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Proper prediction of productivity can enable the enhanced estimation, realistic scheduling, and accurate cost forecasting of construction processes. Due to the existence of different labor sources (unionized and non-unionized), the prediction of productivity is still a significant problem in India. Moreover, the construction procurement processes and on-site performance are the predominant elements that can result in improved project outcomes. Thereby, the consideration of labor constraints and site conditions will play an important role in productivity improvement.

This study investigates the factors affecting construction site productivity. A total of 28 factors are grouped under 7 categories as follows: labor constraints, safety and quality procurements, material and equipment (ME), site management, project working condition, delay controls, construction methods and techniques, and external factors. Furthermore, by involving these factors, the questionnaire survey was conducted among Indian construction practitioners. As a result, 204 responses were received and the data were analyzed using a reliability test, relative importance index (RII), and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The result of this study highlighted the importance of strategic construction management activities in terms of effective planning of ME, planning and realistic scheduling of construction activities, proper communication, information sharing, etc. Thus, this study provides a clear insight to the Indian construction practitioners in determining the effect of these site factors on the successful execution of their projects.

In this paper, the problem of construction productivity in India and its causes are explained effectively. This study examines the preference of labor contract, labor source, and most importantly, the factors affecting site productivity. Moreover, the other lagging issues regarding the management of construction activities are also described in detail.

This paper is based on a review of the literature on construction productivity and findings from a survey investigating, first, whether there are significant differences in opinions between head office personnel and site managers on factors that influence construction productivity and, second, to determine groups of factors that mostly influence site productivity. A critical discussion is structured under three general headings: (1) management factors; (2) employee motivation; and (3) experience and training. Twenty‐nine factors were extracted from the above headings and were assessed by 19 head office personnel and 17 site managers. The survey indicated that both samples regard ‘ineffective project planning’ and ‘constraints on a worker's performance’ as the most crucial factors influencing productivity. Other highly ranked factors by both samples are ‘difficulties with material procurement’, ‘lack of integration of project information’, ‘disruption of site programme’, ‘lack of experience and training’ and ‘exclusion of site management from contract meetings’. Ultimately, when the factor analysis technique was applied on the 29 factors, the result shows that Resource Management Effectiveness appeared to be the most dominant group of factors influencing construction productivity.

Productivity is a worldwide problem and efforts have been made over the last three decades or so to explore ways to increase the rate of productivity on construction sites. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of the art in productivity research and to present the findings of a survey into the factors that can impair productivity on site.

A literature review is structured under five general headings: pre-construction activities; activities during construction; managerial and leadership issues; motivational factors; and organizational factors. In total, 46 determinants were extracted from the above headings and were assessed by 36 main contractors.

The literature review revealed that while there has been an advancement in developing techniques and tools to improving productivity on site, more need to be done to invest in technology and innovation. The interview survey indicated that factors associated with pre-construction activities, namely, the “experience of the selected site and project managers,” “design errors,” “buildability of the design,” “project planning,” “communication,” “ leadership style” and “procurement method” as the most critical factors influencing site productivity. Other highly ranked factors are “mismanagement of material” and “the work environment.”

The survey is based on main contractors and thus not generalized to cover other sectors of the building team such as designers and engineers.

Outcome of this research can be used to provide professionals and contractors guidance for focussing, acting upon and controlling the most significant factors perceived to influence the construction labor productivity (CLP) on site.

First, reviewed the state of the art and trends in construction productivity research. Second, primary survey with industry experts to rank the relative importance of factors that can influence CLP on site.

The purpose of this paper is to address current knowledge gaps in off-site sub-element fabrication efficiency factors, by identifying an explicit relationship between productivity and employee empowerment.

The research is based on two engineering fabrication-yard case studies that investigate both qualitatively (via analysis of semi-structured interviews that incorporate a five-point Likert scale, with fabrication-product stakeholders), and also quantitatively (via assessment using SPSS statistical analyses to determine significance and trends in the data-set) the relationship between empowerment and productivity.

The results reveal a positive linear relationship in off-site construction between “employee empowerment factors” and, explicitly fabrication-yard “productivity-levels”. An especially strong and significant positive correlation is found to exist in resource development, worker involvement, process improvement, and task recognition as they refer to off-site construction productivity.

Most academic studies of off-site construction remain largely anecdotal and lack an empirical objective study; as a result, this (fabrication-yard) case-study research provides a useful approach to measure empirically the link between employee empowerment and productivity of off-site construction.

Employee empowerment in the construction industry has long been a focus of analyses; however, there remains a lack of consensus and very few studies into the direct relationship between employee empowerment on the one-hand, and productivity in off-site construction on the other-hand. It is argued here that the on-going new research undertaken in the present study will go beyond subjective opinion towards objective measurement of actual performance in off-site construction.

Construction labour productivity is often influenced by variations in work conditions and management effectiveness. It is substantially important to understand the nature and extent to which individual parameters affect productivity. The purpose of this paper is to focus on providing insight on parameters that affect daily job‐site labour productivity by investigating their relative significance and influence on work output.

The methodology is based on the illustration and use of three different data analysis techniques to rank parameters that affect a certain process. These techniques include Fuzzy Subtractive Clustering, Neural Network Modelling and Stepwise Variable Selection Procedure. The first one belongs to inferential statistics, while the other two are artificial intelligence based techniques. The collection of field information, spanning over a time period of ten months, comprised of daily real time observations of job‐site operations, work progress information collected from project managers and supervisors by using customized forms, and daily weather condition recorded through internet sources. Nine parameters are considered in the study presented in this paper. The data on these parameters is examined and their relative influence and contribution in productivity estimates are assessed. The approach was to consider a limited set of parameters relating to daily job‐site productivity. The methodology presented in this paper provides insight on the relative impact of parameters, affecting labour productivity on short term or daily basis. The results based on each of the three methods are analyzed and transformed into a final ranking of parameters.

