[HN Gopher] Efficiency eludes the construction industry (2017)
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Efficiency eludes the construction industry (2017)
Author : baybal2
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-07-10 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Oh, I think I can explain this pretty easily... most construction
| companies aren't competitive. Construction and real-estate are
| two markets that are from top-to-bottom, inside-out, soaked in
| cronyism. I'd wager most multi-million dollar plus construction
| companies simply know the right people to get the contracts and
| as a result never effectively "bid" on a single fucking thing.
| Why then, if there is no real competition, would you ever
| increase productivity? Short answer, you wouldn't. Being more
| productive would require increasing the rate at which you use
| capital (i.e. you spend more) witout any accompanying increase in
| gross profits. _shrug_
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This is absolutely compatible with everything described in the
| article. A lower-productivity project is a large project, a
| larger project allows larger amounts of money to be skimmed.
|
| Plus elaborate custom specifications for projects also make it
| hard to keep track of costs and bureaucrats wind-up fond of
| these things. Etc.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| In most parts of the USA winning on a public project requires
| three bids.
|
| Why do the same companies always seem to win?
|
| In my neck of the woods (The Bay Area), one company seems to
| get all the jobs. The company's name rhymes with Gelato.
|
| I started to look carefully at the bids.
|
| (I got a General Contractor's license a while ago, and it an
| easy test, and verification of work experience is a joke.)
|
| Ok, I looked into the owner of the contractor's license, and in
| all three bids, they had a "Gelato" as owner of the company.
|
| It looks like the "Gelato" family sent three kids to Sacramento
| to take the test, and get their licenses.
|
| They all bid on the same project, and one wins.
|
| They must share the million dollar equipment, and pool of
| employees though?
|
| Is it legal? I don't know.
|
| Do I know for a fact this is how it works--no.
|
| (There's a bill, I believe up for vote soon, in Sacramento. It
| requires all bidding parties to verify their company us big
| enough to do the project. I don't think we need a bill like
| this. I don't think small companies bidding on huge project to
| is a problem. If I am right about "Gelato" construction company
| --authorities should look into the bidding process. There us a
| reason, besides inflation, that public projects get more
| expensive each year, and never seem to end.)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Curious - what is the name of the company? Why not disclose
| "Gelato"?
| owyn wrote:
| I dunno what the op intent was except just a general sense
| of discretion that is kind of the HN vibe. But it's
| obviously Ghilotti Construction. And yes, they do seem to
| build everything around here, freeways, bridges, big stuff
| like that. They don't have a wikipedia page, my uncle was a
| civil engineer there for decades (now retired)
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Kind of reminds me of the SWIM nonsense of the early
| internet. Not saying the name with so much detail isn't
| protecting you from anything. Just say the name people,
| or don't comment.
| phkahler wrote:
| If they do a good job at prices that are in the ballpark
| it may be fine.
|
| Sometimes what looks like cronyism is just someone
| picking someone they trust to do the job. It can be hard
| to tell the difference unless there are obvious problems
| constantly being overlooked - like with NASA contractors
| for example.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Look up "road work in Marin County."
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Or: "suicide FBI informant marin county construction"
| brightball wrote:
| I wouldn't shock me to see that the construction companies just
| figured out how to finance their own real estate projects.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| It's not just cronyism, it's flat out corruption. I took a 2-3
| year detour from tech to work in construction.
|
| The industry is rife with corruption and misaligned incentives.
| Kick-backs are common. Bids are often not truly competitive,
| and when they are, people find ways like change-order abuse [1]
| to subvert the system. There are so many ways to rig the
| bidding process (bribing someone to find out competitor bids so
| you can undercut them) and the execution (cutting corners that
| you don't expect someone to find out about, or just bribing
| whoever is overseeing quality who might detect the corners you
| cut).
|
| Even the US Army Corps of Engineers has had massive corruption
| cases. When I was in the industry this was an open secret,
| which surprising to me given the Foreign Corrupt Practices
| Act... eventually this would be cracked down upon [2], but as
| far as I've heard, still common.
