Documenting residential construction activities
Joshua Felt, Summer 2006
Brief:
There is a lack of information in residential construction concerning the number and distribution of man hours expended to perform the numerous tasks necessary in building a single family home. This study provides information directing at filling that void. First hand data has been collected by trained construction data collectors by directly observing the construction operations of three single family homes constructed over a period of five months in Gilbert Arizona. Data collected included the number and distribution of man hours needed to build the three homes, as well as documentation of the tasks being performed by all labor crews who worked at the site. The data was collected starting at the beginning of construction on November 18, 2005 and was completed on the last day of construction operations on April 28, 2006. This study reports the results of the analysis of the data collected. The number of man-hours needed to construct these three homes ranged from 895 to 1033. It was found when comparing the number of days in which any work was performed to the number of working days utilized to complete the homes that on average, no work was performed on 45 of the available 120 working days. Of the 1200 hours available for work in these three homes (120 working days at 10 hours per day), only an average of 304 hours was utilized, leaving the houses sitting idle with no work being performed for an average of 896 hours. Thus the conclusion is reached that only about 25% of the available time was utilized in the construction of these homes.