Productivity in construction can be maximized with the right plan in place. That said, productivity isn’t always what a project manager may want it to be because of the uncontrollable and unpredictable. Budget overruns, delivery delays, bad forecasting, and changing scope can negatively impact productivity, and there is only so much one can do to prevent these risks.
Here is the smart approach to improving productivity in a construction team.
Set Realistic Goals
Do not have unrealistic project deadlines. This only leads to stress, mistakes, and reduced team morale. Provide your people with realistic, simple, and achievable deadlines.
Standardize Processes
Provide workers with clear standard operating procedures for repetitive or common tasks. Document efficient processes as you want to see them done. This avoids confusion and mistakes, leading to better outcomes and faster work.
Create Efficient Workflows
Reduce downtime by strategizing the most optimal workflow. This can involve meticulous scheduling to ensure your workers, materials, and equipment function perfectly.
Hire Good Supervisors
Hire strong management, supervisors, managers, and team leads. A strong manager is a must for a robust workflow. A lack of competency can cause difficulties, including a lack of trust in management. In these roles, a company needs well-liked leaders.
Bring Technology to Your Project
Technology can support productive construction work. Construction software is perhaps the best example of increasing efficiency by improving oversight, data collection, centralizing communication, accounting, task delegation, and more.
Enhance Safety
A safe project site is an efficient site. When safety is a focus, you avoid incidents that waste valuable time. Safety is deeply intertwined with productivity. When safety protocols are integrated into workflows, the risk of an accident is minimized, and productivity is kept up.
Offer Safety Training
Ensure workers are offered safety training to reduce accidents and downtime due to safety hazards. Safety education will only have a positive net effect and is worth arranging, even if it’s a couple of hours of training and nothing more.
Identify Bottlenecks
Monitor productivity data. If you see areas where productivity is lacking, investigate. Identify bottlenecks. They can result from poorly planned processes or standards and sometimes be easily resolved.
Offer Recognition
Team members who do their work and fulfill expectations of their role, especially those who’ve truly gone above and beyond, warrant acknowledgment. Offer recognition in a public setting to socially reward those doing a great job. Strive to create a productive workplace that offers the best construction jobs for women and men.
Provide Clear Deadlines
Every worker should understand without any confusion what their role is, what their responsibilities are, and what task deadlines are. Clear deadlines ensure that your workers understand the expectations for performance standards.
Keep Delays in the Schedule
Plan for delays. Put them in the schedule. This will keep your team ahead and ensure your plans aren’t taken off-track by the unexpected.
Delegate Tasks
Train your team leaders to be skilled at delegating and assigning tasks based on worker skill sets. This makes workers feel valuable and trusted, as no leader can do everything themselves. It also saves time, reduces stress, and eliminates burnout.
Maintain Equipment
Poor equipment management is a common reason projects are delayed. Don’t let an equipment breakdown reduce productivity. Ensure equipment is properly maintained, fixed, or replaced as needed. Keep your fleet or rental inventory available.
Centralize Communication
Clarify what communication channels you wish to use on your construction project. Use construction management software to centralize communication. Ensure communication is efficient and effective at every level of the project.
Encourage Open Communication
Actively ask team members to raise questions, comments, and concerns. Hold daily or weekly meetings where you gather as a team to discuss progress and project challenges. This will allow workers to feel involved in the project and give them a platform to come forward and use their voices.
Foster Collaboration
Promote teamwork through joint problem-solving sessions, encourage sharing knowledge and skills, and assign tasks requiring team members to work together. Collaboration increases morale and, in turn, productivity. Workers get the added benefit of shared success.
Quickly Resolve Conflicts
Do not wait to resolve conflicts. Team productivity is firmly based on how well team members communicate and work together. With interpersonal conflict, take the time to resolve what’s happening and bring your team back together to focus on the project phase.
Manage Stress Levels
Ensure your construction team does not feel overworked. Alleviate unnecessary pressure. Give workers the chance to come forward with potential concerns. Provide essential breaks for the team to recharge and balance workloads. Listen to your workforce and pay attention to their overall performance, communication, and perceived stress level.
Use Data to Drive Decision-Making
A construction project generates a ton of data. Use it. Review real-time data on labour, material, and task completion in construction management software. Analyze current project performance to make informed decisions on how to set up your team for maximum productivity.
