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Typical Fight on Construction Site Takes an $11,000 Bite
According to a study titled The Cost of Interpersonal Conflict in Construction published Dec., 2012 by the Center for Construction Research and Training, the average dispute on a construction jobsite costs nearly $11,000.
The study examined 41 disputes and noted how much it cost in lost time to deal with each dispute. Author Julie L. Brockman, PhD. concluded:
- Managing the disputes consumed an average of 161.25 hours and cost $10,948 each.
- The reported costs may underestimate the true costs because some costs may not be directly attributable to the incident.
- The nature of the construction business triggered disputes more than the natures of the individuals involved in the disputes.
In today’s competitive market, contractors must examine every opportunity to cut costs. Many contractors may have overlooked the costs of interpersonal conflict on jobsites because they didn’t realize how much interpersonal conflict costs.
The study may be downloaded at: http://www.cpwr.com/pdfs/BrockmanCostofConflict.pdf.
How I Know That a Squall Can Cause Profits to Fall
Here’s an example of how interpersonal relationship problems drive up Construction costs. It comes from my personal experience as Rock Prep Foreman on the Belle, WV. Locks and Dam upgrade project from 2005 to 2007.
On a lock and dam job, water enters and exits the lock chamber through concrete-lined trenches cut into the bedrock. Each night, our crew trimmed the 15-foot deep trenches for line and grade. On the night in question, we were working in a curved section, where the trench walls had an inside radius of about 20 feet and an outside radius of about 35 feet. The two curves shared a radius point.
On that particular night, my superintendent assigned us to hoe ram the rock on the inside curve so that rodbusters could set rebar mats on both inside and outside curves the next morning. The day shift Rock Prep crew had trimmed the outside curve. We began by rigging a small Bobcat hoe equipped with a hydraulic hammer and set it in the trench.
I unhooked the hoe from the crane and took a look at the layout. The job surveyors, who had already gone home, had driven PK nails in the bottom of the trench 15 feet from the inside rock wall I was to trim. My first concern was to make sure I measured radial to the curve. However, I immediately noticed something that gave me greater cause for concern. On one end of the layout, the nails were about 6 inches from the already-completed outer wall. On the other end, they were about a foot and a half.
Something was wrong. The nails should have been about equidistant from the finished outer wall. If this layout was correct, one of the mats—either inner or outer--wouldn’t fit the next morning.
I called the night shift superintendent, Nick, and asked him to come down. I showed him the layout.
“It won’t work,” I said.
“I know,” he replied. “I tried to tell the surveyors that earlier, but they insisted it was the right layout.”
Whatta we gonna do with this hoe all night?” I asked.
“You’re gonna cut that wall according to that layout,” Nick ordered. “Don’t argue with me about it. Just do it. I’m gonna teach them a lesson.”
So I wasted a whole night’s work. The next day, the rodbusters trucked the rebar mats down, tried in vain to set them, then trucked them back out. The carpenters who had been scheduled to begin forming were delayed.
No, I don’t have a hard time believing that the average dispute on a Construction job costs $11,000.