Levels of Productivity

Making major improvements to labor productivity for contractors starts at the company level and must be rigorously managed all the way down to the individual steps in each task.

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Levels Of Productivity Company, Projects, Tasks, and Steps

We too often see contractors attacking the problem only at one level and not looking at the entire value stream identifying what adds the most value and what does not.  

  • Company - Do you have the right people in place to identify and eliminate waste?  Does your market strategy and opportunity selection process provide projects where you have the best chance of success?
  • Projects - How effective is your planning process?
  • Tasks - What percentage of your tasks have all 6 Pillars of Productivity met before starting?  
  • Steps - Look at every detail, every screw, every step and see if you can eliminate it.  

Remember that the actual speed of the crafts people installing things IS NOT the biggest problem with productivity.


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Levels of Productivity
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Levels of Productivity
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Collections and Retention Trend Metric
Assuming that a contractor’s project team has done an effective job of aggressively billing the project, the biggest variable that remains for cash flow is the effectiveness of collections.
Resource - Stratified Systems Theory (SST) and Timespan 101
All contractors navigate through very predictable stages of growth, delivering larger and more complex projects. Business complexity evolves requiring different capabilities at all levels. Tom Foster lays out some of these key differences very clearly.
Definition - Deliberate Practice
Practicing with a clear awareness of the specific components of a skill we are working to improve, and exactly how to improve them. It is not simply doing something repetitively for enjoyment or until it becomes mindless.