Impact of weather conditions on construction labour productivity in Qatar

Abstract

Qatari construction projects frequently encounter significant delays. One of the major causes of these delays is ignoring Qatar's extreme weather conditions on labour productivity. This paper studies the impact of temperature, humidity, and wind on labour productivity in Qatar for four construction trades, namely, formwork, masonry, plaster, and ceramic tiles. These trades were chosen because they are time-consuming and commonly found in most construction projects. Weather and trade labour productivity data were recorded between July 2013 and February 2014. The results showed that weather conditions have a high impact on trade labour productivity. They also showed that the labour productivity in the summer can be as low as half of that in the winter. Linear regression models were developed to predict trade productivity on a given day of the year. is a civil engineer with over 30 years of professional experience in the area of sustainable construction materials and construction engineering and management. His industrial experience involved design, procurement, and construction of various structures including power plants, petrochemical plants, offshore facilities, and buildings. In his recent assignment as project manager for NEPCO/ENRON, he was responsible for the design, procurement, and construction of two LNG power plants amounting to over $350 million. He has successfully obtained over $1.5 million of funded research and documented his findings in over 60 peer-reviewed publications; of which 35 are top quality journal papers. This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled 'Impact of weather conditions on construction labor productivity in State of Qatar' presented at