Construction Revolution: Labor Productivity & the Labor Shortage

Labor productivity challenges the construction industry. Time and money are lost, and the struggle to have efficiency on job sites amid the labor shortage further increases the problem. However, there’s a way to resolve the headaches and stress that come from this struggle.

Episode 5 of the Construction Revolution podcast by Neuberger & Co. features Bill Wagner, President of STRUXI and Penta Technologies, Inc., and he shares his industry expertise and how technology tackles the construction industry’s labor shortage and labor-productivity problem.

Construction is an industry unlike any other, with accounting being set up in a reverse approach compared to other industries. These companies know what materials and efforts are needed to complete the work, and they monitor the process on a granular level. Why? The industry feels that this is the best way to surveil a project and be ready to act when things start to go wrong.

Managing a business within an industry that has low margins, has job types that continuously change and has more challenges arising every day is typical for construction. Other industries in the United States have seen double-digit growth for labor productivity in the last 20 years. But construction?  It’s in the same place it was 20 years ago.

Project managers and owners are nearing retirement, and younger individuals aren’t looking to work in construction. Combine the lack of labor productivity growth and the increase in the labor shortage, and your business meets even more uncertainty, more money lost and more time wasted.

The need for control in an unpredictable industry such as construction is essential, especially when the unexpected awaits your team at every job site.  So, what can be done?  Look at the data to unlock the productivity your team needs.

STRUXI is a digital toolkit for the decision maker in the field: the foreman, the job superintendent, and the project manager. The software acts as a digital time clock that tracks when workers clock in and out on job sites, and the tracking is meant for information only (such as grouping workers into teams, viewing the work completed and examining the work length) to help construction leaders make smart decisions based on the data.

By forcing people to look at the data daily, leaders can see the following benefits:

1. You eliminate the payroll rounding.
2. You give the decision maker time back to make data-informed decisions rather than running around the job site trying to collect information.
3. You give the decision maker more control over the choices they make by giving them data to look at every day.
4. Once you build the data set in the long term, you put your business in a position to decide whether you want a job completed as fast as possible or if you want to make as much money as possible. The data can then show you who to put on which job to get the results you need.

Data is only the start. Being a technological disruptor brings value to your business. Construction companies that participate in this shake the construction industry and bring about lean methodology and short, interval scheduling to help their business succeed.

Construction has been stagnant for long enough; using data and technology brings value and productivity to not only your team, but also the field. Wagner shares how STRUXI helped one company, Lithko, redeploy half of the payroll team, remove payroll rounding, return 1-1.5 hours a day to the project leaders and save between $25-30 million each year.

Now that’s a company using data and acting as a technological disruptor to change up the industry, and STRUXI loves being a part of that process. Massive changes are coming in the next 10 years for construction, so it’s time to move out of the stone age and move into the future to help your business increase its efficiency and value.

Listen to Wagner’s insight on how to tackle the labor shortage and labor-productivity problems in the field and hear how labor-productivity solutions like STRUXI can have your team saving time and money while navigating through the labor shortage.