There is a growing movement in the construction industry to adopt LEAN principles to streamline jobsite labor productivity. As one of the primary costs of construction, labor alone constitutes as much as 30% of overall project cost, and represents the cost that is most subject to uncertainty and risk. This risk is predominantly due to compromised site productivity on projects where there’s a high degree of wasteful, non productive labor time.
In fact, it’s common to view labor productivity as the sole determining factor of overall project performance and profitability – i.e. project success or failure is directly dependant on labor productivity. Other primary project costs – such as procurement, equipment, materials and engineering – can have associated risk and uncertainty but are marginal in comparison to risk associated to labor productivity.