Every major industry has dozens of governing bodies and expert groups represented by long and forgettable acronyms. Newsflash, the construction industry is not an exception. The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) is one of the oldest, largest, and most impactful professional groups in the construction industry. They have over 152,000 members in 177 countries and were established in 1852.
The ASCE recently published a 35-page industry standard titled, “Identifying, Quantifying, and Proving Loss of Productivity ASCE 71-21.” The writing takes a deeper dive into the importance of collecting productivity data, how to track and measure labor productivity and how to improve construction productivity.
The Importance of Collecting Productivity Data
SCE has found that the tracking of productivity in the construction industry isn’t being done properly or in a timely enough manner. Most teams recognize their labor productivity hasn’t been great when they’re already about 80% through the project and still have a ton of work left to complete.
At that point, it’s too late to make any meaningful adjustments and the project takes a loss. Collecting construction productivity data early and often empowers a project manager to call an audible if things aren’t going well to get their team back on track.
How to Track and Measure Labor Productivity
ASCE 71-21 states that tracking construction productivity comes down to accurately measuring quantities of commodities installed and labor hours used. Additionally, the tracking must take place as soon as the project starts and continue regularly throughout the project.
STRUXI captures BOTH production quantities and labor hours, and it can do this on a daily basis and in real-time.
The ASCE literature says that in some cases, measuring productivity isn’t an issue of having the right technology, but is more of a cultural issue. Some company cultures don’t value the collection of productivity data enough to warrant training employees to use new technology.
Fortunately, STRUXI doesn’t require an entire culture shift, since the web-based software requires little to no training and minimal touch time to use productively.
Reducing Productivity Issues
Once productivity is being tracked early and daily, field and office leadership can identify where all their budgeted hours are going by viewing labor productivity reports. Also, this level of tracking can help show what work is beyond the scope of the original contract that may require a change order.
STRUXI produces out-of-the-box reports that clearly show performance over time and help identify productivity issues. An additional feature of STRUXI called time attributes allows users to label labor hours with terms of their choosing on top of their already assigned cost code. You can think of time attributes as your own, personal hashtags! This feature helps provide a more accurate snapshot of the current state of a project and better tells the story of a project when looking back on it.
Schedule a call today to learn more about how STRUXI helps measure productivity and empowers users to then improve productivity.
