Productivity rates and construction methods for high rise concrete construction: a comparative evaluation of UK, German and French contractors

Abstract

Recent investigations concerning the productivity of the UK construction industry and its performance compared with other European and world-wide nations have reported conflicting findings. These investigations have utilized various methodologies in attempting to measure and compare productivity levels. The present investigation uses a customized method to gauge the productivity at site level of three European national construction industries, namely Germany, France and the UK. Analysis of variance is employed to compare the productivity rates used by contractors' planning engineers for a specific concreting operation. The performance of UK contractors is found to be more disparate than those of contractors in either France or Germany. Although leading UK contractors can compete with the best on the continent, there are a number of companies whose performance is far worse than any in France and Germany, due mainly to the construction methods used by UK contractors. It is concluded therefore, that a best practice recommenda9 tion for UK contractors would be for them to avoid using traditional timber formwork methods to beams, and instead adopt more productive approaches afforded using either proprietary or prefabricated systems.