Ranking of Relative Importance of Productivity Factors in Indian Construction Projects

Abstract

Productivity remains an intriguing subject and a dominant issue in the construction sector. Best performance is unachievable with poor productivity resulting in time over-run and consequently cost escalation of projects. Hence, productivity is of critical importance to the profitability of most construction projects and it is essential that attempts to be made to improve productivity. Any improvement in productivity cannot be achieved without understanding the factors that adversely affect productivity. The objective of this research, therefore, is to identify and rank factors perceived to influence productivity of construction projects in Indian context with respect to their relative importance and to determine the importance percentage of main factors and sub factors of productivity. To achieve this objective, a questionnaire survey was carried out targeting respondents from four distinct projects, namely, residential, commercial, infrastructure and industrial. The questionnaire comprised 39 sub factors, classified under the following 10 main factors: manpower, motivation, time, material/tools, leadership, supervision, project, safety, quality, and external. The findings show that, among the factors explored, the subsequent 10 are discerned to be the most significant factors influencing productivity: (1) Lack of availability of electricity, power and water at project site (2) Lack of labour experience (3) Frequent revisions and alterations in design, drawings and specifications (4) Rework due to field error committed by craftsmen (5) Working overtime (6) Material shortage at site (7) Increasing number of labors in the site, so as to accelerate work (8) Payment delay (9) Low quality of raw materials used for construction operations (10) Shortage of tools and equipment necessary to do the job on site. This research’s findings will provide better insights to construction practitioners into productivity issues in India and more effectively direct future efforts to achieve productivity improvement to enhance the performance of construction project.
Keywords: Productivity, construction projects, relative importance, rank, importance percentage