Consider a recent experience of mine: While visiting a powerplant project, I listened to a familiar claim: "Were giving it 100% and when were held up, its not our fault," a foreman told me as we reviewed what was wrong with the fast-track job. Not only was the job behind schedule and over budget with sketchy drawings, late deliveries of steel and conflicts between the plants owner, engineer and constructor. There was a pervasive mindset of, "Why change? Weve always done it this way," even though the productive use of labor resources this time was barely 50% of available work hours.
SLIDE. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, construction labor productivitymeaning value added per work hourhas been on a slide for decades. That has happened even though labor-intensive construction productivity problems are at least 80% controllable. In manufacturing, by contrast, worker productivity has been going up steadily since Taylors 19th-Century contributions.