Masonry Magazine April 2000 Page. 23
Productivity,
Quality, Safety
A Relationship for Success
by George Berg and Rick Dutmer, FMI
Construction productivity can be improved and projects made more profitable if the installation quality is increased and job sites are safer. At first glance, the relationship between productivity, quality and safety may seem incidental and remote but they are more interrelated than one might think.
Productivity
Construction labor in the field is a large part of the profitability equation and a major resource to many construction companies. Direct field labor is one of the largest components of the cost of construction. However, the managers of that resource, field supervisors, are often under-trained. Key areas for improvement of field supervisors include crew motivation; daily planning; training of subordinates; communication with owners, designers, and other trade contractors, or, managing contract changes. In addition, the studies performed by the Construction Industry Institute and FMI indicate that roughly one-third (30%-35%) of all field labor falls into the category of recoverable lost time-time that could have been productive if there had been better training, task instruction, understanding of the quality standards, and some system to observe and measure if the desired results are being achieved. Simply put-better management!
Again, training (how) and task instruction (what) given in a clear unambiguous manner are essential. Procedures for putting the work in place must be discussed and detailed in daily planning sessions. Then observation must be made to ensure the task is being carried out correctly. Measurement and reinforcement of the appropriate behaviors must also occur. Task instruction, developing task procedures, and making observations to reinforce work being accomplished according to plan is essential to productivity.
Quality
The Quality of the initial installation of construction materials can be a key factor in the profitability of many projects. Making crafts people aware that they should accomplish their tasks according to a standard (e.g., the contract specifications) is an important aspect of getting the job done right. Pretask planning, coordination of the materials, tools and equipment, proper instructions, and trade or technical skills are critical to proper installation and ultimately the project's success.
Measurement to determine that these critical activities are occurring is vital, but there must also be reinforcement for doing the work correctly according to agreed-upon standards. Deficiencies in quality manifest in a variety of ways, chief among them is rework. The cost of rework is tremendous. Research performed by the Business Roundtables Construction Industry Cost Effectiveness Project concluded that losses in production primarily resulted from absenteeism and turnover. The root cause of this is workers performing the jobs in unsafe working conditions and having to perform excessive rework. Installing work usually includes selecting the material, purchasing the material, transporting it to the workforce, unloading it, staging it, and installing it. The labor to install the material has a similar sequence of events. When things are not done according to standard, the originally installed work has to be removed and then all of the installation steps repeated. Originally, there was one set of steps-when rework occurs the work is multiplied by 3! The cost of rework can very easily be three times the original budget. For example, a $20-million a year contractor who spends $5 million on direct labor and has a 2ª percent incidence of rework would be losing approximately $375,000 annually ($125,000 x .05% x 3 times) in just labor. If the opportunity cost of having workers ignore the work they should be working on while they were removing work and then reinstalling it is considered, then the cost could be five times the original amount. Rework can also cause collateral delays and disruption to surrounding work. Although the amount of rework is not the only measure of quality, it is a key indicator of how much attention is being paid to the concept of quality.
Safety
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicates that the construction industry continues to have the highest work place injury rate of any major sector. In 1987 the Bureau of Labor statistics reported that the construction industry ranked first in both fatality and injury