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ADIGRAT UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF Construction Technology and Management
Proposal on: Factors affecting of labor productivity in building construction
at Adigrat construction projects.

Prepared By: Dawit G/kidan

Yohannes Amdetsion

Helen Ayalew

Principal Advisor Birhane D.

A proposal Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for the Award

of degree of construction technology and management.

April 8, 2019

Adigrat, Ethiopia
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Table of Content
Content pages

Chapter one……………………..…………………………………………………………………………1

1. Introduction…….………………...………………………………………………………....1

1.1 Background of the study ……………………………………………………………....1

1.2 Statement of the problem................................................................................................1

1.3 Objectives of the study………………………………………………………………...1

1.3.1General objective of the study ...................…......................................................2

1.3.2. Specific objective of the study…….…..………………………………………2

1.4 Basic research questions……………………………………………………………….2

1.5 Scope and limitation of study…………….…………………………………………....2

1.6 Significances of the study …………………………………………………………......3

Chapter Two…………………………………..……………….…………………………………4

2.1 Introduction ………………………………..………………………………………… 4

2.2 Previous study on labor productivity …………………………………………………5

Chapter Three …………………………………………………………………………………………….7

3. Research methodology ……………………………………………………………………………....7

3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………..…………………….7

3.2 Research type…………….………………………………………….…………...……………7

3.3 Description of the research area….…………………………………….……………………...7

3.4 Population, sample and sampling techniques of the study………...…………………………..8

3.5 Data sources…………..…………………………………………………………………….....8

3.6 Data collection method………………..……………………………………………………....8

3.7 Data analysis method……………………………..…………………………………………...9

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Chapter Four …………………………………………………………………………………………...10

4.1 Time and Cost budget …………...…………………………………………………………….10

4.1.1 Time Budget ……………..…………………………………………………10

4.1.2 Cost Budget ………………………………………………………….……..11

References
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CHAPTER ONE
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Background of the study
The Construction Industry can be categorized into three major sectors namely, Transport and
Communication (Road, Railway, Airway, and Telecommunication related physical works);
Water Works and Energy; and Buildings and Other Physical Infrastructures. The capital budget
requirements of each of the categories vary extensively depending on the focus the economical
required for the nation development. The construction industry is one of the most important
industries in the economy of every country. It provides a significant source of employment for
the worldwide population. It has been focus of multiple studies that have as objective its
improvement and development. Construction is the world's largest and most challenging
industry. Human resource today has a strategic role for productivity increase of any organization
and this makes it superior in the industrial competition. With the effective and optimum uses of it
all the advantages supplied by the productivity growth can be obtained.( Adrian, J. (1990).
This research presents general information about the factors affecting labor productivity in
Buildings of Adigrat Town construction project. It also provides some recommendation to
reduce the factors affecting labor productivity for the coming project (activity).

1.3 Statement of the problem

In every construction project there is a factor which affect labor productivity. In the same case
there are factors that affect labor productivity in Adigrat town construction project. So the
purpose of this research is to provide general information on the issues involved in the factor
affecting labor productivity of building construction of Adigrat town construction project and
focus on methods of reducing the factors for batter productivity. A successful construction
project is one that achieves the intended objectives in terms of cost, time, quality and safety. This
is possible only when the planned levels of productivity can be attained. Labor is more variable
and unpredictable than other project-cost components, it becomes necessary to understand the
effects of different factors on labor productivity. An increase in productivity can reduce the labor
cost in a direct proportion. It can either benefit or reduce a project‟s profit. It provides detail
analysis in the factors affecting labor productivity and how they affect labor productivity.
(Thomas, H. R., and Sakarcan, A. S. (1994)"
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Understanding the factors affecting labor productivity is very necessary to improve the efficient
of construction project likes reduce total cost, time and it could increase the competitive
advantages of the Construction Company in Adigrat town toward Ethiopian as well as foreign
construction companies. All the above things lead this research to raise the questions:
What are the factors affecting labor productivity in the construction project?
How to evaluate the effects of this factor on the labor productivity?
To answers these questions it is necessary to conduct the topic Factors Affecting Labor
Productivity in the building Construction Projects of Adigrat town.
1.3 Objectives of the study
1.3.1General Objective
The general objective of this research is focused on identifies factors that affect labor
productivity in building construction at Adigrat town construction project, analyzing and
recommend the methods of reducing the factors that affect labor productivity.
1.3.2 Specific Objective
 To identify the factors that affect labor productivity of buildings in Adigrat town
construction project.
 To reduce the factors and to improve labor productivity building construction in Adigrat
town construction project.
 To analyzing methods of reducing the factors affecting labor productivity in Adigrat town
construction project.
1.4 Basic research questions:

