Performance gap in construction

This article is all about the Performance gap in construction

Introduction

The construction industry has had a problem for a long time now. Its called the performance gap. This is simply the difference between what the industry says it will deliver and what it actually delivers.

For example, a house builder will market its new houses as perfect homes, ready to move into and enjoy for a life-time.

And to a large extent these houses will be good. But there is a performance gap that really lets the industry down. For example, a friend of mine bought a new house recently and moved in. The shower upstairs would not produce water so they called the house builder who sent a plumber that day. The plumber took a look and identified the problem immediately. The plumbing had simply not been connected correctly and there would be a couple of hours work in swapping over connections.

Now, this is a brand new finished property. Imagine buying a car and the car won’t start and the car manufacturer explains that when they were making the engine they connected the spark plugs up to the wrong location. What faith would you have with the rest of the property.

The performance gap presents itself in the following areas of construction:

• Health and safety – the number of people injured or killed during construction
• Final quality of finished product – is the property completely finished or are there multiple defects
• Program – will the property be finished on time
• Experience – how the Client and stakeholders feel during the process, are they looked after correctly ? Are there lots of arguments, lawsuits and threats ?
• Budget – is the property delivered within the agreed budget ?

It is one of the challenges for the construction industry to reduce the performance gap so as to coax investors into the industry. If investors find that property development or property investment is not an attractive space to invest in then they will simply invest elsewhere e.g. the stockmarket, private equity etc

Its important to note that people hire the construction industry has benefited from the desire of investors to invest in finished property and not the construction industry. Investors don’t care about the construction industry, they care about the finished product delivered to them.