Good project management in construction must vigorously pursue the efficient utilization of labor material and equipment. Improvement of labor productivity should be a major and continual concern of those who are responsible for cost control of construted facilities. | 4. Labor Material and Equipment Utilization Historical Perspective Good project management in construction must vigorously pursue the efficient utilization of labor material and equipment. Improvement of labor productivity should be a major and continual concern of those who are responsible for cost control of constructed facilities. Material handling which includes procurement inventory shop fabrication and field servicing requires special attention for cost reduction. The use of new equipment and innovative methods has made possible wholesale changes in construction technologies in recent decades. Organizations which do not recognize the impact of various innovations and have not adapted to changing environments have justifiably been forced out of the mainstream of construction activities. Observing the trends in construction technology presents a very mixed and ambiguous picture. On the one hand many of the techniques and materials used for construction are essentially unchanged since the introduction of mechanization in the early part of the twentieth century. For example a history of the Panama Canal construction from 1904 to 1914 argues that T he work could not have done any faster or more efficiently in our day despite all technological and mechanical advances in the time since the reason being that no present system could possibly carry the spoil away any faster or more efficiently than the system employed. No motor trucks were used in the digging of the canal everything ran on rails. And because of the mud and rain no other method would have worked half so well. 1 In contrast to this view of one large project one may also point to the continual change and improvements occurring in traditional materials and techniques. Bricklaying provides a good example of such changes said not to have changed in thousands of years perhaps in the literal placing of brick on brick it has not. But masonry technology has changed a great deal. Motorized .
