City A.M.’s recent coverage of UK construction productivity makes a familiar point. Despite new technologies and increasing pressure to deliver more homes, the sector is still performing at levels comparable to the 1990s. (City A.M. article) It is a striking headline, but the underlying issue is more nuanced than it appears.
The slowdown is not simply a result of labour shortages or limited investment. It is the predictable outcome of information being scattered across too many channels and too many people. Productivity drifts when teams cannot rely on a single, accurate source of truth.
Programmes can model labour, materials and weather. What they cannot model is the chain reaction that begins when communication breaks down. One drawing that didn’t make it to a subcontractor. One update buried in an inbox. One message passed verbally on site and never recorded. None of these mistakes look significant on their own, but together they quietly erode momentum across an entire development.
Across the projects we speak to, the pattern is consistent.
• Information arrives piecemeal instead of as one coherent picture.
• Trades rely on a mixture of PDFs, WhatsApp threads, forwarded photos and verbal instructions.
• Supervisors spend too much time chasing updates, not managing the build.
• People hesitate because they do not fully trust which version is correct.
These small pauses and checks are rarely captured on a programme, yet they are often the biggest contributors to programme drift.
At the same time, policy direction across the UK is sharpening. Government guidance on digital transformation, competency tracking and record keeping has made one thing clear. Fragmented communication is now seen as an operational risk, not an acceptable by-product of busy sites. Productivity cannot improve while the information environment remains inconsistent.
Housebuilders cannot control planning timelines or national labour availability. They can control how well teams communicate under pressure. When trades, supervisors and site managers all work from the same source of truth, progress becomes predictable. When they do not, even minor details create unnecessary delays.
The conversation is shifting away from “Why are projects slowing down?” and towards “How much of this could have been avoided with clearer, more consistent information flow?”
In a sector facing rising expectations and limited tolerance for inefficiency, clarity is no longer optional. It is the foundation of predictable delivery. And as the City A.M. article highlights, improving productivity will depend on tackling the quiet, everyday communication gaps that slow projects down long before the bigger risks appear.
