Productivity Comparisons, Are They Possible or Even Desirable?

Increased productivity is of societal good and efforts to achieve this should be a relevant task for all businesses. However, the concept of productivity is not clear as to what is to be measured. This becomes a problem especially when statements are made that the development of productivity in the construction industry is not as good as other sectors of industry. It is not clear if this comparison is relevant or even possible to make. This study aims to address and discuss the problem surrounding productivity measurements and comparison of them and is based on literature reviews that address the problem of evaluating productivity, with special focus on construction productivity. The results show that there is no uniform measure for construction productivity that can be used. Different situation calls for different measures. There unique circumstances for various construction activities, such as housing, commercial, industrial, infrastructure etc, that makes comparison of productivity between them virtually impossible. If statements of productivity are made without the knowledge of what the measures really show or is based on, there is a risk that these lead to misleading conclusions. Every study of productivity needs to be critically scrutinised with a high degree of scepticism. Instead of trying to achieve one uniform measure of productivity a set of key performance indicators can be used instead in order to obtain more qualitative facts about the state of the construction industry.