Take a look at building sites right now and productivity is, ironically, at the highest it’s been for a while, says Ruma Karaitiana, Chief Executive of the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation. “In an ideal situation work sites would look as they do now, staffed all the time with highly skilled people. At peak periods it’s the opposite,” – times when management and supervision skills are most needed. And, he observed, the industry would do well to prepare for another boom. “By the end of 2012 there will be so much building activity that people will go looking for skilled people to add to their workforces and they won’t be able to find them. What they always do is substitute skill for labour.”

As a consequence, he says the risk of productivity plummeting increases quite dramatically, unless companies have the ability to supervise and manage less skilled people. “You may have a very good builder who’s a technical craftsman and builds wonderful houses, but may be very poor at making sure all the specialist trades turn up on time and are well coordinated.

“Every time a truck from the builders’ supplier doesn’t turn up – and the guys are sitting around on their saw horses – is a loss of productivity.” Effective project management and on-site supervision are smart, productive practices, along with good use of capital and other resources. But a key, defining factor is communication – how builders manage people, talk to clients and staff, and coordinate projects. “Bad plans” was the first problem Richard Merrifield of R J Merrifield Ltd (also executive member of the Certified Builders’ Association and Construction Strategy Group) identified, a couple of experiences still fresh in his mind. Another problem: while the industry accepts the need to train apprentices, he says it can be a strain on employers. One out of his five employees is an apprentice. He is pleased with the general calibre of new entrants, but says because of the downturn there are not enough good positions for young people to train in.

“You’re acting as teacher and also trying to be productive for the client, even though the apprentice is charged out cheaper. It takes time to teach them,” says Merrifield. He suggested “a little bit of a thank you” from government – say $500 per month per apprentice – would help offset the cost of training. If he sees guys having a chat on his sites they are likely to be working out a problem. Time is money and his employees don’t waste it, he says. While there may be an element in the industry that won’t sweep the floor or pick up a shovel when they know the digger is coming, Merrifield says his staff pitches in. He paces his projects, not taking on more than he can manage, uses subcontractors he knows, and communicates clearly, with a bit of give and take on both sides.

Martin Fahey of Clearwater Construction just wants the industry to get on with it. “We’ve become a country of ‘let’s set another group up and have another talk fest’,” he says. “The whole issue around productivity is driven by skills, training, and accepting the lowest price for work. There’s no regulation in the industry; the drive to license stopped at residential/housing and needs to be driven into commercial construction.”

Fahey thinks construction is valued less as a career option by schools and parents, a view echoed by Karaitiana. Leaky homes have hurt the industry’s image while the boom and bust cycle makes it seem a precarious employment option. Schools could encourage students with aptitudes in woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing and allow them to be embraced in the ‘trade training’ regimes. “A good trade training qualification must have as much mana as a good tertiary qualification, especially as it relates to the construction industry,” says Karaitiana. “We need to be constantly bringing talented entry-level people into our industry for it to survive, to go forward and be more productive.”

But attracting good people into an industry known for its boom and bust cycles and lower pay rates for qualified tradespeople – relative to other countries – are ongoing issues. “We tend to pay our management staff much better compared with overseas models. That’s why so many trade trained Kiwis go to Australia,” Fahey said. And the existence of a large unqualified group of workers doesn’t help matters. Subcontracting can result in poorer quality work with less direct control by contractors over the final product, he says. “At an educated guess currently 50 percent would have no recognised trade training. The guy putting sealant around windows or the waterproof membrane on your roof might have had no training. That’s where all the trouble starts, when work is overly subbed out and dumbed down.”

Insufficient on-site supervision means mistakes are made and rework required. Supervision and organisation of work is proportional to productivity says Fahey. “Well supervised, well planned work undertaken by tradespeople, using quality documentation, drawings and specifications, will prevent any rework or mistakes being made.” Companies invest in health and safety, in training future leading hands and foremen, project and construction managers. Fahey says training costs must be reflected in the rate charged for labour. “We’re beaten for work by companies that do no training or skill development of their people. This again is a procurement issue. Clients should be demanding this but are happy to get a cheap entry price for their project.”

Alan Marshall, of Peter Camp Builders (PCB), suggested certain systems of building could be made quicker. More complex wall cavity systems that reduce drafts and enable water run-off now represent double the workload. PCB addresses this by training staff “and pushing it” as they work harder. Bill Smith, chairman of the Building and Construction Productivity Partnership, echoed many of the above views.

“The traditional tendering focus is on lowest cost which overlooks the benefit of design and usage for the life of a project using a whole-of-life approach,” he says. Despite some outstanding work in productivity improvements he noted some deep causal factors which placed a lid on step change improvement. “Career pathways have become less attractive for those who wish to avoid job uncertainty during boom bust cycles. The industry can benefit from better interaction between training and education by skill and the demand for that skill in the private sector.”

The Productivity Partnership aims to achieve a 20 percent lift in build sector measured productivity by 2020. Smith says it has made good progress across the four work streams – procurement, skills, construction systems and research and is currently validating its early range of findings. “Building is an ongoing set of problems that requires practical and creative solutions,” Mr Merrifield says. While not speaking for CSG he said the group is “totally supportive” of the productivity work underway with the Department of Building and Housing.