|
| [1] https://guide.iacrc.org/potential-scheme-change-order-
| abuse/
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-us-army-corps-
| engi...
| cagmz wrote:
| What was your role? That's an interesting detour.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Not that interesting honestly.
|
| It was a family business and I helped out by the managing
| operations (this was more as a supplier of building
| material to contractors) and doing business development
| (which involved bidding for construction projects).
| jseliger wrote:
| Related: https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-its-hard-
| to-i...
| nroets wrote:
| I think building has become a lot more complicated: 4 decades
| ago, semi face brick buildings with carpets and simple trimmings
| was common.
|
| Now it's plastered walls, with large doubled glazed windows
| everywhere. Laminate floors. HVAC. Extra insulation to reduce
| heating costs.
|
| And all buildings now need to be wheelchair accessible with lots
| of ramps, lifts and specialised bathrooms.
|
| Result: Specialised workers at very stage, reducing competition
| and causing delays.
| foolinaround wrote:
| https://archive.vn/a7cP8
| ayon1922 wrote:
| great
| irrational wrote:
| > Prices for building materials are not to blame. They are
| subtracted from measures of value-added (and have not risen in
| any case).
|
| I was shocked to read this until I saw the date. 2017 should be
| added to the title.
| Zenst wrote:
| I would imagine health and safety and deaths have also decreased
| since that period.
|
| Quick look at https://sbcmag.info/news/2015/jan/construction-
| jobsite-fatal... does seem to bear this out, though really need a
| longer time-scale for a bigger picture upon this.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly. Look at the number of deaths on large NYC
| building/bridge projects in modern times vs 50, 100, etc years
| ago.
|
| I have an uncle who has lived for 40 years with mental
| disabilities and unable to drive, from an a construction site
| accident.
|
| My grandfather died before reaching 60 after a series of
| ailments starting with a back injury suffered in the
| construction industry.
|
| It is hard & dangerous work, which has gotten dramatically
| safer over time. It nonetheless remains hard on the body.
| deelowe wrote:
| Maybe this depends on the region? Literally zero concern for
| safety where I live. Framers especially get hurt all the time.
| wussboy wrote:
| Perhaps. Although I do think it's interesting that we're now
| saying things like "framers get hurt all the time" and not
| things like "framers get killed all the time", which would
| have been much more common in ages past.
| deelowe wrote:
| I think that's maybe more due to the medical system though.
| Here, no one ties off and no scaffolding is used. I know
| someone personally who almost died not long ago. My father
| used to do commercial roofing and fell 30ft once as well.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Title should be changed to the actual title of the article
| instead of the inflammatory subtitle chosen. The article opens up
| with an example of Germany facing the same issue.
|
| Actual article title:
|
| Efficiency eludes the construction industry
| baybal2 wrote:
| I chose the subtitle, over the title because it is stinging,
| and is straight to the point.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Disagree, it's a worldwide problem. Part of it is due to
| increased regulation and extra cost and detailing due to
| regulations.
| dang wrote:
| OK, we've changed the title to that from "American builders'
| productivity has plunged by half since the late 1960s".
| baybal2 wrote:
| Please change it back. I believe the title was more
| appropriate.
|
| - While it was a subtitle, it was way more to the point
|
| - Specifically pointing to America was also appropriate
|
| The Economist is a magazine publication. Their headlines are
| a concession to the content.
| dmix wrote:
| + (2017)
| dzdt wrote:
| @dang
| smichel17 wrote:
| This does nothing. Send an email if you want to get his
| attention.
| yashap wrote:
| The article does state that it's especially bad in America, far
| worse than in Germany:
|
| > Construction holds the dubious honour of having the lowest
| productivity gains of any industry, according to McKinsey, a
| consultancy. In the past 20 years the global average for the
| value-added per hour has inched up by 1% a year, about one-
| quarter the rate of growth in manufacturing. Trends in rich
| countries are especially bad. Over the same period Germany and
| Japan, paragons of industrial efficiency, have seen nearly no
| growth in construction productivity. In France and Italy
| productivity has fallen by one-sixth. In America,
| astonishingly, it has plunged by half since the late 1960s.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Makes sense. Commercial construction is dominated by bean
| counters whose incentives and penalties discourage risk.
