Estimating Construction Labor Productivity Frontier: Pilot Study

Abstract

Existing practice compares actual productivity with historical data to gauge construction operation efficiency. However, this practice is accurate only if historical data reflect optimal values—generally, such comparisons manifest only relative rather than absolute efficiency. Therefore, in order to determine absolute efficiency, one must compare actual versus optimal productivity. Optimal productivity is the highest sustainable productivity level achievable under “good management” and “typical field conditions.” Perfect conditions, though unattainable in the field, conceptually yield the theoretical maximum level of productivity, known as the “productivity frontier.” The productivity frontier is a construct that enables the estimation of the optimal productivity of construction operations. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by introducing a novel framework for estimating the labor productivity frontier and applying this framework to a pilot study that tests the feasibility of this framework against a single-worker, labor-intensive, sequential construction task. This paper first reviews relevant literature, then presents the theoretical underpinnings of the framework for estimating the productivity frontier in the construction domain, examines the data from the pilot study, and evaluates the feasibility of the proposed framework. By following two approaches—observed durations and statistically estimated durations—this study demonstrates the functionality of this framework by computing that the productivity frontier of the pilot study is 22.32 stations per hour.