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The purpose of this research was to evaluate contextual factors affecting labour
productivity on construction projects, and whether these factors differ based on
construction projects, company or location. According to a report by McKinsey Global
Institute (MGI) (2017), globally, the construction industry accounts for 13% of the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 7% of the world s working population,
making the construction industry one of the leading contributors to GDP (PWC, 2016;
Barbosa et al., 2017; StatsSA, 2017). Barbosa et al. (2017) said that in the past 20 years
the construction industry has had a 1% annual productivity growth globally.
Durdyev and Mbachu (2011) argue that productivity outside of the contextual
definition and clarity of the construction project s objectives is a complicated concept
to understand. Construction and labour productivity are described as output obtained
divided by input expended by Tran and Tookey (2011) and the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development ([OECD] 2011) respectively. While the
Building and Construction Sector Productivity Taskforce (BCSPT) expand on this noting
that productivity is the construction industry s ability to convert inputs into outputs
(BCSPT, 2009).
Whiteside (2006) proposes that labour productivity is the output average of direct
labour hours to install a unit of material. However, Allmon et al. (2000) argue that
labour productivity can only be defined when an organisation or the project has
identified the base or norm of what constitutes labour productivity. This study agrees
with the proposition raised by Allmon et al. (2000) because logically a base or norm
will be required to know whether labour is productive or not. It follows that if a
construction project commences without clarity on the expectation level of
productivity or a standard for efficient labour productivity, there will be no knowledge
of how the project has performed.
Throughout literature, different scholars view labour productivity as one of the factors
having a significant influence on construction productivity (Makulsawatudom et al.,
2004; Enshassi et al., 2007; Jarkas and Bitar, 2012; Jarkas, 2015; Okorafor et al., 2016).
Lim (1995) argues that labour productivity is amongst 17 factors found to impact
project productivity, while Hughes and Thorpe (2014), found labour productivity to be
amongst the 15 listed factors affecting project productivity.