Factors affecting labor productivity of the construction workers in Bangladesh

Abstract

Productivity remains an intriguing subject and a dominant issue in the construction sector, promising cost savings and efficient usage of resources. Construction industry faces challenges to improve their productivity and the problems are usually associated with performance of labor if the construction is specially labor intensive. Without adequate and efficient manpower, it is impossible to carry out a construction project. It causes a lot of mishaps and disturbance to the whole construction operation, thus increasing the duration and cost of the project, which may not be feasible for the constructing company or owner. So it needs to be ensured that all the labors are giving their best input for the achievement of the project goals. However, labor’s productivity and efficiency gets affected by some factors. These factors may either motivate the labors for showing better productivity or may demotivate them and stop them from giving their best effort. These factors can be controlled by taking necessary steps by the owner or constructing company. But in order to do so, the factors, that are affecting the building construction labor’s productivity mostly, are required to be identified. But in Bangladesh, this issue has not given much attention. As a result, standard construction of a building in Bangladesh is still very time consuming and costly. This situation has motivated the study to identify, asses and determine the factors those are affecting the labor productivity of building construction sector of Bangladesh. A questionnaire survey has been carried out to get the workers response and point of view about the management facilities of their job, and thus to identify the possible factors that have been affecting their productivity. Labors from various construction sites have been surveyed to get the response of the workers, and through which the factors affecting labor productivity have been identified. The results show that the factors identified have more or less strong impact on labor productivity. It is hoped that the study will be a guideline for various building construction projects to arrange proper management facilities for the labors to improve their productivity which will ensure the feasibility, cost efficiency and minimum duration.