Analysis of Critical Factors Affecting Labor Productivity of Construction Projects in Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

AbstractThe construction industry in India with Gross Domestic Product share of 8–10% is the second largest contributor in previous decade and it employs a large population. Construction is a labor-intensive industry. Decreasing construction productivity is a major concern faced by this industry. The loopholes in labor productivity sprang from various factors that are behind the labor inefficiency to complete the work at the desired rate. These factors are reviewed from different studies already conducted in the past to find the inefficacy of a project. In the present study, five construction sites of Himachal Pradesh, India have been taken into consideration. Firstly, the productivity of a construction site was checked using work sampling method which conforms to our assumption of decreased productivity. In the second phase, a questionnaire has been prepared where important attributes of labor productivity were stressed to find the significant factors affecting construction labor productivity. The methodology used was, (a) problem identification in labor’s inefficiency, (b) getting questionnaire responses related to factors affecting labor’s productivity from each site, and analysis of the data using Relative Important Index to get significant/critical factors. From this study, it was found that Rework, Efficiency of labor, Materials Availability, working without holidays, and safety having RII values as 0.88, 0.76, 0.52, 0.40, and 0.16 respectively were the important factors that are affecting the construction labor productivity in Himachal Pradesh. The results obtained from this study suggest that the management team needs to focus on more clarity of the task to be performed as improper supervision at the sites leads to an increase in the workload by redoing the same work again.KeywordsConstructionLabor productivityQuestionnaireWork samplingRelative important index