How to Influence External Factors Impacting Productivity

Contractors who participated in our 2023 Labor Productivity Study believe they have the potential to improve labor productivity by more than 5% annually. Put into practice, this can have a massive impact on bottom-line performance for labor-intensive contractors.

Most study participants plan to double-down on improving their operational processes and training and developing their people. And while these efforts help address the leading internal factors that negatively impact labor productivity on projects (internal planning and project team communication), what about the external factors with negative impact to labor productivity, including low-quality design documents, unrealistic schedules, general contractors, change order inefficiencies and other trade contractors? Such factors play a significant role in the success of a given project and are not always controllable by specialty trade contractors.

Even if external factors cannot be directly managed or controlled, they can be influenced through robust planning and communication. Below are a few best practices shown to be effective in our work with labor-intensive, specialty trade contractors.

• Client Kickoff Meetings: Most contractors hold internal kickoff meetings to get their teams ready to mobilize and start projects with momentum. Surprisingly, relatively few contractors make it a point to convene similar meetings with their clients, either general contractors or owners.
  
  By formalizing a meeting at the beginning of a project, contractors can influence the level of communication, cooperation and collaboration from the project’s outset. This is a chance to ensure stakeholders are on the same page relative to expectations for schedules, documentation requirements, design or constructability concerns, change order and payment processes, and other variables.
  
  Through meeting with the client to go over critical aspects of the project one-on-one, walk the site together and maybe even sit down for lunch, contractors can begin to build a rapport that will hugely influence project success, particularly as it relates to labor productivity. Note that this is different from the kickoff meeting led by clients or owners, which commonly includes a dozen or more different trade contractors in the room. These meetings are generally high-level and don’t afford the same opportunities to build connection and trust like a special purpose, one-on-one meeting that you schedule directly with the client.
   
• Detailed Trade Scheduling: Too often, master schedules are created in vacuums, devoid of inputs from key trades on sequencing and duration of activities. Unfortunately, trade contractors commonly accept a client’s unrealistic schedule, pointing to its deficiencies when predictable “delays” occur later in the job.
  
  Today, we often see trade contractors who don’t develop their own schedules, because they feel general contractors or owners are not open to their input. But you never know until you ask — and few are asking.
  
  Before proceeding to ask for changes to a master schedule, take time to develop your own critical path schedule for your scope of work. If you can demonstrate a schedule logic that optimizes success for your team and the project and this schedule is incongruous with the master schedule, then you have the basis for a conversation with the client about sensible adjustments that can be made for the betterment of the project.
  
  Progressive general contractors and owners ask for input from key trade partners on schedules and/or engage trade partners in iterative pull planning sessions to optimize the collaborative success of all stakeholders. Absent these client-driven processes, presenting your own schedule to a client can result in productive discussion about schedule deficiencies that could impact your ability to optimize labor productivity for your project.
   
• Job Status Updates: Over the course of a project, there is an endless flow of information from many different parties and through a variety of media (email, project management software, text, phone calls, in-person and virtual meetings). And although key items get mentioned or discussed, unless they’re top of mind, they can fall by the wayside. A solid, weekly job status update helps consolidate all of this information in one place for your specific trades and presents it in an easily digestible format for your client.
  
  A strong job status update typically includes:
  • Work that was completed over the past week (including progress photos)
  • Work to be completed in the week(s) to come (including a formal look-ahead plan)
  • Outstanding items that could hold things up if not addressed (constraints), such as site logistics, access to the work face, track stacking, pending submittals, delayed materials, pending change orders, delayed payment, open RFIs, design/constructability issues, etc.

Summarizing this information in one place, updating it weekly, and sharing it with stakeholders (internal and external) keeps everyone on the same page. By ensuring stakeholders are aligned, you can mitigate or eliminate constraints that might otherwise negatively impact your labor productivity.

Because few contractors execute these best practices consistently, by implementing them you can help differentiate your firm in the minds of your clients. If done well, they will provide tremendous value to your client as well as your project team — helping you influence the external factors that can negatively impact your ability to perform and optimize labor productivity on your projects.

Ask any owner or general contractor if they would be against:

• Scheduling a dedicated kickoff meeting with you prior to mobilization to align project teams.
• Receiving a detailed schedule from your team showing how you plan to execute the work.
• Receiving thorough project updates from you on a weekly basis to ensure nothing holds up production.

Most clients would be delighted to hear these suggestions and impressed at your willingness to take the additional measures. Perhaps your project teams are already doing these things regularly; if so, great! If not, consider tweaking your approach to client communication by adopting some of the elements above. You might be surprised at just how much you can influence as a result.