A study of designer time utilisation in Iranian construction consultancies

Productivity improvement within the construction industry has addressed issues that are predominantly associated with activities and tasks on construction sites, and less so in the office work. The lack of an understanding of the proportion of productive time during working hours for designers, as well as the measurement method forms a significant gap in the knowledge of the design process. Productivity management cycle comprised of 4 phases: measurement; evaluation; planning; and improvement. Therefore, measurement becomes essential in productivity improvement. This study identifies the lack of defined duration for design task and measurement of design activity time as an essential gap in the productivity knowledge that relates to designers. This research was aimed at measuring the productivity of the designer based on the amount of time spent during working hours, to facilitate the establishment of a realistic output value for the design stage. The study presented in this thesis focuses on investigating a standard activity time for design tasks along with establishing a set of explanatory statistical models that could be employed as a solution for complementing existing design productivity efforts. The data for this study obtained through a convenience sample of six cases comprising building consultant companies in Iran, with the key data mobilised by video observation. The findings of the research show that the proportion of productive time in one hour of working is 75% which is 45 minutes, while the proportion of non-productive time in one hour of working is 25% which is 15 minutes. In order to provide a means to validate the findings reached, two Iranian and two British consultant managers were interviewed separately to gain an industry perspective and it verify that the minimum acceptable level of productive time hovers around 75%.