Labour as a share of the cost of road construction, Australia (2013 survey of road works)

What it is. 31.8% of the total cost of road construction work: site-based labour 24.19% plus office-based labour 7.60%.

Sample. Survey of road works by the federal transport research bureau, 2013. Combined construction and maintenance mix is labour 33.94% (Table B1); maintenance alone 36.2% (Figure 4). The private contractors' column, the most relevant to a contractor, shows 32.13% for road construction and maintenance together.

What it is not. Context only: how large labour is in the cost of road works, not a measure of overstaffing, lost hours or productivity, and not an overrun or a loss. Shares are from 2013 and for roads (construction and maintenance), not all civil work. Labour bought inside materials or subcontract prices is counted there, not here. No Australian measure of hours over budget was found.

Where it came from

• Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) (2013), BITRE Road Construction and Maintenance Price Index and Sub-Indexes: 2013 update (Information Sheet 49)
  Appendix B, Table B2, 'All labour', road expenditure weighted column (p.23) · source record
• Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) (2016), Modelled Road Construction and Maintenance Price Index (Information Sheet 83)
  p.1 (combined construction and maintenance mix: labour 26.7% plus 7.3%) · source record

Considered and set aside

• Infrastructure Australia: States, with no source or method, that labour is roughly two-thirds of costs in land-transport infrastructure construction (p.7). That is double the survey share, and with no basis given it is not used as a figure. Its p.60 says labour productivity indicators (absenteeism, turnover) are the least used by industry and construction multifactor productivity growth was -0.8; neither is a money measure.
• Infrastructure Australia: Says no consistent project-level data on subcontracting, self-performance or rework exists and that indirect labour cost metrics would have to be collected (p.61); no hours-against-budget figure.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics: Gives labour cost against expense for the industry; filed as its own context figure, au_heavy_civil_labour_cost_share.
• Ryan & Duffield: Lists poor productivity among factors the literature gives for megaproject failure; it gives no figure for it.

context/au_road_construction_labour_share · AU · F42 ·the record ·link to this figure ·dispute this figure(or email support@demiton.io)