• Corpus ID: 17581841

MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY AND EVALUATING INNOVATION IN THE U

@inproceedings{VanDuzer2006MEASURINGPA,
  title={MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY AND EVALUATING INNOVATION IN THE U},
  author={R. M. Van Duzer and Farella Attorney and Braun and Martel Llp and E. Sabine G. Schreiber and Chairman. and Paul M. Goodrum},
  year={2006}
}

• R. V. Van Duzer, Farella Attorney, +4 authors Paul M. Goodrum
• Published 2006
• Economics

1 The Building Futures Council (BFC) would like to acknowledge the following task group members and individuals that contributed to this white paper: The Building Futures Council (BFC) is a national, non-profit, private organization composed of building and construction industry decision makers concerned with challenges and rewards of the built environment. The mission of the BFC is to act collectively as a think tank to identify critical issues encountered in the building and construction process, analyzing, discussing and advocating guidelines and criteria for improving efficiency in the process and furthering the overall well-being of our nation. The objective of this White Paper is to encourage the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to continue its initial efforts and introduce and establish improved construction productivity measurement metrics so that productivity changes throughout the construction industry are properly reported and appropriately measured. This paper reviews current productivity measurement literature, particularly that pertaining to the construction industry, discusses the need, and offers recommendations, for improved measurement of productivity in the Industry. In general, detailed construction productivity measurement has been avoided by U.S. government analysts due to a lack of adequate data and a lack of professional and academic consensus on appropriate measurement techniques and the significance of these techniques. Statistics on long-term productivity trends are generally available for many industries in the U.S., particularly in goods-producing sectors like mining and manufacturing. The same cannot be said for the construction industry. This discrepancy is primarily due to the measurement difficulties regarding real inputs and outputs unique to the construction industry. Most of the problem involves measurements of output, particularly the problem of controlling for the change in quality in the inflation indices. The use of proxy indices in construction also contributes to the problem (e.g. using the Census Housing Index to deflate commercial and military construction). While the input data is measured in hours worked by the BLS, output is measured by the Census Bureau. In comparison to other industrial sectors, it appears a number of analysts believe, even in the absence of agreed measurable data that construction productivity growth was above average in the 1960s and early 1970s and below average in the 1990s. Furthermore, there is a perception within the U.S. construction industry that significant potential exists for developing more effective measurement processes and that evaluation of the data generated from those processes would guide and encourage increased productivity. There have been few …