FACTORS AFFECTING CONSTRUCTION LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY IN IRAQ USING BASRA CITY AS A CASE STUDY

The construction industry has a multifaceted relationship with most sectors of the economy in all nations, as well as playing a vital role in social and economic development. One of the main factors that affect the development of the construction industry is labour productivity. The aim of this paper is to identify and rank the importance of the factors perceived in the literature to influence labour productivity in the Iraqi construction industry using Basra city as a case study. From the literature a total of 59 main factors were identified that may affect labour productivity on construction sites. These factors were classified into ten primary groups: (1) Managerial; (2) Environmental; (3) Manpower; (4) materials and equipment; (5) Schedule; (6) Safety; (7) Quality; (8) Motivation; (9) Technical; (10) External. The statistical analysis of these factors was prepared by using the Relative Importance Index (RII) and SPSS 23 programme. The grades obtained made it possible to assess the comparative importance of the factors as perceived by respondents. The study provides comprehensive and explicit data for the construction contractors working in Iraq before providing the proposal for the bids taking in account the risks and the challenges mentioned in the study. Also it observed that the Iraqi government authority enforcement is essential to ensure that the construction labour productivity is fulfilled without losing in time and money. A structured questionnaire survey was sent to construction project managers, as a target group and the results showed in order to improve labour productivity in Basra city in particular and in Iraq in general. The results are show that the ten essential factors affect on construction labour productivity with different level of importance. In addition, all types of corruption must be considered to be serious problems affecting labour productivity. Enforcement, conduct education and training for manpower by using new techniques are decreasing the difference between estimated and actual labour productivity.


INTRODUCTION
Due to the high percentage of failure in Iraqi construction projects especially which is mainly related with time and cost. The labour productivity represents one of the main challenges which prevent project planers to figure out the actual productivity in the field. This research aims to add more clarifications regarding all factors that possibly affect labour productivity which will help project planers to include all these factors in their consideration to reduce the gap between theoretical and practical productivity estimation.
A report published in Business Monitor International (2013) stated that the Iraqi construction sector could grow by 8.1% annually between 2013 and 2017, considerably less than the annual average real growth rate of 22.4% that occurred during the period 2008-2012. The report's authors expected the construction sector to grow respectively by 10.39% and 8.5% in 2015 and 2016, compared with a growth rate of 20.3% in 2014. The slower growth rate has been attributed to the absence of the positive statistical base and to a worsening business environment. The report's authors also noted that project delays, false starts, political separations and weakening security conditions continue to impede progress in the construction sector. They added that project delays can be considered a result of several factors, including a lack of institutional capacity, labour productivity problems, the lack of collaboration between federal and local authorities, and widespread corruption.
Labour productivity is defined as the amount of production per employee (or group of workers) per unit time (Olomolaiye et al., 1998). Labour productivity represents one of the main challenges facing the construction industry (Robles et al., 2014). In most countries, labour costs account for 30 -50% of the overall cost of a project (El-Gohary and Aziz, 2013;Yi and Chan, 2013).
Construction labour productivity is not easy to quantify and is affected by several factors that influence its ability to be measured (Thomas and Napolitan, 1995). Data on productivity capacity allow the analysis of a range of factors that provide project owners, contractors, and project planning professionals with the means to control construction progress, to estimate the cost of future construction projects, and to measure their competitiveness in the global market (Al-Zwainy et al., 2013). It is therefore clear that the project planner needs to understand all the factors affecting labour productivity in any attempts to minimise their impact on the estimated labour productivity. The aim of this paper is to identify and rank all the potential factors that affect labour productivity in Iraq in order to provide clarification on how controlling these factors could reduce project delays. In addition, this research contributes to the knowledge of Iraqi manpower by evaluate and solve current problems and improve the productivity.

LITERATURE REVIEW
It is essential to see labour productivity as a single element in the overall usefulness of an operating system in employing labour, equipment and capital to turn hard work into valuable output, rather than being a measure of the ability of labour (Shashank et al., 2014).
In order to identify all the factors that could affect labour productivity in the Iraqi construction industry, firstly the study conducted an extensive literature review. The relevant works are listed in Table 1 where the main categories represent the classification of factors in common areas. A total of 59 main factors were identified from a detailed literature review as those that could affect labour productivity on a construction site. Factors were classified into ten groups, namely Kufa Journal of Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2017 59

