Qualifying the Problem

Since the 1960s, U.S. businesses have achieved substantial gains in annual productivity through a variety of improved business processes, computing technologies, and related applications. These productivity gains can be measured in most major industries, including manufacturing, financial services, and transportation, to name a few.

During the same period, the productivity growth rate for the construction and building industry has averaged –0.59 percent, while all other industries (excluding construction) combined have an average productivity growth rate of 1.77 percent. This relative decline has occurred even though the construction industry and other U.S. industries have access to many of the same technologies. To determine a source for this problem, industry experts point to many anecdotal and generally plausible causes, including system interoperability, largely for computer-aided design (CAD) tools, as well as project collaboration.

General industry estimates claim that between 10 and 30 percent of all building project costs can be attributed to wasted activities, such as schedule overruns due to inaccurate coordination scheduling, wasted labor and management time, wasted materials, and unnecessary litigation. Based on U.S Department of Commerce building estimates for 2009, a 10 percent waste factor is equal to approximately $94 billion. While this figure does not specifically indicate what is causing productivity rates in the construction industry to decline, it does reveal a significant opportunity for waste reduction and productivity improvement that could help to address the problem.

Project Savings

Construction workflows that leverage color design and construction documentation and printing provide an important means for reducing costs for traditional design-bid-build projects. Relative to the cost of color printing, the improvements in collaboration gained through reduced estimation contingencies, requests for information and change orders can readily exceed a 4:1 ratio, in which each incremental dollar invested in color printing can yield $4 in savings for a given project. These savings are derived through the use of higher-quality color construction documentation during the estimation, bidding, and construction phases of building where collaboration extends across multiple downstream stakeholders, such as specialty subcontractors, fabricators, and suppliers.

To learn more about how color construction documents can help reduce construction costs, and the details behind this ROI model, download the Free Wide Format Printer Buyer's Guide.

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