Introduction

Construction industry is one of the industries that play an important role in

developing and enhancing economic sector and also the development of one’s

country. Both developing and developed nations have realized and understand the

significance of construction sector in socioeconomic and sustainable development of a

country (Dwikojuliardi, 2016). Construction activities are closely linked with the

various phases of economic development of a country. This has been debated at the

macroeconomic level for some years. Since the commencement of the Industrial

Revolution, construction activities have been linked to the process of industrial and

urban growth. The construction output grows more rapidly than national output when

economy grows and viceversa (Alaloul et al., 2021).

This industry is an important element of Malaysian economy because it is widely

linked with many other parts of the economy such as basic metal products which

include the iron and steel industries and electronics. This construction industry has

given a share to the economic GDP at a staggering 18.7% employing over 500,000

workers in some 54,500 local companies. The construction sector is expected to grow

the most at 13.9% by the coming year of 2021 (Benedict, 2020). Malaysia realized the

significance of the construction sector in the early days of its independence and so

many effort were put into the sector to be able to develop it. This sector does not only

contribute towards the economy but is also one of the largest pool of employment .It

contributes significantly to the creation of new job possibilities and income streams

for both skilled and unskilled members of society. This means that the construction

industry is deeply intertwined with other sectors of the economy, both backward and

forward, and is intimately tied to a wide range of economic activity. Any change in
the construction sector must affect other sectors of the economy and finally impact

goes to national income.

Hence the construction industry is often considered as an engine of economic

growth specifically in developing economies. In the building sector, the sector may

activate and successfully use locally produced material and personnel. The favourable

impacts on the economics of construction enterprises and the country as a whole has

made the study of productivity in the construction sector a gaining traction. Because

of the intense competition among businesses today, increasing the efficiency of

construction projects may have a direct influence on their survival. Every construction

project is impacted by a variety of elements, either directly or indirectly. Construction

productivity loss is frequently linked to a combination of variables rather than a single

cause, although no general collection of elements having a major influence on

productivity has yet to be identified. In addition, the factors that impact construction

labour productivity are seldom independent of one another. Some causes may arise

from the same source, or one factor may set off the occurrence of others.

Although the construction industry contributes to the development and

enhancement of the Malaysian economy, but it is not free from being impacted by

issues and problems. Construction companies especially in the government sector are

constantly being troubled by issues that are unavoidable. Some of the issue faced by

them are in terms of labour shortage, labour productivity, safety aspects and

traditional equipment management. The company has constantly been hampered by

labour issue and realizes that labour is the top trade and investment issue. Based on

the company’s internal data collection, it is mention that 41.4% problem stems from

labour top trade and investment issue they faced, followed by cumbersome visa

procedures (30.9%), sales and service tax management (29.5%), and political
uncertainty (28.4%). With the current pandemic, the company has been hampared

even more by this situation.

The firm is facing huge labour shortages due to the nature of the job. The

Malaysian construction industry shed over 2 million jobs during the economic

downturn and has struggled to get employment back to pre-recession numbers. Most

workers who were dispatch out of their job have then seen retired or join employment

in other sectors. The workers are not joining the industry back as they have started a

new career. The bottom line is the construction industry is not attracting enough talent

to meet growing demand. About 21% of employees in the construction industry are

age 55 or older, compared to just 9% that are 24 or younger (Hearns, 2020).

Construction workers are retiring at a higher rate than the younger generation is

entering the field. Millennials, who are more tech-savvy than previous generations,

aren't flocking to construction jobs in the same way that previous generations did,

which will continue to present problems for enterprises as they try to meet rising

demand. The lack of variety, as well as the uncertainties surrounding immigration

reform, will further exacerbate the situation.