The three most important parameters are identified in the same order by the fuzzy logic and neural networks methods. Regression analysis, however, provided somewhat different results.

This research investigates the contribution of a set of parameters towards the variations in daily job‐site labour productivity. For practitioners such as site engineers, this is of practical importance for making daily work plans. On the other hand, the structured approach presented to perform significance ranking of parameters relevant to an engineering process, may also be of interest to other researchers and practitioners.

While operational factors reduce construction workers' productivity in Zimbabwe, the impact of the people-centred management aspects has not been empirically interrogated as a remedy. This article reports on a study that sought to determine significant people-centred management aspects that lead to improved labour productivity and assesses the existence of statistically significant differences due to the demographic variables of respondents. Demographic-specific strategies that enhance construction “workers” productivity were revealed.

The survey research design using a self-administered questionnaire was deployed to collect the primary data. The design followed a positivist paradigm to evaluate objectively how people-centred management affects construction workers' productivity. The statistical data were descriptively and inferentially analysed.

People-centred management was determined to be significant in improving construction workers' productivity, with the most significant aspect being the building of employee confidence in related approaches. Designations and educational levels mostly indicated a statistically significant difference in several aspects that included the adoption of a functional reward culture for workers and training on people-centred principles. Training on-site management and construction workers in people-centred management and its application are crucial to improving construction workers' productivity.

Construction companies should drastically improve their concern for people while they sustain a high concern for production within their construction sites. Although several factors affect construction workers' productivity, this study determined that management-related factors and people-centred management were significant towards influencing low productivity in Zimbabwe.

The study determined people-centred management and demographic-specific interventions as being able to improve construction workers' productivity in Zimbabwe.

To establish the differences between the perceptions of white‐collar managers and blue‐collar workers with respect to the factors that affect construction labour productivity, and to show that integrating the differences could lead to productivity improvements.

A questionnaire survey administered to a purposive sample of 400 project managers and a convenience sample of 152 construction workers, eliciting current trends of their perceptions towards 59 factors that were extracted from an extensive literature review and exploratory study. This was followed by the identification of good practice examples from site observations across two project sites.

The study found distinct differences between the two groups, with white‐collar managers being more concerned with resource planning issues and the blue‐collar workers placing more value on the utilisation of resources. Furthermore, the site observations demonstrated that integrating these differences through employee involvement could lead to productivity improvements.

The study should extend previous productivity research, which had hitherto focussed on shorter‐term work content and work environment factors from a managerial perspective, with relatively lesser focus on the perspective of the general workforce.

An accurate estimation of project costs is always a great challenge for a construction company, particularly when there is a commitment with the owner to achieve a project at a given price. It is thus essential to develop technical and logistic solutions (TLS) ensuring a good organisation and improving the productivity. These improvements are not yet well assessed because relevant models are not available at the right time. This paper presents a new approach for assessing productivity by using an analytical cost model and indicators widely used to measure the site productivity. A case study is described to validate the cost and indicator model. They can be used in a decision making process consisting of a comparative study of different TLS in order to select, in a predicted term, the TLS ensuring the best productivity. A decision support system for generating different alternatives to be compared is currently under development.

The purpose of this paper shows the effect of hot and humid weather conditions (HHWCs) on workers that has resulted in considerable loss in the construction industry, especially during the hottest periods due to decline in worker productivity (WP). Until the last few decades, there is very limited research on construction WP in HHWCs. Nevertheless, these studies have sparked interests on seeking for the most appropriate methods to assess the impact of HHWCs on construction workers.

This paper begins by reviewing the current measuring methods on WP in HHWCs, follows by presenting the potential impact of HHWCs on WP. The paper highlights the methodological deficiencies, which consequently provides a platform for scholars and practitioners to direct future research to resolve the significant productivity loss due to global warming. This paper highlights the need to identify the limitations and advantages of the current methods to formulate a framework of new approaches to measure the WP in HHWCs.

Results show that the methods used in providing real-time response on the effects of HHWCs on WP in construction at project, task and crew levels are limited. An integration of nonintrusive real-time monitoring system and local weather measurement with real-time data synchronisation and analysis is required to produce suitable information to determine worker health- and safety-related decisions in HHWCs.

The comprehensive literature review makes an original contribution to WP measurements filed in HHWCs in the construction industry. Results of this review provide researchers and practitioners with an insight into challenges associated with the measurements methods and solving practical site measurements issues. The findings will also enable the researchers and practitioners to bridge the identified research gaps in this research field and enhance the ability to provide accurate measures in HHWCs. The proposed research framework may promote potential improvements in the productivity measurements methods, which support researchers and practitioners in developing new innovative methods in HHWCs with the integration of the most recent monitoring technologies.

The aim of this study is to explore the impact of using foreign workers on construction productivity in project situations. Generally, foreign-funded projects use both native and foreign workers. Foreign workforce entering into the construction industry may affect the productivity positively or negatively, depending on the migrants’ attributes, institutional arrangements and native workers’ responses, thereby impacting the cost of the project. In Sri Lanka, large construction sites have become multicultural and depend on foreign workers brought in by foreign contractors for infrastructure projects.

A survey-based approach was used to collect data. Structured interviews were conducted to explore the characteristics of the foreign workforce and their impact on productivity. Further, potential strategies were analyzed to establish industry motivators (IM) to enhance productivity.

The study on the foreign workforce identified ten employee characteristics that may impact project’s productivity either positively or negatively. Further, 16 significant strategies were compiled to establish six IM to enhance productivity.

These proposed motivators will be useful for construction practitioners in mitigating negative impacts and proactively managing the foreign workforce in a way to enhance construction productivity.