How to calculate productivity? Table of productivity.

 

  Data Collection:

 

  Data Collection:

A very comprehensive data collection was performed at construction sites. Took assistance from the site supervisor to compute data as precise as possible.  We used to go to the site at least 3 times in a week for a period of 4 months. Since we had our classes as well on the week days, so we taught the site supervisor to help us measure data in the hours we weren’t available. Being undergrad students we had 6-7 hours available for project on daily basis (except for the project day). Since site work is minimum of 8 hours, which at times exceeds to 10-11 hours (overtime work) and we could only manage 6-7 hours, so the extra hours measurements were taken by the site supervisor on our behalf, and later we counter checked those measurements using our own activity analysis. We remained vigilant while collecting data.

The scope of our project includes four tangible factors, hence the data we acquired touched all four aspects. For the first factor, ‘level of experience of labour’ we looked for sites that had labours with various years of working experience in the specified activities. On construction site there were labours with a ranging work experience i.e. from a few months to years of experience. To bring uniformity and reliability in our results, we categorized experience into parts i.e. 0-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years etc and cases like labour having experience of 23 years or 30 years were very rare, hence we ignored those cases.

‘Complexity of a project’ 

was our second aspect. To cover this aspect we chose two sites with ‘higher complexity’ and two sites with lower complexity. To define a project as complex, we had to go through literature review. The construction process is always made up of a multitude of interacting parts. Therefore, in simple terms, this may suggest that construction is generally complex in nature. However, the dictionary definition adds another interesting property, i.e. `being difficult to understand or carry out, intricate, involved’. Since not all construction production processes satisfy this property, it may then be acceptable to consider it as a meaningful cut-off point that makes a distinction between a `complex’ construction process and a simple or `non-complex’ one.

 

 

Many experts and researchers have defined a complex process in quite a number of specific ways. Perrow (1965) defined the complexity of a task as the degree of difficulty of the search process in performing the task, the amount of thinking time required to solve work-related problems and the body of knowledge that may provide guidelines for performing the task. Thompson (1981) considered complexity as the measure of the difficulty of coordinating a production process comprising of activities that lack uniformity of work. Malzio et al. (1988) suggested that a complex process is that which comprises of operations that are innovative and conducted in an uncertain situation.

 

Experts consider project complexity in a number of ways. They see a complex project as follows.

 

1. That having a large number of different systems that need to be put together and/or that with a

large number of interfaces between elements.

2. When a project involves construction work on a confined site with access difficulty and requiring

many trades to work in close proximity and at the same time.

3. That with a great deal of intricacy which is difficult to specify clearly how to achieve a desired goal or how long it would take.

4. That which requires a lot of details about how it should be executed.

5. That which requires efficient coordinating, control and monitoring from start to finish.

6. That which requires a logical link because a complex project usually encounters a series of revisions during construction and without interrelationships between activities it becomes very difficult to successfully update the programme in the most effective manner.

 

Keeping in mind all these points, we rated our four site projects on a complexity scale. For which we used the method of Likert scale (on a scale of 1 to 5). 1 representing fulfilment of the condition at a very small extent & 5 representing fulfilment of the condition at a very high extent. Sites were rated by observing the site and interviewing the staff.

 

 Complexity of a project

Fig 3.6 Complexity of a project

Or even cost wise, Gulberg mall is most costly project,  site is least in terms of cost of project, as well.

 

Our third factor is ‘temperature’, literature review says that studies on ‘temperature effect on productivity are not consistent’. We used to note hourly data of temperature whenever we were working at site. We took data during winters therefore there weren’t many fluctuations in the temperature.

‘Overtime’ is our fourth factor. Overtime in this research is defined as the hours worked beyond the typical 40 h scheduled per week or 8 hours of work per week days. Extended overtime is frequently used to:

·        Meet tight project targets from owners

·        Make up for late changes and project delays

·        Attract skilled labour to a project

Some owners and contractors consider extended overtime as necessary and required to meet the demands for faster schedules or to staff their projects. For them, extended overtime is the norm, their standard approach to projects.

In our case, the numbers of hours exceeding 8 hours work in a day, is equal to the number of overtime hours. In our sites, it ranged from 1 hr to 5 hrs.

 

3.4 Process of acquiring data on field with respect to its factors:

 

3.4.1 Tangible:

Steps:

1.      Reach site, and see what activities are being performed.

2.      Start noting data of those activities on the designed site performa, at one hour intervals.

3.      If you reach the site late or leaves a bit early, take the assistance of foreman or site supervisor to fill the remaining hours data. In order to make sure that data of whole day at construction site is noted in the performa.

4.      Labour skill level: It was measured by taking readings of labour with a particular experience. For e.g. one day, work done by labour having experience of 0-5 years, working on a particular activity (let’s say concreting), was measured. And on another day, work done by labour having experience of 5-10 years, working on the similar activity (concreting), was measured. Same goes for labour having experience 10-15 years.

5.      Overtime: Work done in the hours after 8 working hours was noted as overtime work.

6.      Temperature: Since we were taking readings at intervals of 1 hour, hence we noted temperature for 1 hour intervals

7.      Complexity: Since we rated each project on a complexity scale, so the productivity data for each site was calculated in hourly average format.

3.4.2 Intangible:

Steps:

1.      Developed a project management process performa

2.      Interviewing construction site staff and observing management system

3.      Verifying our performa results with readings obtained from site

 

Following is the sample of project management process performa

 

 

Project Management Process Performa   1.                  Site name: 2.                  Competency & Number of foreman (years of experience): 3.                  Documentations: 4.                  Company SOPs: 5.                  Safety Management: 6.                  Company SOPs communicated to the administrative body (till foreman level): 7.                  Tools, Techniques & Policies regarding quality management: 8.                  Number of complete projects:

Fig 3.7 Project management process performa