An Activity analysis to investigate the root causes of worker productivity losses in Sri Lankan building construction projects

Abstract

Construction workers are the basic unit of the construction industry. The behaviour of construction workers varies with the time, which impacts on worker productivity. Therefore, obtaining the highest levels of performance is crucial in order to be competitive in the construction industry. The scarcity of skilled workers, increase of high rise building projects and changes in the economic and political conditions aggravated the need of seeking strategies to improve the performances of construction workers. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the productivity pitfalls, and root causes behind the worker performance losses when developing productivity improvement frameworks. Under this study, a detailed workforce assessment framework was developed for building construction projects using the Activity Analysis technique. A worker performance benchmarking was carried out for different trades to identify the differences in contract strategies of the workers. Further, root causes for worker productivity losses were identified and mapped those with the responsible parties.