A tool to assess construction worker productivity

Abstract

Labour is one of the most crucial requirements in the construction industry. The current Sri Lankan construction industry is having a hard time finding skilled workers to match their higher demand. Hence, they tend to explore other options such as employing foreign workers. As a result, the cost of labour is increased creating other social and economic issues. Therefore, in order to be profitable, it is essential to optimize the worker productivity. With the aim of improving worker productivity all the factors that affect the productivity needed to be identified and categorized. In this study all the critical factors affecting worker productivity identified through thorough literature review. Using several rounds of surveys factor ranking was done to identify the most critical factors affecting the worker productivity. Using the identified and ranked factors a tool (“Enhancer”) was developed. “Enhancer” assists the project managers, engineers to assess the most critical factors affecting workers’ productivity for a particular construction site and, automatically obtain recommendations and suggestions for low performing factors. Furthermore, the “Enhancer” tool provides an easy process to train the labours and maintain latest construction methods and documents.