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research was based on a survey designed to assemble all essential data proactively. The survey yielded 59 productivity factors from related research on construction productivity. The 'Survey Monkey' tool was used to design and administer the survey, using project managers, as a target group. Participants were asked to rate each factor using a scale of 1 (no influence) to 5 (very strong influence). Respondents were also asked a few general questions related to their work and experience.
The RII was used to rank the various factors affecting labour productivity. The grades obtained made it possible to assess the comparative importance of the factors as perceived by respondents. In addition, SPSS 23 programme has been used to carry out all analysis techniques.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The influence of each of the 59 factors proposed to affect construction labour productivity in Iraq was determined. All factors were categorised into the ten major groups listed in Table 2.
The comparative importance factors. However the rest of the participants have more than 10 years' experiences which mean that this research has good combination from different level of experiences.
After discussing the descriptive analysis, each category will be discussed separately to figure out its effects on labour productivity. In addition, an overall discussion will be presented at the end of analysis section.

MANAGERIAL
The relative importance of the twelve factors categorised in the managerial group is shown in Table 3.  Table 3 shows that the 48 participants ranked "Construction mangers' lack of leadership" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the managerial group with mean equal to 3.92. This highlighted that leadership is vital in construction industry and can affects project productivity significantly. In order to improve the leadership among construction manager, this research suggests developing some training sessions regarding the leadership which can be considered as a fundamental to be a construction manager. In addition, it can be seen from the table that the participants illustrated that supervisions, decision making, and experiences can affect labour productivity considerably.

ENVIRONMENTAL
The comparative importance of the six factors classified in the environmental category is shown in Table 4.  Table 4 shows that the 45 participants ranked "Site layout" as the most significant factor affecting labour productivity in environmental group with mean equal to 3.82. This presented that prepare site layout will help to reduce delays caused by accidents, congestions, and unprepared areas. This research suggests to include the preparation of site layout should be done before start any actual construction work. In addition, it can be concluded from the above table that the other environment factors have less importance compared to site layout. However, these factors still important and need to be improved to gather long term benefits regarding labour productivity.

MANPOWER
The qualified importance of the eight factors in the manpower category is shown in Table 5.  Table 5 shows that the 44 participants' ranked "Fraud and dishonesty and wasting time" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the manpower group with mean equal to 4.23. This illustrated that labour personality has significant effects on the productivity.
However, this factor is relativity difficult to improve due to the complexity and variability of personality among labours even if they came from same areas or they worked together for long time. This research suggests that provide clear explanation regarding job description for each labour and introduce a promotion system may improve labour loyalty to their projects. In addition, it can be seen that skills, training, and absenteeism have considerable effects on the productivity comparing with the remaining factors.

MATERIAL/EQUIPMENT
The comparative importance of the four factors categorised in the material/equipment group is shown in Table 6.  Table 6 shows that the 43 participants ranked "Tools and equipment shortages" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the material/equipment group with mean equal to 4. This result brought to light that lack of suitable and modern tools and equipment can prevent labours from improving their productivity and lost time and efforts by working with exhausted tools and equipment. Additionally, the lack of materials and their storage area can affect the productivity negatively. Therefore, planning properly and try to provide suitable tools and equipment will definitely improve the labour productivity.

SCHEDULE
The relative importance of the four factors classified in the schedule group is shown in Table   7.  Table 7 shows that the 43 participants ranked "Misuse of time schedule and Poor work planning" as the most significant factors affecting labour productivity in the schedule group with means equal to 3.58 and 3.51 respectively. These results indicated that misuse good time scheduling has the same impact as providing poor work planning on productivity. Therefore, it is important not just provide high quality time scheduling but it is crucial to make sure that there Kufa Journal of Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2017 67 is a team able to understand this planning and implement it successfully. In addition, increasing work load and the number of labour will not necessarily improve productivity but on the contrary it will produce damaging impact on the overall labour productivity. Finally, it can be concluded that this category's factors have considerable relationship with improving team skills and provide suitable training session regarding the project planning which will definitely improve the overall awareness among project team.

SAFETY
The relation importance of the five factors in the safety group is shown in Table 8.  Table 8 shows that the 41 participants ranked "Ignoring safety precautions" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the safety group with mean equal to 3.78. It can be concluded from the results that ignoring safety has significantly effects on labour productivity in negative way. This result can be understood because ignoring safety regulations will increase the accidents occurring chance in the site which will affect productivity critically.
However, ignoring these regulation does not mean there is a lack in these regulations but the problem is in the awareness of the safety terms among project team. This research suggests that providing a high quality safety plan for any project before it starts and discuss it with project team will help to increase the safety importance understating among construction labour in general.