|
| Public works usually require separate bidding for different
| aspects of projects, which means you have 2-5 different entities
| to coordinate around. Some states and entities are experimenting
| with design/build contracts, but there's obvious opportunity for
| corruption there, so who knows how that will fare.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| A real estate agent told me that the big problem is in the 50's
| and 60's you could do massive developments in the suburbs.
| Imagine building the same house 500 times. You probably get
| very skilled and efficient at it. Today most developments are
| limited to just a few houses and a lot of construction is one
| off for permits and design so there are no economies of scale.
|
| Just anecdotal, but made sense to me why costs are going up and
| productivity declining.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| On the other hand customers don't really like their house
| looking exactly like the rest of the 'hood. HOAs are bad
| enough, but even the basic structure of all the houses
| looking identical? That's an eyesore.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| Newsflash: it's the building trades unions. We have the tech to
| build nice buildings much more efficiently but we don't use it
| due to political advocacy from the trades unions. We have
| extremely inefficient regulations around building codes, largely
| due to lobbying from the trades unions. In CA right now, the
| trades are lobbying for regulations to ban cross laminated timber
| structures, which are a step function cost reduction change for
| 5-12 story buildings. The reason modular construction hasn't
| taken off is largely due to political lobbying from the trades
| unions. They even lobby against zoning code changes that would
| allow people to build larger buildings with the same tech we
| currently have. It's absolutely insane.
| m00x wrote:
| Do you have data to cover this statement, or is it simply
| conjecture?
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I don't have an academic study, put I do policy advocacy in
| this space as a hobby, specifically around supportive housing
| for the homeless and this is my experience in California and
| the general understanding of the state of things by the
| politicians and professionals in the space.
| edoceo wrote:
| That's a lot of words for "it's conjecture"
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Looks like finally, instead of just rioting, Luddites got smart
| and got themselves some political representation.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't really think this comment should be down-voted.
|
| The claims are fairly well-founded:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-tr...
| "San Francisco, trade unions at odds over modular construction
| - even for homeless projects"
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The article gives a good actual explanation:
|
| _Instead, volatility in demand for construction has trained
| builders to curb investment. "The industry has learned through
| bitter experience to prepare for the next recession," says Luc
| Luyten of Bain & Company, a consultancy. Capital-heavy
| approaches to construction bring high fixed costs that are
| difficult to cut in downturns. Workers, in contrast, can be
| fired._
|
| One of the factors of construction is "it costs what it costs".
| Builders are willing and able to pass costs on to consumers and
| so don't have an incentive for cost savings.
| wussboy wrote:
| Is there any effective remedy to this? Would be interested to
| hear your opinion (which sounds like it's as lot closer to the
| action than mine is).
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| 30 years of state run schools and colleges telling everyone you
| absolutely need a college degree and everyone who works in the
| trades is a loser has resulted in a massive skilled tradesman
| deficit.
| wnevets wrote:
| Construction is an incredibly unstable source of income, its
| very feast or famine in nature. Software for example hasn't
| been since the dot com bubble burst
| epistasis wrote:
| I think a good way to stabilize this industry, and overall
| help our current housing crunch and homelessness crisis, is
| to have a government builder. Somebody that builds
| countercyclically, buying land and collecting the same land
| rents that landlords do, but turning those land rents into
| more housing. We currently subsidize our food system with a
| massive amount of socialism, to the degree that Midwestern
| farming probably wouldn't be recognizable without the farm
| bill. However, our housing system is going to crap due to the
| instability of construction as a trade, which in turn is
| causing massive increases in housing prices. I think this is
| a place where we need to change our government policy to make
| it a better market. Instead of intervening only with massive
| subsidies for home loans as we currently do, we should also
| stabilize the demand side of construction to keep it healthy,
| by providing a continuous buyer of construction labor.
