Industry wastes one third of its time
The construction industry is not short of people because it is wasting 35% of current workers’ time through project delays.
Research carried out by BSRIA into productivity on UK building sites showed that 16% of the normal working day is lost because of poor productivity, which seriously undermines attempts to be sustainable.
“This translates into about 15% of total construction costs,” said Glenn Hawkins, who led the project. “We have a major time problem on sites. More than one third of the typical working day is consumed by delays, which means that 35 of every 100 people turning up to work on a construction site is turning up for no reason.”
He said this showed that the industry was not short of people or skills, the problem is how they were used and whether they had the skills were appropriate.
“The industry can build things more quickly than 10 years ago thanks to new systems and better tools and equipment, but the challenge is to build to a more consistently high level,” said Mr Hawkins. “Most of the problems are not to do with putting systems together, they occur in the lead up to that stage and that means we have to totally re-think how we train apprentices and graduates.”
“Our workforce must have organisational, behavioural and technical skills,” he said. “There is room for improvement in all three, but it is the first two that must be addressed urgently. We can’t drive performance levels forward in a sustainable manner despite all the technical advances we are making.”