This post is an excerpt from the paper, “Industrialization of the Construction Industry,” by Dr. Perry Daneshgari and  Dr. Heather Moore of  MCA Inc.

In today’s construction environment the value transferred to the customer for every dollar spent is only around 46 cents.  More than 40% of the tradesmens’ time on a job site is spent on material handling; most of the work on a job site is performed by highly trained and paid skill tradesmen.

Click to tweet: “Over 40% of tradesmen’ time
on a #construction job site is spent on material handling”

To achieve comparable results as have been seen in the manufacturing and other industries the construction industry has to take these same five steps:

1. Segregation of Work

The most important contribution of Fredrick Taylor’s work to industrialization of manufacturing was his ability to observe the skilled and unskilled tradesmen at work for a long period of time and being able to breakdown the conducted work. Once the work was broken-down it could then be managed by better management of time, location and contributing resources.

Once the work was visible and understood, it could be designed in the most optimal manner, and segregated amongst the resources available.

“Principles of Scientific Management” by Fredrick Taylor

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This post is an excerpt from the paper, “Industrialization of the Construction Industry,” by Dr. Perry Daneshgari and  Dr. Heather Moore of  MCA Inc.

An important study by the National Research Council, “Advancing the Competitiveness and Efficiency of the U.S. Construction Industry” identified solutions for breakthrough improvement of productivity.

Five Key Areas for Productivity Improvements in Construction

1. Widespread deployment and use of interoperable technology applications.
2. Improved job-site efficiency through a more effective interface of people, processes, materials, equipment, and information.
3. Greater use of pre-fabrication, pre-assembly, modularization, and off-site fabrication techniques and processes.
4. Innovative, widespread use of demonstration installations.
5. Improved performance measurement to drive efficiency and support innovation.

Click to tweet: “Do you know the 5 Key Areas for
Productivity Improvements in #Construction?”

These findings are very much in line with what the manufacturing industry had realized after the advent of industrialization. The Industrial revolution, which started in mid 1700, led to an increase in population due to the first time in the human history that production levels were higher than self-consumption of the working man.

With higher population also came new markets and customers. The production facilities had to become more productive.

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