星空传媒

The construction industry key performance indicators (KPIs) have played a vital role in improving performance. The latest results announced by the Department of Trade and Industry and Constructing Excellence on 3 June show a marked rise in performance across the industry.

This was the third set of KPIs for m&e contractors and results show an improvement since measurement began in seven out of the ten headline KPIs for the sector.

Of those that have not improved, the predictability of time has been gradually falling over the survey period and over the last year dropped below the 50% mark.

The quality of operating and maintenance (o&m) manuals is another area where the industry is failing to meet client satisfaction, with the percentage of respondents giving scores of 8/10 or better falling from 50% in 2001 to only 38% in 2003.

One of the most critical factors for clients is assurance of costs. Here, the m&e sector showed gradual improvement over the three years, with fewer projects running over budget. However, a massive 59% of projects included in the survey did not hit target costs, so scope for improvement is vast.

Add to this trend the fact that the 465 survey responses that the latest data was collated from were most likely to have been provided by the more successful firms in the industry, and it should cause even more concern.

The areas where greatest improvements were shown over the past year were client satisfaction with defects, which rose 9% to 64%. Productivity also saw a rise of 拢9000 value added turnover per employee to 拢43 000.

In the overall construction industry strong increases in client satisfaction with product and service have been recorded. The predictability of time at design, construction and project stage have all significantly improved, as have predictability of costs for construction and design. The project cost predictability has also risen, but to a lesser degree.

Profitability and productivity have risen over the five year period since the benchmarking system was started, however the overall performance of construction costs and time have fallen strongly. Alan Crane, chair of Rethinking Construction, commented: "The demonstration projects have shown that these can improve, but we have to bear in mind the enormous cost pressures in the industry. We are celebrating wages rising, but unless productivity also goes up then the net costs will rise.

"There is evidence that target project times are being set more aggressively," he added.

The gap between the performance of those involved in the Rethinking Construction demonstration projects and the rest of the industry is getting bigger. Client satisfaction with product and service are 90 and 86% respectively in the demonstrations compared to 78 and 71% for the industry. 6% more projects were delivered within design budget and 12% more within construction budgets by those in the demonstration projects. "The overall industry profit figure is catching up with demonstration project figures," reported Crane. "This is good because unless we can sustain improving profitability figures we can kiss goodbye to improvements as they need investment."

June also saw the first set of Environment KPIs being unveiled. There are eight benchmark measurements in this sector including energy use, waste, impact on the environment and whole life performance. Their introduction means there are now KPIs for the three main strands of sustainability: economic, social and environmental.