| websites2023 wrote:
| And yet college degree attainment hovers around 33% and those
| who do get one earn an average of $1m more over their life time
| than those who don't. There's something else going on here.
| closeparen wrote:
| The just-so story I heard about the construction trades was
| that there was essentially no work for years after 2008. The
| master craftsmen retired or moved on, and as demand recovered
| there was hardly anyone left to train even those apprentices
| brave enough to enter an industry that just... sometimes
| doesn't have any work for a few years.
| AngryData wrote:
| There aren't a lack of tradesmen, there is a lack of people
| willing to cut 20 years off their life for a marginal raise,
| especially in the US where that will barely cover their
| increased medical and tool costs. There is a lack of people
| willing to put themselves financially reliant on a boom-bust
| industry where workers are regularly fired or layed off on a
| moments notice.
|
| I know more tradesmen that are leaving the trades than joining,
| and they are usually the best among their group. Being a
| skilled framer often nets you nothing over being a barely
| competent framer. Despite all these claims of trades making
| huge money, most tradesmen are not. For ever plumber in NYC
| making $50 an hour, there is a dozen other contractors working
| for $12 an hour using their own tools and trucks fighting over
| the scraps of lower class business who can barely afford them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Being a skilled framer often nets you nothing over being a
| barely competent framer."
|
| Every indutry that doesnt reward skill qill eventually go to
| shit
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Which is why Germany had the "Meisterzwang" for a _long_
| time in the trades - basically only certified masters of a
| trade could open up a shop. Unfortunately, EU laws forced
| Germany to drop that requirement for everything sans a
| couple of high-risk trade jobs (e.g. electricity, plumbing,
| meatpacking, roofing and hairdressers).
| eplanit wrote:
| This is just what Mike Rowe talks about, and something that
| he's personally working on:
| https://www.mikeroweworks.org/about/.
|
| More power to him!
| tpmx wrote:
| I think this is very common in many "western world" countries,
| not just the US.
|
| And at the moment the software field seems a lot more
| financially rewarding to smart, practical young people trying
| to figure out what field they should go into.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I think this is very common in many "western world"
| countries, not just the US.
|
| I'd say it's the same process even in China these days.
|
| There was a big stir online few years ago where it came to
| light that Shenzhen polytech grads have significantly larger
| salaries, and employment than much more prestigious
| university graduates.
|
| On other side, I see more, and more Chinese companies
| becoming carbon copies of American corporates with
| engineering offices stuffed full of MBA's, and needing 10
| SWOT analyses to fix a single line of code bug.
| voidfunc wrote:
| You are not wrong about the messaging but lets not pretend
| trade work is green fields and roses, a lot of it absolutely
| fucks up peoples bodies.
| yojo wrote:
| This. My dad is a contractor. I've been taking some time off
| SWE work to try to learn some of what he knows while he can
| still do it. It is just hard on my body, half the days I wake
| up with the wrong kind of pain. Hanging drywall, digging post
| holes, sanding, painting, laying tile, etc. So much of the
| work is an ergonomic nightmare.
|
| I think it's not as bad in single family construction as
| commercial work, since the activity varies more over the
| day/week. But still, I can't imagine my body not breaking if
| I did this for a career.
|
| OTOH electrical work seems mostly reasonable. If one of my
| kids wanted to get into a trade that's where I'd steer them.
| pc86 wrote:
| Not diminishing the degree to which it can hurt your body
| long term - it absolutely can. That being said, most people
| that do that kind of work as a career start it as a job
| when they're 16-18 years old, and are typically active
| (sports, etc.) for many many years before that.
|
| You're starting it at best in your mid-to-late twenties?
| And even if you played sports in HS and go to the gym
| regularly, your body just isn't used to it and it's past
| the point where it can quickly adapt and more importantly
| get used to the stimulus. You're likely much more prone to
| injury than someone fifteen years older than you whose been
| doing that work since they were 17 (I'm sure I am too, it
| would destroy and I am very active for a SWE).
| stanski wrote:
| Yes and no. I don't know of any exercise that would
| compare to sanding a wall, for example. It's not exactly
| an activity you would want to be doing for a long stretch
| of time. No matter how fit you are, construction work
| isn't like you're getting paid to go to the gym.
