Improving productivity is the number one goal for construction companies. The larger the company, the more critical it is to increase efficiency in both execution and delivery. Getting projects in on time and under budget – with world-class quality thrown into the mix; this two-pronged goal is all-too-elusive in today’s world.

With a global productivity growth rate of only 1% a year for the past 20 years while the world’s economy has grown at a rate of 2.8% per year over the same two decades, the construction industry is in dire need of a productivity makeover, as a McKinsey Global Institute study pointed out.

That inequity is even more obvious in the United States. Productivity in the retail, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors has grown by 1,500% since 1945. However, the construction industry has barely moved the productivity needle over those same 75 years.

Boost productivity, solve half the world’s infrastructure needs

Politicians talk the talk when it comes to building infrastructure, but they can’t walk the walk unless the construction industry has the tools to enact whatever infrastructure policy they propose. That’s not a political statement. It’s what the numbers reveal.

Without a change in the industry’s productivity, the McKinsey study showed, the world’s need for more and better infrastructure will remain a pipe dream. If, on the other hand, the industry could boost its productivity to the levels of the overall economy, the value the construction industry could contribute would go up by $1.6 trillion per year. That number, the study pointed out, would meet half of the entire world’s yearly infrastructure needs.

Finding a way to deliver this kind of productivity for the construction industry would be a game-changer.

From better, more efficient workplaces to shopping centers to spend their money, the world’s population will have a higher standard of living, thanks to the improvements in the infrastructure that underlie the pathways of their lives.

If only.

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