Productivity in Construction Industry

Since the late 1990s, the construction industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has lagged behind the rest of the world in actual levels of productivity and productivity growth. This is despite the KSA Government’s tremendous support for the construction industry and the expectation that, in the coming decades, the KSA construction industry will continue to develop and grow to achieve the targets of Saudi Vision 2030. This paper explores in depth the concept of productivity to gain insights through answering two questions contextualized within the KSA construction industry: 1) How do managers perceive productivity? and 2) How is productivity measured? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 senior managers with 10-27 years’ experience in project management in the KSA construction industry. Qualitative analysis of interview results found that around 40% of interviewees had little or an incorrect understanding of the concept of productivity and its relevance to production processes. This poor understanding of productivity and its measures extends to the lack of clear specific procedures for regular measurement of productivity.