| yojo wrote:
| Fair. I'm late 30s, my dad is 74 and can work circles
| around me. He definitely started manual labor young. I
| did some of it in high school but have been behind a desk
| since college.
|
| I do consider myself very fit/active, but it's not the
| strength or stamina that's the limiting factor, it's the
| holding weight at weird angles, or applying torque, or
| just reaching out over my center of mass for hours.
|
| Anecdotally it seems like the specialists have it worst.
| His friends who did flooring all have wrecked knees, and
| the drywall hangers have messed up shoulders. He seems to
| have made it out unscathed, though other generalists he
| knows have back problems.
| analog31 wrote:
| I think even in single family construction, it is often the
| case that people specialize and the work can be quite
| repetitive. We had some drywall work done, notably
| finishing a portion of our basement. Hanging the drywall,
| followed by taping and mudding, followed by painting. All
| were done by different people, _probably_ with different
| pay scales and expectations of working conditions.
|
| I've had people come to my house to do handyman work, and
| at the same age as me, they are hobbling and broken.
|
| I suspect that one of the causes of the opioid crisis is
| that we had a pain crisis, caused by bad working
| conditions. I could imagine advising one of my kids to go
| into the trades, but only if they move to a country with
| decent labor laws, safety net, and health care. Not in the
| US.
| [deleted]
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Being poor absolutely fucks up being able to live, so I'd
| rather have a meaningful career if I had the choice versus
| being look at unfavorably compared to an automaton in other
| fields.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I hadn't considered this before reading your comments, but
| it makes sense that skilled trades will be somewhat
| automation proof, at least in the medium term.
| foolinaround wrote:
| Modular houses - where the fittings are made in the
| factory itself - is one kind of automation.
|
| I met a guy a few years ago who had a plumber role in one
| of those modular factories... he said he was paid lesser
| but he likened it to a 9-5 job in a factory, and was ok
| with the pay.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| In part because skilled trades already are fairly
| mechanized. Backhoes, skid-loaders, nail guns, power
| tools, etc.
|
| (And in general, I think mechanization is under-
| appreciated as a productivity enhancer compared to
| automation... Who is more productive moving something
| like gravel around, someone driving a 5 ton capacity dump
| truck or someone overseeing 100 gravel-moving drones with
| a capacity of 5 kilograms each? Even if the drones are
| essentially autonomous, the dump truck driver will be
| more productive in moving the material around because
| he's driving a big machine and the drones will need
| someone to manage them especially when there are
| problems. Or even compare 5 ton autonomous mining trucks
| with a 500 ton dump truck... the 500 tonner is gonna win.
| Larger scale machines are still a pretty straightforward
| way to improve productivity.)
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Honest question. Why do your examples assume that the
| autonomous machine has to be smaller than the human
| operated version?
| Fordec wrote:
| Is there a building industry equivalent of build the machine
| that builds the houses?
|
| You can be a massively skilled electronic engineer, but you
| don't need to hand solder every board to have a great,
| skilled, outcome. I guess the answer is all the machinery we
| employ for larger buildings, but there's no real equivalent
| for the individual suburban home which still involves most of
| the manual labor.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Actually, the electrical engineers that I've worked with
| didn't know how to solder. They had technicians to do that.
|
| OTOH, I, a physicist, used to be a certified NASA solderer.
|
| That was in the days before surface mount.
| WalterBright wrote:
| All the EEs of my generation knew how to solder.
|
| Interestingly, no electrician I've used knew what
| inductive coupling was. :-(
| wrycoder wrote:
| Well, I'm about fifteen years older than you are. You
| must have worked with a different class of EEs. The one I
| knew weren't hams and probably didn't grow up building
| kits and stuff like we did.
|
| Inductive coupling is one of the most fascinating topics
| in EM. And, is all the power _really_ flowing in the air
| between the wires? The electricians don't know that,
| either.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I guess the answer is all the machinery we employ for
| larger buildings, but there's no real equivalent for the
| individual suburban home which still involves most of the
| manual labor.