The shortage of skilled workers is detracting from the productivity and business

growth of construction companies across the country (Aero, 2021). Construction firm

management should take actions to address the construction labour shortage rather

than surrendering to doing less with fewer personnel than they require. Below is the

recommendation that contractors can follow :

recruiting a year-round activity (Jackson, 2020). Company should not wait when they

desperately need worker and only trying to find them. The company should instead,

commit to recruitment all year, by attending job fairs, posting online job ads and filing

promising applications or resumes to return to when you need them. A new hire

focused on recruiting could be a worthy investment of time and money so that they

will always have a pipeline of qualified workers when you need them. Companies

should also try to reach out to students. They should take time to build relationships

with trade schools or offer internships for students to get their foot in the door during

the slower months (Long, 2017). This will enable companies to be able to brush their

skills to make them more skilled workers and offer them a job after their graduation.

This method will ensure that company will always have a constant flow of skilled

worker into their stream.

Today's workers want to keep learning and progressing professionally, and you

can keep them interested by providing training. It's a win-win situation to provide

training. It leads to more highly qualified people for your company, as well as

goodwill from these workers, who will feel appreciated as a consequence of the time

and money you put into them. Due to a labor shortage in the construction industry,

potential workers have a broad range of construction businesses to choose from.

Companies that appear to appreciate their employees and their safety will attract the

greatest staff. Company have to make sure that they are strong with their base and had

showed proper records in establishing a strong workers’ compensation policy,

providing training and using proper safety equipment. Companies should try to be

fully equipped and these efforts will ensure the company will have enough skilled

workers who are ready to take on the company’s policy.

labours. Unlike other industries, the firm has seen little to no improvement in

productivity over the one year. The firm’s negative productivity curve represents a

very real threat not only to the company itself, but to the sustainability of the firm

(Construction’s Productivity Problem, 2020). As it stands, every ringgit spent on the

workers delivers less than what it is supposed to be. This has cause a serious

implication on the financial income of the firm. There are a number of factors that

lead to poor productivity on construction projects. Based on my research within the

company on what affects labor productivity, the below listed factors are found :

Labor absenteeism and turnover. There is a great deal of time and money lost

associated with high turnover and absenteeism on projects. Generally the firm is

already facing low manpower and high demand for labor for theirprojects. This

absenteeism has impacted all of their productivity. Some factors that cannot be

avoided such as extreme weather conditions will also increase absenteeism and

turnover. Replacement workers are usually not familiar with the work or area,

and require experienced workers to stop work and show them what to do.

Morale and attitude spirit of workers based on willingness, confidence,

discipline, and cheerfulness to perform work or tasks can be lowered due to a

variety of issues, including increased conflicts, disputes, excessive hazards,

overtime, over-inspection, multiple contract changes, disruption of work

rhythm, poor site conditions, absenteeism, unkempt workspace, and so on.

eight-hour work day or 48- hour work week lowers work output and

efficiency through physical fatigue and poor mental attitude

Reassignment of Manpower .When workers are reassigned, they experience

unexpected or excessive changes, losses caused by move-on or move-off,

reorientation, and other issues that result in a loss of productivity.

Construction is an extremely important job for accuracy. But without proper

productivity, they are unable to be be productive and this recommendation to improve

productive is very vital. Below here is some recommendation on improving

productivity. The first way is to be able to communicate clearly. Communication is

the most important productivity booster in any job. No one will get the job done well

if they have no idea what’s going on. It’s important the company clearly communicate

their goals to all of their employees and labour before and throughout a new projects

and keeping them updated throughout the project.The employee should never leave

the employees in the dark about what’s happening in a project. The company should

also set a more realistic goals.Construction takes time so it’s important that the

company set realistic goals that will ensure a constant productivity rate.The company

must be able to make the whole labours understand the goal for each day, each week,

each month, and even each year. It’s important that people have goals to strive

towards each and every day. Setting small goals makes a big project seem easier to

accomplish. Reward is one of the biggest motivations for a worker. These indirectly

have a significant impact on their productivity. Construction is often hot and tiring

work whereby your workers are putting in hour after hour of manual labor. In order to

increase productivity, offer incentives in the form of rewards. Whenever the labour is
able to achieve the set objectives, company should be able to reward them adequately.

