AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CONSTRUCTION TIME AND PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE OF HIGH-RISE PRIVATE INDUSTRIAL BUILDING PROJECTS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Building projects are complex undertakings. To ensure success of a construction project, there must be good management of many factors, such as cost, duration, quality and safety. Construction productivity has been one of the biggest concerns in both the construction industry and academia.

Singapore’s industrial landscapes have gone through a vast transformation over the past few decades, from industrial space for labour-intensive industries in the 60s, to knowledge- and innovation-intensive activities today. The increase in industrial developments has contributed, and will continue contributing greatly to the economic growth of Singapore. While there were various researches conducted to explore the time performance of building projects, this paper aims to focus on the time performance of high-rise private industrial buildings in Singapore.

The significant factors affecting time performance of high-rise private industrial building projects in Singapore were found to be availability of material and equipment, availability of skilled workers, design complexity and construction methods in this dissertation. In Chapter Eight, the Relative Importance Indexes (RII) of these factors were found to be 0.906, 0.878, 0.872 and 0.878 respectively. The t-values of these factors, obtained from running a two-tailed t-test, were found to be 15.057, 11.315, 12.914 and 12.685 respectively. In both the RII calculation and two-tailed t-test, these four factors fell under the top ten factors identified. Upon integrating all the findings in this study in Chapter Eight, these four factors were singled out.

The impacts of these factors were comprehensively discussed in Chapter Eight. With these knowledge in hand, this study can help propel the industry towards greater productivity given a better understanding of the factors that affect productivity of high-rise private industrial building projects.