https://doi.org/10.24928/2022/0143

Is Construction Industry Still Performing Worse Than Other Industries?

Jan A. Elfving¹ & Olli Seppänen²

¹ Senior Vice President, Skanska Finland, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0002-7909-6759
²2 Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalto University, Finland, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0002-2008-5924

Abstract

It is difficult to find a cross-industry comparison where the construction industry is not one of the worst performing industries. Countless studies demonstrates that the industry is lacking other industries in productivity development and safety. But are we actually comparing apples-to-apples, or, moreover, are there areas where construction industry is performing better than most industries? It is easy to show what does not work but it seems to be harder to show what works. This paper presents some early results of performance measures that large number of leading engineering and construction companies have agreed to measure performance on in the Finnish construction industry. We compare reliability, user experience, sustainability, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Based on this baseline progress in the industry will be followed and also compared to other industries. There are already some interesting points to be lifted, like schedule reliability in Finland seems to be higher than in studies in other countries. Another interesting observation is customer satisfaction and Net Promotor score, where construction industry scores higher than most other industries. Based on the performance measures the paper discusses about industry performance in general.

Keywords

benefits realization, continuous improvement, lean construction, waste

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Reference

Elfving, J. A. & Seppänen, O. 2022. Is Construction Industry Still Performing Worse Than Other Industries?, Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) , 399-409. doi.org/10.24928/2022/0143

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