This will make workers feel appreciated and eager to push forward. A lack of

productivity is often stemming from the inability to handle the job. The reason behind

this is from inadequate training. If the company wants a work on site to run

efficiently, training the workers is highly recommended. They should be trained

before a project begins depending on the scope of work. This is of course might

incurred cost but it is very worthy in the long run. Proper site training not only does

improve productivity, but it also decreases the number of injuries related on site.

More often productivity is due to leaders of the company not being able to listen

and hear out their labour. This is related back to communication. To be a good leader,

its important to listen well to their labour. have to listen well to those you’re

employing. Certain workers also have ideas and suggestion that they wished to be

heared. Leaders of the company should be able to listen and accept their

recommendation and do not just brush them off. Before starting a construction

project you need to have a detailed plan laid out for how you’re going to accomplish

the job. This includes schedules for workers, materials needed, and countless other

logistics. The more thoroughly you plan your project beforehand, the better it will

turn out. You also need to keep this plan updated to reflect on how the project is

moving. One of the most effective strategies to boost site productivity is to hire

competent management. Your team will respond if you have supervisors that are

courteous yet tough in their leadership. Managers assist in keeping employees focused

on achieving your objectives. Managers can serve as a liaison between construction

workers and senior management, relaying issues. Nothing is more frustrating than

believing you have sufficient building supplies to complete a project only to run out at

the last minute. To avoid this, you should check inventories on a frequent basis. You
need to make sure you have the materials to complete at least one week’s worth of

work. If you don’t, you need to order new materials well in advance to give them

enough time to come in. You don’t want your whole project to screech to a halt

because you didn’t take the time to take proper inventory.

Construction is hot and tiring work. It requires ton of manual labor that puts stress

on the body. In order to increase productivity, it is important to give you workers

adequate time off (Rhumbix Editorial Staff, 2020). If you’ve been working them hard

for a few weeks in a row, give them a long weekend to recover. This will demonstrate

that you care about your workers and they will be happier for it. When they return to

work they’ll be eager to get back to the project after being well rested.

Construction is heavily reliant on human work, and labour is the most

complicated and difficult resource to manage. It is commonly understood that human

resources are one of the most important productivity determinants and that they are

uncontrolled. It is reported labour costs account for between 30 and 50% of a

project’s total cost. Certain construction companies also hire unskilled workers.

Unskilled workers are cheaper than skilled workers who demand for high salary to

accept offer. Therefore, to balance the project cost, some contractors mixed skilled

and unskilled workers. When the norm becomes the hiring and employment of

unskilled workers, the consequences are bad quality works and frequent work redone ,

further lowering site productivity.

Government construction sector face problems with traditional equipment

management. Equipment is at the heart of all construction operations. This makes

managing it efficiently critical to business success. Most government construction

companies usually record equipment movement either with paper files or through the
use of spreadsheets. However, manually tracking such as high-ticket assets leads to

multiple problems for construction companies. Even logging information in

spreadsheets takes time and is susceptible to costly typing errors. Moreover, there is

only so much you can accomplish with a static spreadsheet especially when data is

invariably changing during projects. Very often, construction companies end up with

errors in their equipment data logs. There tends to be a mismatch in what the system

says it has and what is there in reality. For example, the system may tell that a

particular tool is available. However, when checked physically, you may not find it.

This indicates an error in your records. Now, your employees have to waste their

precious time looking for lost tools, ultimately delaying the project. Moreover, losing

tools and construction equipment also leads to a decrease in productivity because of

the unavailability of resources. Additionally, you will also incur further costs to

replace what’s lost. Once you’ve discovered a single missing tool, you’ll want to flag

all the others that aren’t traceable.

