January 22, 2007

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Graduate students at the University of Calgary join Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura in investigating construction industry best practices. From left to right: Fereshteh Mafakheri, Kasun Hewage, Dr. Ruwanpura and Xin Liu.

Industry Efficiency

Calgary construction companies collaborate

Peter Kenter

corresponent

The last thing you’d expect from companies competing in Calgary’s overheated construction market would be a collaborative research project into improving industry efficiency.

Meet the last thing.

PCL, Graham, EllisDon, Ledcor, Cana, Stuart Olson and Revay and Associates have joined forces with the Calgary Construction Association and the Canadian Construction Research Board to fund a $1.1 million Construction Productivity Improvement research project at the University of Calgary. The companies have kicked in a collective $450,000 with the federal government’s National Science and Engineering Research Council adding $562,000 and the university contributing $130,000.

The research, headed by Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura, an assistant professor in Project Management Specialization at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Calgary, is the second phase of a project that has already produced impressive results. The four original industry partners (PCL, Graham, EllisDon, Ledcor) have estimated that an initial $50,000 study which began in 2003 has helped them to achieve almost $2 million in efficiencies.

“In the first phase of the study, we looked at what people did on job sites, physically monitoring their time at each activity in a whole range of categories,” says Kees Cusveller, District Manager of Graham Construction. “What surprised us was how unproductive we all were. We all suspected this, but never wanted to admit it.”

One of the largest bottlenecks in construction scheduling was materials management, says Cusveller. “There was a disconnect between what the guys needed in materials and what the crane was delivering. We now sit down with the foreman and crane operator each morning and tell them what we need and what the sub-trades need at any given time and it’s made us more productive.”

The researchers also found that many construction workers knew very little about the projects they were working on—how long the project would last, the size of the finished building or what the final use of the structure might be. Workers are now briefed on the scope of each project before commencing work. The second phase of the study will take place over five years and look at more specific issues including: workforce motivation; best practices models for supervision; efficient management of labour, materials, equipment and tools; and labour productivity at the macro level.

Stakeholder companies have also identified individual areas of research they’d like to see investigated.

“We’re interested in material handling on a tight site,” says Bob Hildebrandt, Vice President of Ledcor’s Calgary office. “There’s a big difference between working on a shopping centre and a downtown office building.”

Dr. Ruwanpura says that the construction industry isn’t particularly inefficient, but by adopting work practices and new technology it can dramatically improve performance and lower cost overruns. “Although we were waiting for government funding, some of the research on the second phase had already begun in February of 2006 and we’ve already seen results,” he says. Careful observation of concrete formwork over a 10-week period, for example, has resulted in a 28 per cent improvement in output.

“Our recommendations aren’t rocket science,” says Dr. Ruwanpura. “We’re concentrating on common sense, low-cost solutions to begin with. Once we establish a level of trust, we’ll suggest solutions that might have some higher costs and complexity associated with them.”

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