1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
The efficiency of the construction industry is heavily reliant on its level of productivity. As noted by Adnan et al(2007), until the productivity level of construction activities is improved, the nation's economy will continue to suffer setbacks. Hence, improving productivity has become a major concern of every profit-oriented organisation (Adnan et al, 2007). An important component of the construction industry productivity is labour. Labour costs represent a considerable proportion of the final cost of a building, usually accounting for between 40 to 60% of the building cost (Butchan et al, 1993). In addition, labour is known to be the most important factor of production since it is the only factor that creates value and sets the general level of productivity (Ameh and Odusami, 2002).
According to Yates and Guhathakurta (1993), labour productivity is the value of gross output per worker, referred to as man-hour or work-hour. It also could be referred to as the careful attempts to measure the physical output of labour taking into account the other factors that affect construction productivity.
Recognising its importance, several studies have focused on the factors that affect labour productivity (Oloko, 1983; Lema, 1995; Yagba and Ayandele, 1999; Ameh and Odusami, 2002; Adnan et al, 2007; Kane et al, 2007). However, none of these studies provides an empirical evaluation of the level and extent of influence of these factors on the productivity of the Nigerian construction labour. Given the importance of such an issue, this research seeks to examine the influence of some productivity factors on labour outputs that were empirically established by the authors for some selected trades, and published elsewhere.
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