Using Construction Project Performance Metrics to Optimize the Owner Organization

Optimizing Cover

The purpose of this research is to establish the current extent of construction owners’ project performance challenges, identify the leading causes of performance issues and determine which policies, practices, tools and tactics correlate with the best project performance. The research focuses on these key construction project performance metrics from 174 owners about projects they have completed in the last three years:

  • Cost: Final construction cost compared to the original budget at the time of capital allocation
  • Schedule: Date of completion compared to the original schedule for construction established at the time of capital allocation
  • Quality: The quality of the final building compared to the original expectations at the time of capital allocation, based on two components: how well the building design incorporated features or functionality compared to initial goals, and how well the building construction was executed and its workmanship

This SmartMarket Brief includes groundbreaking research on the most common construction industry shortcomings experienced by owners and how to overcome them. The research features the key differences in performance between top-performing and lowest performing owner organizations, which is demonstrated using different construction project performance metrics. The brief also highlights practices used more by the top-performing owners related to stakeholder engagement, nurturing of talent, organizational culture and performance measurement, process and technology.

We would like to thank e-Builder for participating in this important research. e-Builder strives to help owners of capital projects become more efficient and ultimately reduce the cost of capital programs. By embarking on this research journey with Dodge Data & Analytics, e-Builder aims to highlight the best practices that world-class construction owner organizations are implementing.