The basic questions to be answered and discussed in this research will be:

1. What are the factors that affect labor productivity of building construction in Adigrat
town construction project?
2. What are the methods to reduce the factors that affect labor productivity in Teppi town
construction project?
3. How can be analyzed methods of reducing the factors affecting labor productivity ?
1.5 Scope and limitation of study

The study will be conducted based on the accomplished and ongoing construction projects in
Adigrat town until now and will more focus in the presence building constructions. The
respondents will be the person who has an important role in the project such as contractors,
office engineer, project managers, construction managers, foreman, chief engineers etc.

Generally, this research is done to be an important stepping stone for examining the various
aspects of the problem under consideration; understanding and formulating guiding principles to
govern the research procedure; and developing and/or testing theories for the enhancement of the
existing situation, state or process.

The thesis work is limited by several factors: due shortage of budget for the research work, due to
overcrowd of the contractor during case study it was not been possible to get detail data for the projects.

In this paper, the thesis is limited to water treatment plant, road construction and building
construction that is carried out in Adigrat town.

1.6 Significances of the study

Productivity has a great significance in construction. Labor productivity constitutes a significant

part of production input for construction projects. In the construction industry, many external and
internal factors are never constant and are difficult to anticipate. So this research will the
significance of: - it would help other researchers to make further investigation on such areas, it
will helped us to put in practice the theories that we were thought in the class &to understood
them easily and to develop experience and skill, it helps to the construction company to aware
the factors and to take corrective action when they occur, it Helps to develop Adigrat‟s
construction industry in particular and economic development in general, it will be a reference
for new investors who want to invest in construction industry in Adigrat, it helps Construction
Companies in Adigrat to have an overview on Labor Productivity in their building construction
project.
 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

(Hillebrandt, 2000) states that “The construction industry is the sector involved with erection, repair
and demolition of buildings and civil engineering structures in an economy. The industry
provides constructed physical facilities which provide space where other activities may take
place. The building section of the construction industry is mainly concerned with the assembly of
building materials which are supplied by the manufacturing sector and delivered to the site by
the transportation sectors. To a large extent in Kenya, many of the buildings construction works
still rely heavily on manual labor in their assembly which to some extent contributes to job
creation.”
(Ethiopian road authority) “The construction industry in Ethiopia has been providing a wide variety
of buildings, ranging from houses to high rise buildings and from schools and hospitals to
factories and shopping centers, and has been carrying out an equally wide variety of engineering
construction projects, ranging from highways to hydro – electric dams and irrigation dams /
canals.”
(IOSR Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering (IOSR-JMCE)) states that “Productivity is the one of
the most important factor that affects overall performance of any small or medium or large
construction industry. There are number of factors that directly affect the productivity of labor,
thus it is important for any organization to study and identify those factors and take an
appropriate action for improving the labor productivity.

Prokopenko (1987) defined that “productivity is the relationship between the outputs generated by a
production or service system and the input provided to create this output. Thus, productivity is
defined as the efficient use of resource – labors, capital, land, materials, energy and information
– in the production of various goods or services.”
Merriam-Webster defines “productivity as the quality or state of being productive. Labor
productivity is typically measured as output per worker or output per labor-hour. Although there
are endless definitions for productivity, they all refer to productivity as a comparison of input
versus output. Productivity = Output/ Input. Increased productivity occurs when either
1. Output is constant, while input is reduced, and/or
2. Input is constant, while either the quantity or quality of output has been increased or
enhanced”.
(Amina Hameed, 2009) states that “Productivity can be a ratio to measures how well an individual,
organization, industry and country converts input resources such as labor, materials, machines
into goods and services”.

Referring to Eng. Zeyad Ahmed Abo Mustafa (2003) defines “productivity as human and financial
resources key measurements of utilization because it indicate an efficient use of available
resources as well as converts it into noticeable results”.

