In this new era of digitalization, the construction industry has an opportunity to improve the productivity and efficiency of their core practices and processes using the power of measurement. A new report, the second in the Measuring What Matters series from Dodge Construction Network and Versatile®, uses a set of Versatile’s industry jobsite data gathered by CraneView® to provide insights and benchmarks into a fundamental task: site organization.
All contractors engage in site organization, but many may lack the data that would allow them to optimize these repetitive processes and make the jobsite more efficient.
In a study of U.S. general contractors conducted in 2019 by Dodge in partnership with Autodesk, less than half report they are highly engaged in optimizing their site organization for the receipt and storage of materials. This poses a significant challenge to the industry, since poor site organization can reduce productivity, generate more material waste, and even lead to increased risks to worker safety.
General contractors recognize the need to improve their approaches to site organization, according to the 2019 study, with nearly three-quarters expecting to increase use of these practices in the near future, and over one-third saying that they’d be willing to invest in a technology solution to improve this process.
Most importantly, the 2019 study revealed that one of the top two obstacles preventing general contractors from improving their site organization is the difficulty of benchmarking and measuring success.
Before now, general contractors have only had their own anecdotal experiences about the impact site organization has on their projects and where opportunities for improvement lie. The analysis of the CraneView data in the new report offers a unique opportunity for contractors to understand how measuring site activities can drive real efficiencies to organizational processes.
The findings apply most specifically to projects that utilize a crane. On these projects, the benefits of improving site organization processes are particularly striking since the efficiencies gained by optimizing site organization allows the crane to be better utilized for critical path activities, saving both money and time. However, the larger conclusion at the heart of the findings is relevant to all projects whether a crane is involved or not, since valuable resources can be leveraged for higher-value tasks.
These trends are drawn from the measurement of actual behaviors on numerous jobsites and offer new insights into the real-world impacts of site organization planning on overall project health. They are focused on three key areas:
- Utilizing industry benchmarks to provide the necessary data to make site organization planning more effective.
- The benefits of doing site organization in advance rather than the common practice of making it part of the standard workday.
- More specific to the use of a crane, the increased efficiency of utilizing batching.
Together, these findings demonstrate how greater access to real data from jobsites provides contractors with the new and actionable insights that help them operate their jobsites more effectively.