QUALITY
The qualified importance of the four factors in the quality group is shown in Table 9.  Table 9 shows that the 41 participants ranked "Quality inspection delay" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the quality group with mean equal to 3.88. This result revealed that quality has considerable relationship with quality. This fact is not new but this research found that inspection routine and lack of good quality material prevent productivity to reach its target level. This delay tends to push labour continue working without quality checks which will increase the chance of rework. This research suggests to involve quality assurance and quality control team in early design stages and share project planning with them to improve the project time scheduling and avoid any unnecessary delays. The current project quality checking system in Basrah in particular can gather huge benefits via using some well-known quality system as ISO and PMI.

MOTIVATION
The relative importance of the five factors in the motivation category is shown in Table 10.  Table 10 shows that 40 participants ranked "Payment delay" as the most significant factor affecting labour productivity in the motivation group with mean equal to 4.18. The poor finical system in Basrah in particular and in Iraq in general cause lots of payment delays in almost all construction projects due to different and fragmented authorities that need to approve any payments. These all obstacles can produce frustrated feelings among labours which they need their payment to feed their families. The local authorities have considerable experience regarding these problems. However, they are still facing the same problem which mainly comes from lack of required knowledge among these authorities. Therefore, this research suggests to employed foreign consultant with qualified experiences to avoid these problems.

TECHNICAL
The comparative importance of the five factors in the technical group is shown in Table 11.  Table 11 shows that 40 participants ranked "Clarity of technical specification and change orders" as the most important factors affecting labour productivity in the technical group with means equal to 3.78 and 3.75 respectively. This results highlighted that technical factors have significant impact on productivity. However, proving clear specification which can be read and understood by all project team will help to improve the labour productivity without wasting time to try to understand these specifications or implementing them incorrectly.

EXTERNAL
The relative importance of the four factors in the external category is shown in Table 12.  Table 12 shows that the 39 participants ranked "Corruption" as the most important factor affecting labour productivity in the external category with mean equal to 4.51. It can be seen that corruption has been identified as the most factor that affected the labour productivity enormously. Corruption can produce damage behaviour among construction labours due to feeling that they are not treated fairly and their rights have been seized. This research suggests that providing clear regulation that aim to secure labours rights and increase the awareness among them that they need to fight any sort of corruption because it is part of their duty to their project and to their country. In addition, different types of holidays will interrupt work continuity and can reduce overall productivity. Finally, also cultural problems such as using labours from outside the country can cause some sort of competiveness which will lead to improve productivity. Table 13 shows the 10 most important factors with their main category as they affect construction labour productivity in Iraq. Fig. 4 shows the differences between these factors.  Corruption is perceived to be by far the most important factor affecting construction labour productivity in Iraq, showing clear differences with other factors. In addition, it can be seen that Overall Factors Comparison factors related to the fraud and dishonesty of labourers and then payment delay have a considerable effect on labour productivity. One of the more surprising results is that participants did not ascribe much importance to weather conditions, even though Basra city is considered one of the hottest populated areas on earth. This research found that increase the productivity awareness among the construction industry participants will improve their understanding which will lead to increase productivity as a final result. Moreover, using the new productivity calculation techniques such as Return Of Investment ROI will help to consider different type of factors that may affect labour productivity and lead to improve the prediction in the early design stages.

COMPARISON BETWEEN CATEGORIES
A comparison has been made between the results of this study with those obtained from studies carried out over the last 3 years in Nigeria, New Zealand, Kuwait, USA, Turkmenistan, Turkey, India and Egypt; the top 5 factors influencing labour productivity for each country are shown in Table 14. It can be concluded for the table that the factors affecting labour productivity is almost the same. However, their priorities are different depends on the construction development in each county. In addition, it can be seen that the corruption and labour personality dishonesty represents the most important factor regarding labour productivity which slightly different from other countries even developing countries such Kuwait and Egypt. The main reason beyond that the political problems that facing Iraq government recently and the national and local authorities are unable to apply the law which directly cause the spread of corruption. As suggested previously increase the awareness will help people to realise the problem and encourage them to face it in different ways.

CONCLUSION
Based on the findings and data analysis, corruption, fraud dishonesty and wasting time and payment delay are the most significant factors that affect construction labour productivity.
Extremely hot weather and sometimes high humidity did not consider strong factor correlation with labour productivity in Basrah, so that this result gives as opportunity to look in details in the effects of weather condition in Basrah city.
The results presented the top 10 of 59 factors affecting construction labour productivity can serve as tools to evaluate the current status of labour productivity in Basrah city in particular and Iraq. In general the paper reveals the effectiveness of improve labour productivity, reduction in time and money loss, and overall construction industry management. Enforcement, conduct education and training for manpower are essential in the enhancing labour productivity of construction projects in Iraq.