Construction efficiency: a tale of two developed countries

Purpose – The measurement of construction performance is a vexed problem. Despite much research effort, there remains little agreement over what to measure and how to measure it. The problem is made even more complicated by the desire to benchmark national industry performance against that of other countries. As clearly construction cost forms part of the analysis, the mere adjustment of cost data to an “international currency” has undermined past attempts to draw any meaningful conclusions. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper introduces a new method for comparing international construction efficiency, tested on a data set of 337 modern high-rise buildings in both Australia and the USA, and in so doing demonstrates that the ratio of cost over time is capable of ranking the efficiency of projects, building contractors, cities and even entire industries – not only today, but retrospectively over time. Findings – It is concluded that, based on data from the larges...

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