<story><title>Efficiency eludes the construction industry (2017)</title><url>https://www.economist.com/business/2017/08/17/efficiency-eludes-the-construction-industry</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>foolinaround</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.vn&amp;#x2F;a7cP8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.vn&amp;#x2F;a7cP8&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Efficiency eludes the construction industry (2017)</title><url>https://www.economist.com/business/2017/08/17/efficiency-eludes-the-construction-industry</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Closi</author><text>The article makes a few assumptions I disagree with - one of which is that the projects they list being over-time and over-budget are because of &lt;i&gt;builder productivity&lt;/i&gt; rather than the primary contractors over-promising to win a large contract.&lt;p&gt;In addition, value added per hour can be a sign of productivity loss, but is also impacted by shrinking margins (which they note &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the case - but shrinking margins has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with competition).&lt;p&gt;Also the article says &amp;quot;Many building professionals use hand-drawn plans riddled with errors&amp;quot; - Hand-drawn plans? This isn&amp;#x27;t my experience in the UK (I design warehouses and have worked with lots of primary contractors). CAD here is pervasive, and anyone with a hand drawn plan would be laughed out of the room (unless you were literally a builder doing a quick sketch - in which case CAD isn&amp;#x27;t a replacement).&lt;p&gt;And the article then recommends... self driving bulldozers as one part of the solution? This is so far away from being safe on a worksite that it&amp;#x27;s nowhere near an immediate concern.</text></comment>