How to Double Productivity
In 2017, the Construction Industry Institute (CII) adopted a new organizational structure that emphasized the representation of industrial sectors. Each new sector committee was empowered to sponsor research teams that would explore topics of special interest to the industrial sectors represented by that committee. Accordingly, the Downstream and Chemicals Sector Committee (DCC) dedicated a portion of its research budget to investigating means to dramatically improve productivity. The DCC challenged Research Team DCC-01 (RT-DCC-01) to develop a research roadmap that, if implemented, would develop the knowledge and practices to double the productivity of the downstream and chemicals industrial construction sector.
Given this challenge, RT-DCC-01 spent one year following a scientific process to identify a series of research topics and then rate them. The team collected research topics through a series of workshops and interviews, inviting expert witnesses from a variety of domains (including surveying software, neuroscience, and even the brewing industry) to share how other industries have improved their processes. Then the team used a panel of industry experts and the Delphi approach to prioritize which research topics could be applicable to the construction industry.
This report details the research approach RT-DCC-01 used to develop the roadmaps, summarizes innovative solutions created in other domains, and presents the three roadmaps it offered to the DCC as the starting points for future research into productivity improvement. The three roadmaps overlap in terms of topics, but include different timeframes.
RT-DCC-01 identified topics that could potentially affect productivity, then graphed each based on its Feasibility and Impact on Productivity. The team then adjusted these results to account for familiarity bias, because the researchers wanted to ensure that unfamiliar yet potentially transformative ideas were also considered (RT-DCC-01, page 41).
RT-DCC-01 produced three potential research roadmaps that incorporated the identified research topics into programs. (Below is an example for Research Roadmap 3.) Additionally, the team developed topic summaries and related research questions for each research topic (RT-DCC-01, page 45).
