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by RAdrien 568 days ago
Productivity in building construction has not improved much, according to data, even if tools have improved.

Even if tripling house size doesn’t literally triple costs, that is a straw man. It certainly must account for some of the cost increase.

1 comments

>Productivity in building construction has not improved much, according to data, even if tools have improved.

What data are you looking at? I worked in construction (to be fair, industrial and commercial sector) for over a decade. Productivity rates changed quite a bit during the decade I was an estimator. I will dig up my productivity books from when I first graduated and compare to the last one I purchased (a few years ago) when I get home.

>Even if tripling house size doesn’t literally triple costs, that is a straw man.

A straw man? Even if labor only accounted for 10% of the cost of building a house (it is much more), changes to labor productivity absolutely affect the cost to build. Productivity rates are different for a new build of 1000sqft and 2000sqft. Not sure how that's a straw man?

Also, just to clarify, I'm not really presenting an argument. I agree with the parent comment that these maps/analyses aren't able to capture all of the variables. They gave some variables to consider when looking at the article data. I'm giving some others.

>It certainly must account for some of the cost increase.

I said it's not a 1:1 relationship, not that size didn't account for costs at all.