|
| Suburban housing is very easy to build. Building 1 storey
| houses is not a challenge anywhere in the world, and it is
| possible to build it super cheap even without any capital
| equipment.
|
| Steel housing is a prime example that even a double digit
| percentage cost advantage, with it being a very
| straightforward, and overwhelmingly superior, replacement
| for wooden framing, doesn't seem to been enough to drive
| new technology adoption in USA.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Well there's the tools industry and robotics in general but
| the issue ultimately comes down to cost and speed. You can
| use heavy automation and tooling to reduce the tax on a
| person but that equipment is incredibly expensive and often
| times is slower than a person or a few people just doing
| the job by themselves or with more "manual" tools.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Apprenticeship.
|
| Good small time subcontractors show up to the job
| themselves but train others to do most of the work.
|
| Subs I worked with had pretty healthy markup over what they
| were paying their workers (>100% when invoicing hours).
|
| The catch is they all had spent years learning the trade,
| and that part is definitely dangerous. I saw a guy ruin his
| back being over eager pouring concrete.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I had an interesting experience, I did electronic
| engineering but i completely misunderstood how to solder -
| i was trying to melt the solder onto the iron and drop a
| drop of molten solder on the board with the wire. The
| technicians were laughing their asses off and said "if you
| cant solder maybe you shouldn't be here"
|
| It was in 2nd year when I watched a youtube video when some
| guy actually explained thay you need to heat up the pad on
| the board, then add solder. I was totally flabbergased.
|
| Soldering was a very minor part of my degree, so it didn't
| really matter, but still.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Well, houses are literally built by cnc increasingly often.
| There's a whole industry in the Baltics of building houses
| in a factory and shipping them around Europe.
| wrycoder wrote:
| There's one channel on yt that I watch a lot. The fellow
| builds houses, and his ability to reach down and do useful
| work four inches below his toes amazes me.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Now we have electricians charging as much as software agencies.
|
| HVAC installation costs as much as a car in warmer regions.
|
| General handyman work outclasses all retail jobs, but you don't
| hear about people with two bachelors doing that type of work
| like you do at a Starbucks.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I think part of this is because skilled trades are often more
| physically taxing than "traditional" college degree desk
| jobs.
|
| I'm inclined towards the skilled trade side of things because
| I like getting my hands dirty but I understand why people
| wouldn't want to do a job that has you in a shop or working
| out in the heat, cold, or rain on a regular basis. Not to
| mention I imagine the injury and/or casualty rate is much
| higher for many trades compared to desk jobs.
|
| TLDR: We obviously need both and they are equally good fields
| but I completely understand the perceived higher valuation
| for the safer, less physically taxing albeit often more
| boring and sedimentary jobs.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Retail jobs are often physically taxing also - shelf
| stacking for example.
| glennpratt wrote:
| I think society does a poor job communicating the actual
| lack of safety that comes from sedentary, physically
| repetitive jobs.
|
| I wouldn't qualify for workers compensation for my
| herniated disc because I don't know when it started or why.
| But it's probably from sitting in front of a computer.
| Asking coworkers over 35, they almost all have injuries
| from computer work.
|
| Maintaining weight and strength while a huge chunk of your
| day is sedentary is a big chore too.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I completely agree. Of course as you say the damage from
| sedentary jobs is a lot less visible and much harder to
| pinpoint.
|
| I'd argue the public perceives sedentary jobs as much
| safer because of this even if they may not be in reality.
| olleromam91 wrote:
| Personally I'd rather have a sedimentary job than an
| igneous or metamorphic one...
| jacoblambda wrote:
| lol. I realised I made that typo right after the time to
| edit elapsed.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| General handyman work is not trivial. It's physical and
| requires a lot of tacit knowledge and perseverance. A regular
| 9-5 Starbucks job is, by comparison, pretty easy-in, easy-out
| (which doesn't mean we shouldn't pay people a reasonable
| minimum wage even for Starbucks... at very least $12.50/hour
| or something like it was in the late 1960s, if not $15 or
| $21/hour like it would be if we adjusted for overall
| productivity growth).
