why is productivity in construction so challenging for us?RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.

The construction sector in Colombia plays a key role in the country’s development and growth. It has been essential in the economic recovery following the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, creating thousands of jobs and driving the economy through its connections with numerous industries. In fact, 2020 and 2021 set new records for housing sales — a strong indicator of the importance and resilience of our industry.

However, we are not without fault, and there remains significant room for improvement in how we execute our projects. Globally — and Colombia is no exception — the construction industry has a historical deficit when it comes to productivity. Unlike related sectors, productivity in construction has seen little improvement in the past 50 years.

This longstanding productivity issue has been a source of deep concern for me. I’ve nurtured this concern through reading and direct experience in a variety of construction projects with Entrez Ingenieros Civiles. Not long ago, I read a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group. It outlined some of the major challenges facing our sector — many of which strongly resonated with my own experience. I’d like to share a few, as I believe they lie at the root of our productivity challenges.

I don’t intend to propose a definitive solution here, but rather to shine a light on these issues. I’m convinced that the first step toward improvement is understanding where we stand. So I’ll focus on what I see as the main barriers highlighted in the WEF report.

The first challenge, one we’ve repeatedly encountered at Entrez, is the lack of a culture of innovation and technological adoption. Despite efforts by industry associations, government, and academia to change this, the widespread adoption of innovation remains elusive. There’s a strong resistance to change that limits our ability to explore new approaches to processes, technology, and research. Today’s world is undergoing a major technological revolution, and construction cannot afford to stay behind. This revolution offers powerful tools that can help us confront our productivity problems head-on.

Another critical issue is the poor transfer of objective experience from one project to the next. What do I mean by this? While every completed project generates valuable personal lessons for those involved, we lack an organizational culture focused on continuous improvement — one that establishes mechanisms to capture and retain knowledge for future use. Without such systems, lessons are lost, and learning remains subjective and prone to bias. Experience must be translated into usable data that informs future projects. The weak transfer of knowledge from past to present projects means we’re missing opportunities to improve — and we owe it to ourselves to do better.

Finally, the point that most caught my attention — and where Entrez is particularly focused — is the lack of effective project monitoring and control. In other industries, such as automotive, real-time data collection allows companies to identify root causes of problems and react swiftly and efficiently. In construction, widespread fragmentation of teams and a lack of interest in data collection and usage make it hard to assess project performance accurately. Often, each company holds its own version of the truth and defends it at all costs. What we need is a single, transparent source of truth shared by all project stakeholders. Only then can we make informed decisions and address the delays and cost overruns that plague our sector — and ultimately, improve productivity.

As I mentioned earlier, this article seeks to explore the reasons why improving productivity in our industry remains such a challenge. I’ve focused on just three causes that left a strong impression on me, though many others exist. My invitation is to acknowledge these difficulties so we can focus on the structural needs of our industry — and, in doing so, build a better future for construction and continue to drive our country’s economic growth.