Measuring Excellence – an appeal for project performance data26 September, 2019 by Colm Quinn

Constructing Excellence

Constructing Excellence has a 20-year track record in performance measurement through our industry KPIs which were originally devised to track the implementation of the Egan review. As output measures these are still broadly fit for purpose for showing improvement in project performance (on time, on budget etc), but in the past haven’t always been explicitly linked to the improvement themes championed by Constructing Excellence. In theory as we digitise our projects, as we make better use of modern procurement methods, as we increase pre manufactured value, we should see a corresponding rise in KPI scores.

The Constructing Excellence Performance Measurement Forum is seeking to test this hypothesis by collecting data on anonymised member projects completed over the last few years, and on a 6 monthly basis going forward. We have piloted the approach with data from half a dozen volunteer member organisations as a proof of concept, and now want to appeal to the rest of the membership to get involved. The larger and richer set of data about projects we have, the more meaningful insights we can derive. Initially we are looking at our cost and time predictability KPIs, but also attempting to gather data on some basic input variables such as the procurement route, whether it was a BIM project, and the pre manufactured value.

Constructing Excellence

Initially we collected data for over 600 projects worth nearly £1bn across all sectors, which has helped as a proof of concept.

Constructing Excellence

We will need to increase the number of projects we have data for before we can start to mine some meaningful insights, but that should be easily possible via the Constructing Excellence membership.

Constructing Excellence

For example in our limited dataset, projects using a lump sum, fixed price contract type have high construction cost predictability. While this is entirely expected and not particularly interesting, once we get a larger and richer dataset we will have the opportunity to unearth more compelling insights,  and to quantify the effects of the approaches we champion.

Constructing Excellence

As part of this work we will also look to:

  • Facilitate alignment of data collection among major clients Story so far with how much has been contributed
  • Collaborate with other industry bodies who also collect performance data
  • Explore the potential to exploit the huge amount of data collected by CDEs etc

We would appeal to all Constructing Excellence members who have access to project performance data to get involved to help us make the case for the industry transformation we all advocate please contact [email protected] for more detail.

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