Factors affecting Labour Productivity of

construction projects In Sarawak

Abstract

The problems of affecting the Labour productivity of construction industry in Sarawak has been an
issue of concern to most G7 contractors and professionals. This paper attempts to establish the
significant factors that affecting the Labour productivity by conducting a survey method that relates
to construction problems which encountered on sites.

Productivity is a complex phenomenon at all levels be it individual, organised private sector or

government the world over and in all spheres of human endeavour particularly in construction
project delivery. Low productivity in the construction industry is as a result of diverse identifiable
reasons such as; high reduction in skill level of construction workers, shift work, shortages of
materials and equipment, change orders, labour shortages, weathers, low level of monitoring and
control of projects etc. key factors that leads to productivity improvement in construction project
delivery were analysed. These comprise of project planning, productivity measurement, avoidance
of construction site congestion, motivation of workforce and good communication among others.

INTRODUCTION

Time passed by and the problem of the Labour productivity become more globalize in construction
industry. Productivity is one of the key components of every company’s success and competitiveness
in the market (Mojahed, 2005). There are various type of factors affecting the Labour productivity in
construction site.

In Sarawak, the construction industry was facing the problems of slow payment of completed work
in construction projects (Rolland Duat, 2014). Alaghbari et al., 2005 stated that the construction
delayed which lead to the major problems were, costly, complex and risky problems has usually
encountered in every construction project. Thus, some of the Labour become unproductive because
salary until they bring bad attitudes to work.

Productivity is an overall conception which is difficult to express or to measure. It is sometimes

expressed in terms of output from labour, or from services, or from capital invested. These partial
expressions often do not give an accurate picture of the overall position. Although they are
measurements of some or all of the inputs and outputs of the industry; but they failed to combine
these measurements into any satisfactory measure of efficiency. Besides, the ratio is easy to
compute if the unit uses a single input to produce a single output. But, in the real-world complexities
the unit uses several inputs to produce several outputs. The outputs in the numerator must be
aggregated in some economically sensible fashion, as must the inputs in the denominator, so that
productivity remains the ratio of two scalars (Lovell 1993). Given the wide range of products and
inputs we attempt to add ‘apples and oranges’ somehow, and the typical weight is the price.
According to Morrison (1998), price distortion is the source of bias in the aggregate measures. The
underlying issues to deal with when attempting to distinguish realquantity measures are quality
changes and the existence of appropriate prices. Lovell (1993) claims that “even when all relevant
outputs and inputs are included, there remains the difficulty that market prices may not exist, and if
they do exist they may not provide an appropriate measure of usefulness”.

Problem Statement
Productivity is one of the most significant factors influencing the overall performance of any
organizations (Kim, G, et al 2013). In construction projects, which are mostly labour-based and
involve basic hand tools and equipment, labour costs consist 30 to 50% of overall project costs
(Enshassi et al 2007). This means that labour productivity is one of the key management factors to
complete a project successfully. Because the construction is a labour-intensive industry, the
significance of this effect not only affirms the concern over its labour productivity, but it can also be
discussed that labour power is the only productive resource, therefore construction productivity is
chiefly depended on human attempt and performance ( Jarkas, A. M., & Bitar, C. G. 2011). Believe it
or not the construction workers have a key role in advancing the construction process. They are
people who have existed from the first step of implementation until the project closing. On the other
hand they influence directly to the main indicators of each project which are time, cost and quality.
Hence the construction mangers ought to be required to consider and investigate more in order to
enhancing the construction workers productivity.