According to Bui Trung Kien (2012), stated that “productivity defined as the ratio of outputs to inputs.
Productivity = Outputs / Inputs”.
2.2 Previous study on labor productivity
Mahamid, I. and Bruland, A. (2012) Stated controlling the negative factors and making use of those
factors that positively affect labor productivity; will help in improving construction productivity.
Therefore, studies should be conducted to identify the factors influencing construction
productivity.
(Thomas and Kramer, 1988) “Increase of productivity was calculated prior to mid-1906‟s, in the
construction industry,(Stall, 1983). Later, decline in productivity has remained of great concern
issue in the construction industry all over the world”.
(UNC, 1965) states that In 1968, the Construction Roundtable was established due to concern about
the increased cost of construction resulting from an increase in the inflation rate and a significant
decline in construction productivity Also in 1965, the United Nations Committee on Housing,
Building, and Planning (UNC) published a significant manual concerning the effect of repetition
on building operations and processes.
(Alarcon and Borcherding 1991).authors viewed that, the research discovered the necessity for a rise
in productivity was perhaps more severe in the construction sector compared to any other sector.
It was necessary to implement, as far as possible, industry-wide principles of production
throughout the construction process. Though, it was known that careful adaptation would be
required to implement the knowledge and experience gained in the manufacturing industry to the
building construction industry.
(Makulsawatudom and Emsley 2002).Past studies and research show the number of factors affecting
productivity, there are still anonymous factors need to be further studied even in developed
countries.
Thomas and Sakarcan (1994) shows built an ideal to describe the factors affecting labor productivity.
In the model, two groups of factors determine the productivity performance, work environment,
and task to perform.
(Ginther, 1993).Past study showed that task to be completed could affect the labor resources by as
much as 15%, whereas work environment can affect labor requirements by an extra 25%. Based
on this factor model, more detailed research was done. One study suggested that scheduled
overtime always leads to efficiency losses because of the inability to deliver materials, tools,
equipment, and information at an accelerated rate.
(Lim and Alum 1995) Surveys and interviews are standard methods that have already been adopted
in many productivity studies. The three items of extreme concern were identified as difficulty in
the recruitment of supervisors, difficulty in the recruitment of labors, and a high rate of labor
turnover.
Another survey with construction personnel (Hanna and Heale, 1994) was conducted to gauge their
opinion about the field of construction, specifically their knowledge about the factors that most
affect construction productivity. As a result, a set of comprehensive factors was identified and
classified into six groups: contract environment, planning, site management, working conditions,
working hours, and motivation.
 CHAPTER THREE

3. Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

Our research mainly focused on reviewing literature followed by assessment of the case in
Adigrat town construction project. Which are necessary to formulate this research, the methods
of data collection that we used is able to decide the type, the methods of data collection and their
analysis which include questioner survey and interview.

A questionnaire will be preferred as the best effective and suitable data-collection technique for
the study. A questionnaire is survey format comparatively requires less duration and saves cost
for the researcher while permits respondents to response the questionnaire at their personal. Data
will be collected from literature reviews from books, questioners, interview and websites which
emphasize building construction‟s labor productivity. Survey will made through questioner
distributed to respondents who involve in managing various types of projects in wide area in
Adigrat town. The respondents will be people who work as: contractor, engineer, developer,
learning institution, project manager, General Forman, agricultural engineer, site Forman, head
manager etc (AbdulKadir, M., Lee, W., Jaafar, M., Sapuan, S., and Ali, A. (2005).

3.2 Research type

We followed quantitative type of research because of Quantitative research makes use of

questionnaires, and surveys to gather data that is revised and tabulated in numbers, which allows
the data to be characterized by the use of statistical analysis.
Quantitative research is deductive. All quantitative research requires a hypothesis before research
can begin. Therefore it is our research method( Borcherding, J. D., Sebastian, S. J., and
Samelson, N. M. (1980).

3.3 Description of the research area

This study will conduct at Adigrat Wereda. Adigrat Wereda is located around in Eastern Tigray
Region. It is found 120Km far from Mekelle to eastern direction. The studies will focusing in
factors affecting of labour productivity.
3.4 Population, sample and sampling techniques of the study

This research will contains all members of population in the Adigrat building construction
project, which are a person professional in construction. In this research we will have a selected
group sample from the population, such as site engineer, construction manager, site supervisor,
Forman and contractor and other responsible man.
3.5. Data sources
In this research we will use two types of data sources namely primary and secondary data
sources. The data sources are people and documents that are interrelated.

