Assessment of critical factors influencing the performance of labour in Sri Lankan construction industry

Abstract

The performance of labour is one of the most important factors affecting the physical progress of any construction project. This study intended to extensively investigate on the factors influencing labour performance in the Sri Lankan construction industry. A qualitative study conducted from a literature review and a series of interviews revealed 117 factors under 6 categories. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was carried out among the construction firms in Sri Lanka and the responses were received from 217 contractors. Overall, 73 factors were identified as critical based on their Relative Importance Index values. Lack of training facilities, delay in salary payments, lack of labour motivation, low salary for labourers and poor performance evaluation of labour skills were found as the top five ranking factors. This study also highlights the need for training programmes that contain the direct scope of productivity improvement, and identified the expected programme outcomes for the effective design of new training programmes to improve the practices on labour operations. The findings of this study are expected to be useful to the Sri Lankan construction industry in effectively upgrading present practices. Some of these findings may also be tested in other developing construction industries in similar scenarios.

Keywords:

• Labour performance
• productivity improvement
• construction industry
• Sri Lanka

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the construction professionals who actively participated in the interviews, questionnaire survey and discussion sessions in this study. In addition, Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission of Sri Lanka, Construction Industry Development Authority, University of Peradeniya and Wayamba University of Sri Lanka are also acknowledged for providing valuable support in the resource arrangements of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.