Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Construction Projects

Incident rate

The number one KPI to track is incident rate. Project managers use incident rates to track how often a safety claim has been made. These incident rates also give project managers a view of whether work has been completed safely and whether the timeline should be adjusted to allow contractors to slow down and work more carefully. 

Number of safety meetings

OSHA has rigid requirements when it comes to the frequency and content of safety meetings on a work site. This means project managers are responsible for maintaining an appropriate cadence and tracking whether these meetings have occurred. 

Keeping track with project management tools like Doodle will allow project and site managers to share calendars and schedule meetings without much need for additional collaboration. Relying on software like these can free up planning time for project managers by streamlining meeting planning across multiple offices. This also gives management the opportunity to ensure they’re OSHA compliant without reallocating too many resources.

Number of supplier accidents 

Some safety incidents may be out of a project manager’s control. In the event that a safety incident arises out of a particular supplier, it is good practice to note this and reduce that supplier’s access to work sites or implement an accident-reduction plan. Should supplier accidents begin to outpace a team’s maximum acceptable incident rate, schedule an overseer to manage on-site drop-offs.

Number of defects

Defects can be found in building supplies or in finished work. You can set a maximum acceptable rate of defects per quarter and track these to ensure a construction project is not suffering from low-quality production. By keeping track of defects found during inspections, project managers can head off quality-related safety issues and save time by pinpointing problem areas that may slow down construction later down the line and making process adjustments.

Construction defect repair time

This metric can be used to determine better time estimates for future projects. Project managers can track defect repair time and adjust project plans and processes to make sure there’s space for repairs if they’re needed. 

Client and stakeholder satisfaction

Effectively managing a project portfolio can keep project managers abreast of client and stakeholder satisfaction. Project portfolio management tools give project managers a simple solution for managing dozens of past and present projects and relevant information about those stakeholders. By keeping all of this data in one place, project managers are able to monitor satisfaction without shuffling through notebooks full of feedback.

Project dependency progress

Construction projects, by their very nature, involve building on top of previous tasks. This means that often a construction project is beholden to the rates at which contractors are able to complete crucial tasks. 

If you use a project management software, you can set it up to display the available resources, the time a task has been in progress, and who is responsible for the deliverable. And with that metric for time in progress, you can compare projected time to actual performance.   

Time spent on project phases

The early planning phase of a construction project will set the initial timeline for any given task, but once factors like contractor quality and weather conditions have impacted a project timeline, those initial estimates have to be adjusted. 

Keeping track of how long project phases have taken in relation to how long they were projected to take will give you a concrete and actionable timeline as construction moves along. Because construction projects tend to take so much time, track progress using work days as a metric. This will give you an idea of how long each phase has taken to complete, and it makes it simpler to project the upcoming weeks and months.