The University of Cambridge Laing O’Rourke Centre has developed a framework for productivity measurement, designed to help businesses unlock the value of their existing data and use it systematically to understand how projects are delivered and where productivity can be improved.
The framework, known as the Cambridge Framework for Construction Productivity (shortened to ‘the Cambridge Framework’), provides a structure to consistently measure productivity at different levels of granularity within a project. It illustrates how commonly available project data, such as programmes, BIM models, progress records, labour and blocker logs can be structured and integrated to support meaningful analysis.
The two main phases when the framework can be applied are during project delivery, and bidding and project planning:
- During project delivery: using flowlines, production rates, labour productivity, and blockers to productivity to diagnose deviations, support corrective action, and stabilise production flow. Upon project completion, data analytics can support the creation of benchmarks and facilitate knowledge transfer about key challenges to achieving expected productivity rates.
- During bidding and planning: ability to create robust and defensible project programmes based on a clear understanding of tasks, sequencing and interfaces. This relies on pooled datasets across projects, work packages and activities to establish empirical benchmarks for production rate, labour productivity and cost efficiency while emphasising the importance of like-for-like comparison and sufficient analytical granularity.
Future applications
To date, the framework has been developed and tested primarily with developers and their delivery teams on commercial and residential projects. “While these sectors provide the empirical foundation presented in this publication, the underlying method is designed to be transferable,” note the researchers.
Future applications are expected to extend the framework to other building and infrastructure sectors, including hospitals, data centres, schools, and linear infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
The research programme that has led to the framework’s development began in 2021 with a first wave of pilot projects, followed by a second wave in 2023. The research team has collected and analysed data from more than 25 UK construction projects, using digital technologies, data analytics and automation to understand how construction work is planned and executed in practice. Successive pilot projects have enabled the research team to iteratively test and refine the method under live project conditions.
Alongside the framework, the research team is developing Camentis, a software tool designed to operationalise the framework on projects. The software is being piloted on live construction projects.
The long-term vision is for Camentis to support better project controls, benchmarking and more advanced analytics (including AI), helping teams make more evidence-based interventions to improve productivity.
Asset owners must adopt the framework
The researchers are calling on industry leaders, clients and policymakers to adopt the Cambridge Framework and test the software, starting with pilot projects.
“Achieving sustained improvement requires coordinated action across the construction value chain. Asset owners should mandate productivity measurement and standardised data sharing across projects, define minimum data requirements at each stage, and establish portfolio-level productivity databases to enable benchmarking and continuous improvement,” they state.
“Designers should use productivity metrics to inform design decisions, considering constructability, standardisation, and opportunities for off-site production. Contractors should implement systems and technologies to capture activity-level, work package-level and project-level data and use the resulting metrics to support planning, control, and productivity improvement.
“Product and material suppliers should contribute fabrication, delivery, and installation data linked to project information and digital models.”
Dr Danny Murguia, assistant research professor at the University of Cambridge Laing O’Rourke Centre and lead author of the framework, said: “The framework is about using data when it can make a difference: during project delivery, when teams still have an opportunity to intervene and improve outcomes. But it is also about learning from every project, building an organisational evidence base so that the next one can be planned, scheduled, priced and risk-assessed using better information than the last.”
The researchers state that the framework is particularly timely in the context of the upcoming PAS 4010:2026, Improving productivity in infrastructure development and delivery, which sets out requirements for a productivity management strategy to manage, assure and continuously improve productivity.