The government contractors also are indulge in a time consuming manual

process. This presents a problem as well because manual tracking does not provide

audit trails for equipment. With the current system in place, employees have to

manually check out each tool separately as they need. This wastes time that could

better be spent elsewhere. The entire process could be much quicker if you simply had

the ability to check out all the items or reserve them together in one go. Construction

projects require access to extensive data on-site to help technicians and project

supervisors make informed decisions. A technician might need to transfer tool

custody at the end of their shift. This becomes a struggle if technicians need to

exchange paper logs and then carry them around throughout the shift. In another

instance, the site supervisor might find a piece of unattended equipment lying around
at the end of the shift. In order to know who the equipment was assigned to or who

checked it out, you will again need relevant information on-site. With conventional

tracking, construction companies either jot down information manually on paper or on

spreadsheets. Both options are infeasible if you need access to information on site.

Carrying paper stacks is problematic and requires you to sift through several pages

before you find what you’re looking for. While spreadsheets might be more efficient

in comparison, you can’t view real-time updates on an equipment’s activity at a

construction site.

Government sector needs an overall new automation to solve this old traditional

process that is very time consuming. Government construction should invest in

dedicated equipment management software that helps them maintain an accurate log

of all their valuable equipment and enables them to schedule recurring calibration

services. Leading construction equipment management system such as Deskera,

Mynetiquette, Estockcard and a few others gives government a wide range of choice

to choose from. This software is able to seamlessly integrates with the government

work flows instead of the other way around and provides end-to-end equipment

tracking. The use of such software may help in auditing construction tools. Losing

tools leads to greater costs and lower productivity. The ideal way to tackle this issue is

to know the last custodian of the missing tool. With the auditing feature, the company

can verify the authenticity of equipment records. This way, there won’t be any

discrepancy between the number of tools actually available and the number your

system displays. Audits provide you with conclusive evidence that the tools are

physically present where they should be. They allow you to request employees to

acknowledge custody of the tool they checked out by scanning the item. This way,

you will know which tools are missing, leading to more accurate information within
the system. Another benefit of the audits is that they help your company save money.

They decrease the amount you would normally spend to replace tools that you

couldn’t keep track of. Checking out numerous pieces of equipment individually can

be a painstakingly slow process. To save time and make the entire process more

efficient, those software listen may help ease the burden. Usually, in the construction

industry, you need a myriad of tools and pieces of equipment on site. So it makes

sense if you want to check all of them out together at once, instead of doing so

individually. A mobile application for on-site assistance can be adopted. Currently,

only 18% of construction companies consistently use mobile apps to access

information. This explains why most labour in the construction industry complain

about their inability to access important information on-site. Many time, they need

data at hand to make appropriate decisions. To overcome this challenge, a suitable

mobile application should be used. All relevant employees can simply download the

app to use on-site and on-the-go. This is extremely useful since service technicians

can’t possibly walk around with paper stacks or a laptop on-site. With the app, they

can simply update critical logs from their smartphone. On-site, technicians may

require equipment details prior to operating them.With so many challenges facing the

construction industry, it’s near impossible to overcome them all on your own.

Especially when your current system revolves around manual tracking and the use of

spreadsheets.

Accidents may happen at the construction site by surprise despite all the planning

a firm do and by using the latest PPEs. In the previous years, OSHA declares

construction work to be one of the riskiest workplaces with death toll and number of

injuries continuously increasing (Mishra, 2018). But at the site, falling debris,

slipping, and electrical hazards are no longer the main causes of accidents at the site.
These days, overworking crew members can wear them off, hence causing them to

lose focus and meet accidents. Lack of safety training and proper safety practices are

also other causes. The leading safety hazards on construction sites include falls, being

caught between objects, electrocutions, and being struck by objects. These hazards

have caused injuries and deaths on construction sites throughout the world. Failures in

hazard identification are often due to limited or improper training and supervision of

workers. Failure in any of these areas can result in an increased risk in exposing

workers to harm in the construction environment. Falls are the leading cause of injury

in the construction industry, in particularly for elder and untrained construction

workers. Motor vehicle crashes are another major safety hazard on construction sites.

It is important to be cautious while operating motor vehicles or equipment on the site.

employees on construction sites also need to be aware of dangers on the ground.

