Insights × Research notes
What the evidence says about building better.
Fifteen research notes on construction cost, safety, data and AI: what published research shows, what it means on a real job, and a case study from my own work in each. Every figure is linked to its source.
Library
All notes
15 notes · filter by topic
Safety · Research noteWhere serious construction injuries come from, and what incident reports can tell you
Falls lead, but caught-in accidents cause most amputations. What the evidence shows, with a case study of 19,021 severe-injury reports.
Pre-construction · Research noteWaiting for a permit: why the average approval time is wrong
Approved-only averages always make permits look faster than they are. In a case study of 29,123 filings, the gap was 47 days.
Estimating · Research noteWhy construction estimates miss — and why a range beats a single number
Only 8.5% of 16,000 big projects hit budget and schedule. Optimism bias, reference classes, and why a calibrated range beats one number.
Contracts · Research noteReading contract risk from the wording: what a neural network catches, and what it can’t
Poor contracting erodes about 8.6% of value. How a CNN that reads clause wording caught 95% of high-risk clauses, and where human reviewers disagree.
Site progress · Research noteWhere site productivity leaks: the fifty-year puzzle and the weekly signals
Construction productivity grew about 1% a year while the economy managed 2.8%. The research, and the slippage and approval signals a site can watch.
Project controls · Research noteForecasting final cost: when the CPI formula works, and when it doesn’t
Earned value assumes cost efficiency settles by 20% complete. On defence contracts it did; on other projects it often didn’t.
Workforce & finance · Research notePayroll leakage on construction sites: what the fraud research says, and how to find it
Frauds typically run 12 months before detection. How peer-relative anomaly detection finds ghost workers and padded overtime.
AI & automation · Research noteLLMs on construction documents: what the evidence says about accuracy
Research on legal documents found hallucination rates from 17% to 88%. Bounded tasks, retrieval, refusal and testing are the defence.
Procurement · Research noteProcurement risk: material price shocks, escalation clauses and late deliveries
Lumber prices more than doubled in a year while bid prices barely moved. Escalation clauses, and ranking late deliveries by vendor pattern.
Receivables & payables · Research noteGetting paid in construction: payment delays, the MSME rules and evidence you can act on
Construction payment cycles can run to about 90 days, and some laws cap small-supplier terms at 45. How to build AR/AP worklists that separate evidence from suspicion.
Inventory · Research noteInventory records you can trust: adjustments, recorders and stale stock
A study of 370,000 inventory records found 65% inaccurate. Checks for adjustment concentration, stale stock and why “zero found” isn’t “clean”.
Plant & equipment · Research notePredicting equipment breakdowns: what the maintenance research promises, and what a model delivered
Predictive maintenance promises 8–12% savings over preventive. A model caught 71% of breakdowns with 10 inspections a week; fixed alarm limits caught 16%.
Real estate sales · Research noteWhy flat bookings cancel: payment timing, home loans and what a call list can do
Calling the riskiest 20% of buyers found 65% of cancellations. Late first payments and unsanctioned loans are the strongest early signals.
HR & attendance · Research noteFix attendance before payroll: the cheapest payroll error is the one never paid
One in five payrolls has errors, at $291 each. Time and attendance errors are the most common. Three checks to run before payroll.
Production & quality · Research noteRework and bad data: the cost line nobody budgets
Poor data and miscommunication were blamed for nearly half of all rework in one large survey. What the research says, and rework hidden behind on-plan output.