| dc.description.abstract | According to the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, “productivity isn’t everything, but in the long-run it is almost everything”. It is unfortunate that the productivity in the construction industry has lagged behind the manufacturing industry for the last several decades. The research presented in this thesis aims to improve productivity in the infrastructure sector of the construction industry by developing and validating Best Productivity Practices Implementation Index (BPPII) for Infrastructure projects.
The BPPII Infrastructure is a check list of practices that are considered to have a positive influence on labour productivity at the project level for infrastructure projects. These practices have been identified through a literature review and consultation with industry experts, and have been anecdotally proven to positively affect productivity. These practices have been grouped together into a formalized set of BPPII’s categories, sections, and elements. Each practice and its planning and implementation levels have been completely defined. Each practice in the index has been assigned a relative weight based on its importance in affecting labour productivity. In total, there are 61 elements, 20 sections, and 6 categories. The six categories of the BPPII Infrastructure are: (1) Materials Management; (2) Construction Machinery and Equipment Logistics; (3) Execution Approach; (4) Human Resources Management; (5) Construction Methods; and (6) Health and Safety.
The productivity factor defined as a ratio of estimated productivity and actual productivity was used as a metric to collect information about labour productivity. Data were collected for infrastructure projects on the planning and implementation level of practices, on the productivity factor, and on project schedule performance.
The research hypothesis tested was that projects that have a high level of implementation of best practices as defined by the BPPII Infrastructure will have a better productivity performance than projects which have a low level of implementation of best practices. The regression analysis confirms that the BPPII score has a strong positive relationship with the productivity factor. ANOVA tests confirm that there is statistically significant difference between the productivity of projects that have a high level of implementation of practices and those that have a low level of implementation. Also, it was found that projects that have a high score on the index perform better in terms of project schedule performance than projects which have a low score on the BPPII Infrastructure. | en |
