Construction equipment productivity in Egypt

Several problems were noticed in operating the constructionequipment in Egypt. Their symptoms included: high costs per unitof production, hardships in operating and maintaining, and lowproductivity. The objective of the study was to provide a clearunderstanding for the problem of construction equipment: inefficientoperating in Egypt. This could be through, studying the Egyptianoperating conditions, analyzing the effect of the factors affectingproductivity and determining the share of the operator efficiencyand downtime in the production loss. The study was conducted ateleven jobs with eleven pieces of earthwork equipment; Three bull-dozers, three elevating scrapers, three off-highway trucks and twohydraulic excavators. Operating cards from the eleven jobs wereobtained for a month, time- motion studies were conducted, cycletimes and production rates estimations were made conforming tothe manufactures’ performance data and reflecting the 7 jobs’ opera-ting conditions. The percentages of downtime compared to thetotal standard time was determined, the production rate within theproductive time was compared to that estimated so as to evaluatethe operator efficiency. The actual cycle time elements were com-pared to that estimated to study the relation between the perfor-mance in these elements and the loss in production. The analysisled to basic conclusions concerning the amount of downtime andits variation according to equipment type, definitions for theopertor’s technical and productional efficiencies, the relationbetween the loss in production due to the operator efficiency andthe equipment characteristics, and the relation between the percen-tage of fixed time in the total cycle time and the loss in produc-tion.