| kortilla wrote:
| > if not $15 or $21/hour like it would be if we adjusted
| for overall productivity growth
|
| Why would you ever consider doing that? Livable wage
| discussions are about what's livable, not how much value
| the job provides.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| Technically, Starbucks is food service, not retail.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yes, but that's not my point, they're of the same labor
| class to me. They're also literally the same labor category
| in Census documents or documents released by the DOJ.
| chongli wrote:
| I think a big part of it is social status and
| marriageability. There is a social stigma against the trades
| that relegates its workers to low social status. PhD's in
| history might struggle to feed themselves on their meagre
| lecturer salaries but they can insist that you address them
| as Dr.
|
| A plumber might make a lot more money but they'll never be
| able to shake the association with dirty, unpleasant work,
| despite the fact that a great deal of plumbers work in new
| installations for construction rather than household repair.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It's temporary on a generational timeline.
|
| When I think of young and old PhDs alike, I don't think of
| high status individuals. I think of people who spent too
| long in academia. Most of them don't contribute
| breakthrough insights to their field in their lifetime, but
| rather make indentations to broader collective knowledge.
| That's not high status to me.
|
| I think more highly of someone who owns their own plumbing
| business. An employer has more status to me because they
| command labor. A PhD graduate will most of the time be
| contributing deep narrow insight to a larger organization,
| not using their studies for entrepreneurial pursuits.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Do you have data that links these two or are you speculating?
| sokoloff wrote:
| They might be speculating, but it's pretty reasonable.
| There's been a massive uptick in college attendance and
| presumably a lot of those attendees would have been headed
| for the trades in the 60s before the "[almost] everyone
| should go to college" push.
| [deleted]
| viburnum wrote:
| Construction is labor-intensive and can't keep up with other
| sectors technologically. Cost disease is the kind of problem you
| want.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Unlike health care, where our understanding of human biology is
| fundamentally limited, I can't see a fundamental limit to
| automation in construction. The article notes that construction
| has become less capital intensive over the years due the
| uncertainty of construction demand (kind of like expensive
| defense items like planes being built almost by hand because
| orders are whittled down to a few per year).
|
| And sure, the "cost disease" effect makes labor intensive
| industries _seem_ less productive with apparently too-high-paid
| people.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease
| beckingz wrote:
| The article says that companies are avoiding capital-intensive
| building techniques to avoid getting burned in a recession.
| Labor costs are faster to reduce.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Interestingly we are shifting toward pre-fabricated houses in
| the the UK:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/31/uk-
| housebui...
|
| This is largely because of staff shortages.
| beerandt wrote:
| And since Dodd Frank, financing is much harder to come by.
| Most residential contractors who used to be able to build the
| same spec houses a few dozen times each, are now in a
| position where they largely survive off of client financing,
| which means even spec house plans become client dictated
| custom homes.
|
| It's much easier to build a dozen of something when you don't
| have to deal with 12 different clients/owners.
| sircastor wrote:
| I once rented a room from a guy whose job was to lead a "follow"
| crew behind crews that were building houses. I job was to fix
| mistakes that the building crew had made during the initial
| build.
|
| I'm glad he had a job, but it stems like the builder could have
| saved a lot of money by just moving a little slower, and doing it
| right the first time. Then again, maybe the cheaper labor
| building the houses offset the extra cost.
| worik wrote:
| Down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and I see that Brandenburg Airport
| was finished in 2020.
|
| In its preamble the Economist says: the project encountered a
| series of successive delays due to poor construction planning,
| execution, management, and corruption
|
| That would be poor: planning, execution, and management. The
| corruption was of the best European standard. Quite excellent.
| foolinaround wrote:
| the blame pointed on having multiple/layers of sub-contractors
| can be avoided by the client inserting this clause in their
| contracts, or am I vastly simplifying this?
|
| In IT, it happens often that there is a clause that prevents
| contractors from sub-contracting a position. This forces them to
| hire for that skill.
