...a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to accept the lowest responsible bid. But Wilson says good owners have to be rigid in their assessment of the financial condition of their vendors. “I see some bids coming in that make me wonder how they expect to make payroll,” he adds.

Owners continue to look to technological advances for process improvements. Owners expect their suppliers to bring cutting-edge technology to the table to enhance productivity. But one major owner laments that, while advanced CAD systems and building-information-modeling tools are common in the process markets and are becoming more popular in commercial sectors, contractors and designers in the light-industrial markets have been slow to get up to speed.

Wilson says it is the larger contractors that are taking the lead on technology and process improvements. “The more mature and larger companies have a leg up on the use of technology,” he says. “The mom-and-pop firms are not there yet, but they are going to have to step up if they want to play with companies like GE,” he says.

Larsen says developing a way to measure productivity is the key problem. “Twenty years ago, we needed to address construction safety, but at least we had a way to measure safety improvements and were able to make great strides in correcting the problem.” He says the same thing can be done with productivity, once the proper measuring tools are developed.

One recent event that has caught the eye of owners is a study released in September by the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md. The study, “Metrics and Tools for Measuring Construction Productivity,” analyzes the various methods by which construction productivity is measured and proposes a means for collecting data for assessment.

Of more immediate application is Austin, Texas-based CII’s research into productivity. In early August, CII unveiled the first of its studies that attempts benchmark productivity against a series of best practices. It found that, in the mechanical trades, an emphasis on safety training and especially front-end planning had the biggest positive impact on productivity. “The important thing is to provide a means for the industry to measure itself against a goal,” Crew says.

CII hopes to soon complete its productivity studies. “We are finishing up our studies on best practices and how they relate to productivity,” says Crew. He says CII now is completing data collection and hopes to publish its findings at the beginning of 2010. “We are finding that a disciplined use of best practices could save at least 10% on most projects, sometimes as much as 15%,” says Crew.

Who Will Be Left?

One of the biggest concerns among owner companies is not the current construction climate, but what will happen when the construction industry starts humming in the future. “It will be a real challenge in 24 to 36 months to find enough capacity to fulfill the industry’s needs,” says Sizemore. He notes that the personnel-shortage problem the industry experienced during the recent boom has not been solved, but only deferred until the markets recover.

Larsen points out that the Wall Street meltdown also has postponed any solution of the problem of an aging population in the trades and industry profession. “Fewer people are retiring now because their retirement accounts were hurt during the recession,” he says. “The big concern is that we need a way to address this problem, but in this economy, few are willing to spend the money to do so.”