Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Justification: As a whole, the US has enjoyed almost continuous productivity growth for the last
several decades, however several previous research efforts have indicated that the U.S. construction
industry bucked this trend with declining productivity. However these research efforts have been
based on non-governmental productivity indices for construction; the U.S. government does not
maintain a productivity index for any construction sector or the industry as a whole. Although a
reliable construction productivity index may not have a direct impact on a specific craft worker’s
productivity or even a project’s productivity, it would provide significantly improved insights toward
understanding the impact of governmental policies (e.g. project permitting requirements, research
strategies and funding of construction related research), industry initiatives (e.g. new building code
requirements and new contract types such as design build), and emerging market trends (e.g. work force
availability and material prices) on the construction industry’s performance. In essence, robust industry
productivity measures will fill a significant gap in controlling the industry’s performance.
Objectives: The proposed research outlines a two-tiered strategy at the industry, project, and activity
levels to improve productivity and its measurement in construction related sectors by achieving the
following two objectives:
1) Pinpoint the challenges and opportunities for developing industry-level, sector based productivity
metrics; and
2) Develop task level productivity metrics for the Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site.
Technical Merit: To effectively manage an industry, a project, or an activity, measurement tools are
required. These tools are used to develop feedback in the management control loop. To a significant
extent, the management control loops for the construction industry, its projects, and their activities are
nested, and thus measurement tools used for feedback are most effective when harmonized with each
other. Developing and implementing a harmonized set of feedback measurement tools is a significant
technical challenge that is addressed in this proposal.
To begin with, there is no governmental measure of productivity for any construction sector or for
the U.S. construction industry as a whole. Such a measure has been difficult to achieve for a number of
reasons. Through a sustained collaboration with key industry stakeholders, the described research effort
will develop a roadmap towards developing reliable productivity measures for selected sectors of the
construction industry.
The Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site (IACJS) will provide a unique opportunity
to examine the potential impact that observed technologies may have on construction productivity in a
controlled environment. The proposed research will develop task level productivity metrics to be used in
the IACJS, which will help in both the assessment of new technologies and the potential development of a
technology prediction index to help quantify the likelihood that a proposed technology would have a
positive impact on construction productivity, if implemented on construction jobsites.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 12/1/10 → 11/30/11 |
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.