Looking Ahead

FMI released the results of its latest survey of contractor productivity today, the FMI 2004–2005 Contractor Productivity Survey Results. The report identified several positive trends in construction industry productivity, but revealed that 53 percent of the companies responding to the survey

Moreover, 81 percent of those surveyed said they could save over 5 percent of their annual field labor costs through better management of productivity.

The survey results represent responses from a cross section of the construction industry, including general contractors and subcontractors ranging in size from $15 million annual revenue to over $100 million.

The report notes that the construction industry has no industry-accepted metric for productivity, but the questions gauging the opinions and experience of industry executives highlight several important practices that affect productivity improvement.

According to Scott Kimpland, an FMI director and author of the report, "It seems that the industry has a belief that they can save their way to prosperity. That particular mindset might explain why our industry has not been able to change overall performance significantly. You cannot just think or talk your way to productivity improvement; you must invest to improve productivity."

Kimpland draws comparisons to the industry's investment in safety improvement during 2003. The survey found that most companies said they invested significantly more to improve safety than productivity in 2003. Given the positive trends in safety improvement in recent years, Kimpland noted it is likely that similar investments in productivity would also yield significant gains.

One of the positive trends indicated in this year's survey results was a notable increase in job planning.

FMI's 2003 Survey of Construction Productivity found that only 33 percent indicated that they had a formal and consistent pre-job planning process as compared to the latest report, which indicates that 47 percent of respondents engaged in a formal pre-job planning process.

Overall, the results of the survey indicate the importance of leadership and planning at all levels of the organization from the CEO to field managers.

A comparison of companies that reported significant productivity improvement with those that have had poor productivity trends in the past five years points to several best practices.

For instance, when asked about project manager performance, those that had high productivity improvement said 64 percent of their project managers were doing a great job compared with only 26 percent for all respondents. Companies indicating the most improvement were better able to implement and support new ideas.

To obtain a copy of FMI's 2004–2005 Contractor Productivity Survey Results, contact Phil Warner, FMI Marketing Coordinator, at (919) 785-9357 or by e-mail at: pwarner@fminet.com .