Phil Diekemper, Executive Director, ACI PRO
The Voice Newsletter February 2024

A Construction Dive headline from October 12, 2023, states: “Construction lost as much as $40B on poor productivity in 2022.” The article shares that the construction industry was surveyed, and half of all contractors see labor inefficiencies worsening. As an industry professional, how does that make us feel? If you are like me, somewhere between shocked, defensive, and frustrated. How can productivity decline for all the investments we make in advanced tools, equipment, project leadership, and training?

PRO: An ACI Center of Excellence for Advancing Productivity, was established in 2023 by the American Concrete Institute as a catalyst for solving the barriers of constructability to advance concrete construction productivity, leveraging ACI’s role as a world-leading authority and resource for the development, dissemination, and adoption of consensus-based standards for concrete design, construction, and materials.

Some claim, like the Construction Dive article, inadequate management practices mixed with poor planning, unreliable budgets, lack of documentation, and conflict between project stakeholders are why our industry is lacking productivity gains. PRO believes these claims are accurate, but may just reflect the cause of the problem, not the problem itself. In the traditional design-bid-build world, project stakeholders are restricted to their silos with a defensive mindset to protect tight margins. Project site requirements continue to become more demanding in urban areas. Design documents are more complex, late, and incomplete, while environmental concerns, sustainability, safety, and employment criteria seem ever expanding.

In future ASCC Newsletters, PRO will offer alternative concepts to improve the lagging productivity gains in the construction industry. To learn more about PRO, visit concreteproductivity.org.