|
| What is special about the construction industry that this cant be
| done?
| Closi wrote:
| The article makes a few assumptions I disagree with - one of
| which is that the projects they list being over-time and over-
| budget are because of _builder productivity_ rather than the
| primary contractors over-promising to win a large contract.
|
| In addition, value added per hour can be a sign of productivity
| loss, but is also impacted by shrinking margins (which they note
| _is_ the case - but shrinking margins has nothing to do with
| productivity and everything to do with competition).
|
| Also the article says "Many building professionals use hand-drawn
| plans riddled with errors" - Hand-drawn plans? This isn't my
| experience in the UK (I design warehouses and have worked with
| lots of primary contractors). CAD here is pervasive, and anyone
| with a hand drawn plan would be laughed out of the room (unless
| you were literally a builder doing a quick sketch - in which case
| CAD isn't a replacement).
|
| And the article then recommends... self driving bulldozers as one
| part of the solution? This is so far away from being safe on a
| worksite that it's nowhere near an immediate concern.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _This isn 't my experience in the UK (I design warehouses and
| have worked with lots of primary contractors)._
|
| I've heard about the New Engineering Contract (NEC) system that
| is supposedly used a lot in the UK:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Engineering_Contract
|
| * https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/NEC4
|
| This is where (AFAICT), contracts are standardized templates,
| and it is only 'amendments' that are custom for the project:
| blueprints, bill of materials, timetables (for staging
| payments), etc, are custom on each job. This (supposedly)
| allows for fewer lawyers to be involved, and only the
| 'technical' stuff needs to be looked at.
|
| How pervasive is NEC? Useful at all?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The US has something similar, the American Institute of
| Architects has standardized construction contracts that are
| in wide use.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The article makes a few assumptions I disagree with - one of
| which is that the projects they list being over-time and over-
| budget are because of builder productivity rather than the
| primary contractors over-promising to win a large contract.
|
| I'm guessing this explains most of it.
|
| It's common in the construction industry to compete during the
| bidding phase by underestimating the time and cost of the
| project, then making up for it with change orders later. It's
| so pervasive in some domains that contractors feel they have no
| choice but to play the game to get contracts.
|
| The smart buyers employ people who know how to manage
| contractors and construction companies with contracts that make
| time and budget overages less profitable for the company. The
| catch is that you need someone on your side watching the work
| so they don't try to cut corners to get the job done. It's
| difficult.
|
| At smaller scales, it's common for contractors to bid more
| projects than they can handle and then rotate between them,
| tending to the clients who complain the most. They'd rather
| overbook their calendar than have gaps in between projects.
|
| Construction and contracting are not fun industries to deal
| with. Having known reputable contractors is very valuable, but
| the good ones are often booked out a year in advance.
|
| And I agree about the other oddities in this article. I don't
| even know if hand drawn building plans would be allowed in
| modern towns. Usually a licensed engineer is required to draw
| and approve the plans and there aren't many licensed engineers
| still doing this who don't use CAD.
| the-dude wrote:
| > It's so pervasive in some domains that contractors feel
| they have no choice but to play the game to get contracts.
|
| Do you mean to say _big gov IT contracts_ ?
|
| We are on HN after all.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > It's common in the construction industry to compete during
| the bidding phase by underestimating the time and cost of the
| project, then making up for it with change orders later.
|
| This is called change order abuse. Sometimes the contractor
| actually has an inside person receiving kick-backs or bribes
| where they can purposefully underbid while knowing in advance
| that they will be able to make it up with change orders
| (which will be approved by the inside person)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| My friend is a plumber - it is hard work, smelly and dirty but
| does he charge $$$.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| Anecdotal, but when our local government does a project, they
| only look at the price tag. If they can afford it, it gets
| approved.
|
| Building something is very labor intensive (the way we do it here
| in the US; the article talks about China and other ways of
| building) and the actual proposed budgets should be higher and
| timelines longer based on how we build.
|
| But in order to win a contract, the builder must lie and say "we
| can do it for this much and in this time frame," which tends to
| be lower than what we can actually realize.
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