The study will has used the data sources to produce the respondents‟ documents .The
respondents‟ documents will be collected using questionnaires from engineers, contractors,
Forman, and other construction professionals discussed above. For the questionnaire survey the
respondents will randomly selected from the employer‟s organization who has been involved in
the building construction sector. The literature review will be provided the basis to design the
questionnaire which will distribute to professionals involved in the contraction sector.

3.6. Data collection method

The data collection approach will adopte for conducting that research includes both primaries and
secondary sources. Questionnaire and interview will provides the primary data for this research while
the secondary data sources include internet sources. There are two basic types of survey questions
from which to choose: open-ended and closed-ended. This questionnaire survey has open-ended
questionnaires will be distributed among these professionals.

The questionnaire will be structured in two main parts: The first part will be a covering letter
With information about the research project, topic of the questionnaire, and how the responses
would be utilized. The second part will be the questionnaire.

3.7. Data analysis method

The research analysis and discussion will be done based on the responses from the distributed
questionnaires.
For analyzing data by ordinal scale, a relative importance index (RII) will be used by following
equation (1):
Normally, accurate information about a given population will expect to be obtaining from a
census study. However, due to large number of population size, in many of the cases, a complete
coverage of a population is not possible. Thus, sampling is one of the methods, which allows the
researcher to study a relatively small number of units representing the whole
population(Saratnakos, 1998). A stratified random sampling method was use in this study to
select the number of sample respondents proportionally from each stratum, because sample size
would be too large to take complete coverage of population. Primarily, sample size of the
population was determined by using the formula below (Yamane„s,1967)as follow:

Relative Importance Index

Where:
= the rating given to each factors by the respondents ranging from 1 to 5
Xi = the percentage of respondents scoring
i = the order number of respondents
 Chapter Four
4.1 Time budget and cost budget

4.1.1 Time budget

Activity April May June
w1 w2 w3 w4 w1 w2 w3 w w1 w2 w3 w4
4
Preparing interview
questionnaires

Locating and defining

the target group
Literature review

Finalizing questionnaires

Data collection

Data processing

Analysing &
interpretation
First draft writing

Draft literature &

Complete remaining
chapter

Revise overall draft

Submit draft and

defence
Correction of the final
draft
Submission of final
research paper

4.1.2 Cost/budget analysis

No. Item/ description Unit Amount Unit cost Total cost

(birr)
1 Stationary materials

1.1 Flash disk Piece 1 200.00 200.00

1.2 Paper Pack 2 75.00 150.00

1.3 Pen Piece 10 3.00 30.00

1.4 Correction fluid Piece 1 15.00 15.00

1.5 File Binder Piece 1 10.00 10.00

1.6 Stapler Piece 1 35.00 35.00

Sub total 440.00

2 Copying and printing

2.1 Copying(literature review) Pages 100 0.50 50.00

2.2 Printing(literature review) Pages 150 1.00 150.00

2.3 Computer writing Pages 100 3.50 350

2.4 Copying(interview questions) Pages 150 0.50 75.00

2.5 Other print outs Pages 50 1.00 50.00

2.6 Binding --- 5.00

Sub total 980.00

3 Transportation cost

3.1 Transportation cost to the study area Trip 15 50.00 750.00

3.2 Cost during interview 100 10 1000.00

3.3 Telephone card Piece 4 50.00 200.00

Sub total 1950.00

 Grand total(1+2+3) 3370.00

Unexpected cost (15% of grand total) 505.00

Grand total 3875.00

.
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REFERENCES

AbdulKadir, M., Lee, W., Jaafar, M., Sapuan, S., and Ali, A. (2005). “Factors affecting
construction labor productivity for Malaysian residential projects.” Structural Survey.

Adrian, J. (1990).Improving Construction Productivity Seminar, Minneapolis, MN.The

Association of General Contractors of America.

Borcherding, J. D., Sebastian, S. J., and Samelson, N. M. (1980).“Improving motivation and

productivity on large projects” J. Constr. Div. 106(1), 73–89.Adrian, J. (1987).Construction
productivity improvement, Elsevier Science Publishing, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Thomas, H. R., and Sakarcan, A. S. (1994)"Forecasting labor productivity using the factor
model." Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 120(1), 228-239.