The purpose of this research was to evaluate contextual factors affecting labourproductivity on
construction projects and whether these factors differ based onconstruction projects company
or location. According to a report by McKinsey GlobalInstitute (MGI) (2017) globally the
construction industry accounts for 13% of theGross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 7% of the
world's working population making the construction industry one of the leading contributors to
GDP (PWC 2016 Barbosa et al. 2017 StatsSA 2017). Barbosa et al. (2017) said that in the
past 20 yearsthe construction industry has had a 1% annual productivity growth globally.Durdyev
and Mbachu (2011) argue that productivity outside of the contextualdefinition and clarity of
the construction project's objectives is a complicated conceptto understand. Construction and
labour productivity are described as output obtaineddivided by input expended by Tran and
Tookey (2011) and the Organisation forEconomic Cooperation and Development ([OECD] 2011)
respectively. While theBuilding and Construction Sector Productivity Taskforce (BCSPT) expand
on this notingthat productivity is the construction industry's ability to convert inputs into
outputs(BCSPT 2009).Whiteside (2006) proposes that labour productivity is the output average
of directlabour hours to install a unit of material. However Allmon et al. (2000) argue
thatlabour productivity can only be defined when an organisation or the project hasidentified
the base or norm of what constitutes labour productivity. This study agreeswith the proposition
raised by Allmon et al. (2000) because logically a base or normwill be required to know whether
labour is productive or not. It follows that if aconstruction project commences without clarity
on the expectation level ofproductivity or a standard for efficient labour productivity there
will be no knowledgeof how the project has performed.Throughout literature different scholars
view labour productivity as one of the factorshaving a significant influence on construction
productivity (Makulsawatudom et al. 2004 Enshassi et al. 2007 Jarkas and Bitar 2012 Jarkas
2015 Okorafor et al. 2016).Lim (1995) argues that labour productivity is amongst 17 factors
found to impactproject productivity while Hughes and Thorpe (2014) found labour productivity
to beamongst the 15 listed factors affecting project productivity.
