Volume 5
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Productivity trend graphs are often used to track progress (or lack thereof) for labor productivity improvement in the various industries over a span of several decades. Numerous sources representing Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. have compiled data to create such graphs. The most widely used graph to date was prepared by Professor Paul Teicholz of Stanford University in 2013. However, most of these graphs (including Teicholz’s) only focus on a timeframe of about fifty years, from the 1960’s through 2010’s.
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For over a century, contract types have barely evolved to keep up with the complexity of today’s projects. Regardless of contract type, today’s contracts continue to assign risk to the owner or contractor, or both. This itself is a myth – owners have and will always carry the risk. This fact has not changed the financial burdens that contractors carry to their own detriment.
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The stage gate project development approach, as adopted by the engineering and construction industry, was designed as a business process both to meter spending prior to the investment decision and yield predictable outcomes. It has been widely implemented across industrial capital project sectors such as energy, mining, infrastructure, chemicals and pharma.
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In recent years, the implementation of Agile mindsets or methodologies has become an increasingly common trend within organizational management. In a 2017 McKinsey Quarterly survey of 2,500 business leaders, 75% of respondents said organizational agility was a top or top-three priority, and nearly 40% were in the process of conducting an organizational-agility transformation.
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Everything from toilet paper to medical equipment has been in short supply for a myriad of reasons including manufacturing capacities, lead times to manufacture, source country priority and unpredictable demand, or in many cases lack of accurate demand forecasts.