Productivity Analysis and Associated Risks in Steel Structures

Abstract

Construction can be analyzed at industry, firm, project, and activity/task levels. Given that there are differences between the concepts of productivity and uses of productivity data, depending on the level of analysis, there is no single meaning of construction productivity, except of an output/input ratio. Furthermore, there is little knowledge in the extant literature about steel structure productivity, sustainability, and risks. Moreover, through the investigation of the grey literature, i.e., the national or European reports on construction productivity, the indexes given are at aggregate levels. This paper aims to fill this gap and provide a holistic approach to the levels of productivity, sustainability, and the risks involved in the construction process in several steel structure types from similar projects constructed by a company that has operated within the field of steel structures for several decades. From a homogeneous database of 71 steel structure projects constructed in the last decade, several curves are derived concerning productivity per work phase. For this research, productivity is construed as a ratio of output/(cycle time). Through a literature review and interviews with experienced site engineers, a risk registry was compiled by the authors concerning sixteen (16) risks encountered in the construction process. The TOPSIS multi-criteria analysis program is used for the prioritization of risks and the @RISK program for the probabilistic cost analysis of the identified risks.