Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Solving the Productivity Problem (Part Three)

The key is project management!

By Andrew Regnerus, Ontario Construction Coordinator

In the first two parts of this series on productivity (Part One, Part Two), I refuted conflating wage and productivity increases and established high systemic influence over productivity and low worker responsibility. In part three, I take a look at four key findings by my friends at Oakbridges, a national labour strategies consulting firm, in their report on Canada’s construction industry.

1. Reject the demographic theories.

Some observers correlate productivity decline to shifting demographics. Retiring workers, they say, take with them work and productivity-enhancing experience, work ethic, and a willingness to prioritize work over other life activities.

However, the experts consulted strongly suggest that the quality or qualifications of tradespeople is not to be blamed. Instead, they blame an accumulation of emerging activities that impact the capabilities and capacity of project leaders—tasks that may appear secondary to the job of building something. Oakbridges challenges the industry to eliminate activities that distract rather than add value, instead of “chasing down proof that tradespeople are somehow not quite up to the task.”

2. The safest performers are the most productive.

That 40 percent of Oakbridges’ report addresses the increase in safety efforts in recent decades may be more a reflection of the research than what the authors value. I know that Oakbridges’ principals respect the safety of workers. I recognize that programs vary in effectiveness and redundancy, yet so long as workers are still injured and killed doing their jobs, emphasis on safety remains necessary.

I find merit in Oakbridges’ suggestion to implement industry-wide tracking of worker safety credentials to prevent repetition for each new situation. The authors suggest that as the safest performers are the most productive, reinforcing good behaviour should trump simply restating how important we think safety is.

3. The lack of trained and disciplined project managers hurts productivity.

Oakbridges names five contributors to the productivity deficit:

Supervisors lack training and experience, particularly to manage the aspects of the work that most impact productivity.
Poor communications processes undermine work instructions; misallocate equipment, materials, tools, and personnel; and delay work permits, etc.
Artificial trade jurisdictions prevent concurrent and efficient workflow.
Improper human resource allocation causes too many or too few people to be assigned to a work activity.
Much nonproductive time accumulates for commuting to site, travel on-site, work breaks, wash-up times, etc.

Productivity depends on good project planning at the outset. A poorly planned project cannot be expected to be delivered productively. Thus, the greatest factor that contributes to poor productivity in construction and leads to overall poor performance on project execution is the lack of trained and disciplined project managers across all levels.

4. Other substrategies can affect productivity.

Oakbridges identifies three more solutions that can help control nonproductive activities, including collaborative contracting strategies (such as integrated project delivery, or IPD), multiskilling and composite (multiple trade scope) crews, and wall-to-wall arrangements (where workers from all trades on a project are represented under one collective agreement). CLAC has been on IPD jobs and is well-versed on how the second and third strategies can improve productivity.

Solving the Productivity Problem (Part Three)

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