Cables running across roadways were often seen until cable ramp equipment was

invented to protect hoses and other equipment which had to be laid out. Another

common hazard that workers may face is overexposure to heat and humidity in the

environment. Overexertion in this type of weather can lead to serious heat-related

illnesses such as heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and heat cramps. Other hazards found

on construction site include asbestos, solvents, noise, and manual handling activities.

Safety is a very important aspect in construction industry. This is to safeguard the

interest if the workers from receiving any injuries or at worst death. Company must

adopt to this safety measures as per what stated in the Occupational Safety and Health

Administration (OSHA) Handbook (29 CFR). Fall protection is needed in areas

including but not limited to ramps, runways, and other walkways, excavations, hoist

areas, holes, form-work, leading edge work, unprotected sides and edges, overhand

bricklaying and related work,roofing; precast erection,wall openings, floor openings

have regulations and guidelines for fall protections to prevent injuries and deaths.

Motor crash vehicles should should have a service brake system, emergency brake

system, and a parking brake system. All vehicles must be equipped with an audible

warning system if the operator chooses to use it. Vehicles must have windows and

doors, power windshield wipers, and a clear view of site from the rear window. All

employees should be properly trained before using motor vehicles and equipment.

Site preparation aids in preventing injury and death on construction sites. Site

preparation includes removing debris, leveling the ground, filling holes, cutting tree

roots, and marking gas, water, and electric pipelines. Another prevention method on

the construction site is to provide a scaffold that is rigid and sufficient to carry its own

weight plus four times the maximum intended load without settling or displacement.

Construction workers need to be properly trained and educated on the task or job

before working, which will assist in preventing injuries and deaths. There are many

methods of training construction workers. One method is coaching construction site

foremen to include safety in their daily verbal exchanges with workers to reduce

work-related accidents. It is important that the workers use the same language to

assure the best communication. In recent years, apart from traditional face to face

safety knowledge sharing, mobile apps also make knowledge sharing possible.

Another method is ensuring that all workers know how to properly use

electronics, conveyors, skid-steer, trucks, aerial lifts, and other equipment on the

construction site. Equipment on the job site must be properly maintained and

inspected regularly before and after each shift (Sharman, 2018). The equipment

inspection system will help the operator make sure that a machine is mechanically

sound and in safe operating conditions. An employee should be assigned to inspect

intended for night use. The glass in the cab of the equipment must be safety glass in

some countries. The equipment must be used for its intended task at all times on the

job site to insure workers' safety. Each construction site should have a construction

site manager. This is an occupational health and safety specialist who designs and

implements safety regulations to minimize injuries and accidents. He or she also is in

charge of conducting daily safety audits and inspections to ensure compliance with

government regulations. Most construction site managers have an entry level

experience or higher degree. Before any excavation takes place, the contractor is

responsible for notifying all applicable companies that excavation work is being

performed. During excavation, the contractor is responsible for providing a safe work

environment for employees and pedestrians. Access and egress are also important

parts of excavation safety. Ramps used by equipment must be designed by a person

qualified in structural design. No person is allowed to cross underneath or stand

underneath any loading or digging equipment. Employees are to remain at a safe

distance from all equipment while it is operational. Employees who have training and

education in the above areas will benefit their co-workers and themselves on the

construction site.

As a conclusion, the construction industries in generals will face major challenges

in future. Those which are often highlighted and considered relate to the construction

industry area as stated above. The overarching issue of construction industry

development should embrace all these issues. In other words, the government sector

should seek to develop construction industries which are well-poised to benefit from

globalization, enterprises and practitioners which are aware of, and actively seek to

limit, the negative impact of their activities onto labour. Construction industry is very
vital to the economy thus its survival is very important. The construction sector

especially those related to the government should enhance on its labour shortage,

stagnant productivity, concurrent safety issues and the use of old and complicated

traditional method. Construction in the private sector have been developing from time

to time, adapting to new and lasted technologies in able to spearhead their

competitors. Government related contractors must make use of such opportunity and

remain as advance as possible in the industry.

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