Addressing the Productivity Crisis in Construction

The productivity crisis is well known, and numerous industry reports identify the issues and scale of the opportunity. Boosting productivity is the greatest chance the sector has to transform itself—it’s the one lever that would automatically help address sustainability, the skills gap, rising costs, and pressure on resources. This session will cover dramatic advances in business outcomes that are now being made by combining technologies. Algorithmic and computational design, industrialized construction, use of robotics, and on-site automation are being deployed together, already demonstrating how schedules can be halved using far fewer operatives, achieving higher quality and safety, with lower carbon. However, this has required new relationships and procurement strategies. As well as showing real-world examples, this session will also consider how roles, business models, incentives, and value propositions will need to adapt if the industry is to make the necessary change.