Construction has spent more than 30 years diagnosing its productivity problem. Countless reviews have pointed to earlier collaboration and repeatable delivery. The industry broadly knows what to do. What it has lacked is the discipline, data and delivery model to do it consistently, writes Jason Millett, CEO of Mace Construct
That is why Mace Construct’s Build Smart, Build Better report matters. It analyses 234 projects delivered between 2019 and 2025 and asks: where is productivity being created, and where is it being lost?
The answer is clear. Productivity is shaped early by design maturity, procurement, workforce stability, supply chain integration, Modern Methods of Construction, digital coordination and measurement.
The scale of the challenge is too big for business as usual
UK construction productivity is roughly 20% lower today than it was in the 1970s. Between 1997 and 2022, it improved by about 1%, compared with 182% for manufacturing and 29% for the wider economy. Almost no other major sector has stood still for that long.
At the same time, the UK is asking the industry to deliver at a scale not attempted in decades. More than £700bn of schemes sit in the UK Infrastructure Pipeline, while the Construction Industry Training Board projects the need for an additional 41,200 workers a year. We cannot pour more people into the same delivery models and expect better results.
Workforce churn is not a people issue. It is a productivity issue
One of the report’s most important contributions is that it quantifies the cost of workforce churn: the productivity lost when teams do not stay together long enough to retain institutional knowledge, build consistency and create momentum.
On projects with around 500 operatives, moving from a stable workforce to a high-churn workforce was associated with roughly 8% lower productivity. Launch materials put the national productivity cost linked to workforce churn at around £1.3bn a year.
That should change how we talk about labour. Retention, direct employment, apprenticeships and workforce planning are not just social value or HR measures. They are delivery levers. If clients and contractors want predictable projects, they need stable teams that can learn and improve together.
Productivity is decided before work starts on site
Productivity is often won or lost before the first operative arrives on site. Design maturity, procurement strategy and early supply chain involvement determine whether a project is set up for efficient delivery.
On major projects, early contractor involvement retained around 1.5 percentage points more value than traditional single-stage procurement. Across complex programmes, that is commercially significant. It also shows that delivery teams need to shape how projects are designed, procured and sequenced.
Too often, contractors are asked to deliver designs they had little role in shaping. By then, opportunities to standardise components, reduce rework and rationalise logistics have already been lost.
Industrialisation is not about identical buildings. It is about repeatable systems
Construction sometimes treats standardisation as a threat to design quality. The opportunity is to standardise the interfaces, components, processes and data that allow teams to improve from one project to the next.
Projects making greater use of industrialised approaches generated around 50% more commercial value per worker than those relying on traditional methods. Repeatable systems reduce the friction that consumes time and margin: rework, unclear interfaces, late coordination, inefficient logistics and one-off problem solving.
Measurement must become normal
The report establishes a Mace Construct baseline of £67 of gross value added per worker hour, excluding extreme outliers. That is above the industry average of £37.38. The top-performing half of Mace Construct projects achieve more than £100 per worker hour. By 2030, we want that to become the new baseline.
The wider prize is substantial. A 51% productivity improvement could unlock £67.4bn more infrastructure across the government pipeline, complete it with 113,000 fewer workers per year, and build 22,000 more homes annually with the same budget and workforce.
That is why measurement matters, especially what we choose to measure. GVA is a useful productivity indicator but it does not always correlate directly with value being retained. Productivity therefore needs to sit alongside safety, carbon and quality as a core delivery metric, supported by a clearer view of whether projects are protecting value through better planning, repeatability and delivery certainty. Clients should expect project-level productivity data and contractors should be prepared to share it. Without that evidence base, the sector will keep relying on anecdotes and pilots.
From insight to action
Build Smart, Build Better is ultimately an argument for changing construction’s operating model: stabilising teams, involving contractors earlier, industrialising where it makes sense, designing for automation, measuring performance properly and treating each project as part of a learning system.
The industry does not need another productivity conversation that ends in consensus and inaction. It needs clients, contractors, consultants and supply chains to make productivity a shared delivery strategy. If we are serious about delivering the UK’s pipeline with the resources available, we need to scale the approaches that already work.
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