Critical factors affecting construction material productivity

Construction productivity is crucial and plays a huge role in the success of a construction company. Productivity can be defined in simpler terms as ratio of output to all or some of resources used to obtain that output. As far as the construction industry is concerned different productivity exists namely labour productivity, material productivity, capital productivity etc. Most of the research in the field is about labour productivity while material productivity is ignored. This research focuses on construction material productivity and factors influencing it. From a detailed literature review top factors affecting construction productivity were found out and further refined to a meaningful level. A case study was done for a period of 12 months in Bangalore to study effects of these factors on concrete productivity. Concrete was the major and critical element in the project so it was the main focus of the study. A total of 55 factors were used for the case study and 22 factors were found to be having an impact on productivity. The most critical factors affecting concrete productivity were consumables, shortage of construction materials, rework, payment delay, lack of skilled workforce and quality control. Suggestions were made on how to improve productivity at the end of the research.