Strategy & Leadership

Rethinking productivity across the construction industry

April 14, 2015

Global

April 14, 2015

Global
Veronica Lara

Senior Editor, Americas

Veronica is a senior editor for The Economist Intelligence Unit's thought leadership division in New York. She specialises in market environment topics and trends that cut across industries, including the future of work, technological disruption, and economic competitiveness. In addition to these areas, she has led projects on advancements in manufacturing, historic energy demand trends, and socioeconomic topics such as organised labour, post-war impact investing and growth of cities.

Until July 2014 Veronica was the EIU's commerce and regulations analyst for 29 countries, mostly in the emerging markets. She has written for various EIU publications, on subjects such as financial inclusion, international trade, and policies aimed at attracting investment and promoting innovation.

Veronica holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in international relations from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. Before joining the EIU, she covered industries as diverse as defense, logistics and mining for a research advisory firm.

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The construction industry needs a major overhaul if it is to bolster its declining productivity.

Report Summary

Low productivity has been a constant drumbeat in the construction industry, raising costs and adding risk and waste across project life cycles. Efforts to improve efficiency, however, have proven difficult in a market too often defined by low margins, aggressive procurement, talent shortages and uncertain work pipelines.

According to Rethinking productivity across the construction industry: The challenge of change, an Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by Autodesk, meeting the productivity challenge continues to be an industry-wide problem. This makes it difficult for individual organisations to find solutions on their own. Improving productivity at the industry level will require changes in the expectations and behaviours of all stakeholders, including clients, policymakers, and supply-chain partners as well as the contracting community itself.

Research Methodology

Rethinking productivity across the construction industry: The challenge of change is an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report, sponsored by Autodesk. It explores the causes of the current productivity gap in the global construction industry and on the tools and strategies that leading companies are adopting to address and overcome these issues around the world.

In November-December 2014, the EIU surveyed 250 global construction industry professionals. Among the study’s respondents, 28% are based in North America, 26% in Asia-Pacific and 24% in Western Europe. They hail from seven industry sectors, including residential and non-residential construction, civil and industrial infrastructure construction, architectural services, engineering services and supply chain organisations. The respondents are all relatively senior—73% hold C-suite positions—and they work in organisations of different sizes, with 42% earning annual revenue of US$500m or more.  More than half (58%) are from organisations with US$500m or less in revenue, while 23% have revenue over US$1bn. 

To complement the survey findings, the EIU also conducted in-depth interviews with senior executives and industry experts. We would like to thank all survey respondents, as well as the following executives (companies listed alphabetically), for their time and insights:

  • Michael Skelton, market strategy and business intelligence leader, AECOM
  • Craig Halvorson, senior vice-president of operations, ARCADIS
  • Richard Bailey, managing director of construction, BAM Construct UK
  • Edward J Walsh, executive vice-president of energy services projects, Black & Veatch
  • James Barrett, chief innovation officer, Turner Construction

The report was written by Sarah Fister Gale and edited by Veronica Lara.

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