Our industry continues to suffer from overall stagnation in productivity while most every other industry continues to improve. Why is this? We are getting better at adopting and using new tools and technologies but productivity still lags. Could it be a people problem? Without knocking hard working construction pros, I think the answer is yes. There is a people shortage in construction which leads to difficulties in hiring, training and retaining people. Without good people, good tools are useless. How do we make our people better? There's a ton of ideas but one that hasn't done much within the construction industry yet is gamification.
Gamification doesn't seek to create new processes or games at companies and on projects. The goal is to gamify existing processes. Gamification of processes could be with coworkers or could be with the individual construction pro. For example, how many submittals are processed and returned as approved could be tracked for individuals. Yes, this could be compared against other construction pros but the data tracking and comparison could be kept private and used to help individual builders continuously improve.
It's a bit out there but maybe it's something we should look at. Even with new tools and processes we struggle to build faster. Maybe making a bit of a game out of things could make better builders and help our industry build a better world.
For additional information on the potential of gamification, check out these articles:
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