Is property in a bubble?

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

Yes amazing isn't it?

Just to note it is for the construction sector overall so includes roads bridges power stations hospitals etc but the biggest part of the construction sector by far is residential housing so yes it now takes more man hours to build a house than it did fifty years ago. Don't think just men on site but the whole story

Anyway this is one of the reasons housing has gotten more expensive. Or at least the reason it has not gotten cheaper. We haven't had much if any overall productivity improvements in construction and many of the developed nations are now less productive at construction than in the past.

Interesting. I enjoy listening to Peter Thiel the tech investor and founder of paypal and he has been saying that over the last 1-2 decades all the innovation has been pretty much in info tech and none in other areas such as engineering.

Maybe it is time to innovate in other areas like engineering.

BikingBud

GreatApe wrote: »

For instance imagine you are a plumber what would be your one wish to improve your productivity? Maybe a machine which helps you cut pipes faster would be useful but your wish should be for less traffic. If a plumber spends half his day moving from one job to the next then it won't matter if he has a faster pipe cutter if he is spending an hour more a day in traffic his productivity goes down even if he is able to cut pipes faster thanks to a new tool.

I think you're pulling things out of your a£$% :rotfl:. Show me the stats!

How many different jobs or sites a day do you think a plumber can do when building a house? He's a plumber not the UKMail* delivery man.

If it takes one day to fit a boiler but he spreads it over 6 days cos he keeps disappearing to other jobs then he wouldn't be coming back

Like for like, how many houses 50 years ago had pressurised hot and cold systems?

Central heating boiler, possibly underfloor heating, multiple bathrooms, plumbed in; washing machines, tumble dyers, dishwashers, fridges, even outside taps were unheard of. So quite likely the fitting a house with family bathroom, en-suite bathroom, downstairs toilet, kitchen and utility room takes a little more effort than a gravity fed hot water system, one bathroom and a kitchen sink. In fact 50 years ago some places would still be on outside earth closets and a cold tap in the kitchen.

Bring back the navvies they didn't have vans to keep !!!!ing off from the job and productivity will increase :huh:

You do need to get into the real world.

*Other delivery companies are available.

BikingBud

economic wrote: »

Interesting. I enjoy listening to Peter Thiel the tech investor and founder of paypal and he has been saying that over the last 1-2 decades all the innovation has been pretty much in info tech and none in other areas such as engineering.

Maybe it is time to innovate in other areas like engineering.

No progress in engineering so what about:

James Dyson, Elon Musk, Modern airliners including engines, Millau Viaduct, Nano-Tech/machines The Shard, 3d printing wireless charging uavs/drones smart phones artificial organs, mag lev trains, as a few to start

Who do you think designs all the devices? The winners of pop idol?

Bit like asking what the Romans ever did for us:eek:

GreatApe

BikingBud wrote: »

I think you're pulling things out of your a£$% :rotfl:. Show me the stats!

How many different jobs or sites a day do you think a plumber can do when building a house? He's a plumber not the UKMail* delivery man.

If it takes one day to fit a boiler but he spreads it over 6 days cos he keeps disappearing to other jobs then he wouldn't be coming back

Like for like, how many houses 50 years ago had pressurised hot and cold systems?

Central heating boiler, possibly underfloor heating, multiple bathrooms, plumbed in; washing machines, tumble dyers, dishwashers, fridges, even outside taps were unheard of. So quite likely the fitting a house with family bathroom, en-suite bathroom, downstairs toilet, kitchen and utility room takes a little more effort than a gravity fed hot water system, one bathroom and a kitchen sink. In fact 50 years ago some places would still be on outside earth closets and a cold tap in the kitchen.

Bring back the navvies they didn't have vans to keep !!!!ing off from the job and productivity will increase :huh:

You do need to get into the real world.

*Other delivery companies are available.

I was thinking if you were a plumber doing maintenance and repairs on existing homes your biggest productivity improvements would come from lower traffic or maybe software that could allocate work to you in a way that the next job is a couple of streets away rather than in the next borough one hour away.

Anyway once more this isn't my observation its the observation of national bodies like the office for national statistics and it isn't just UK its most the developed world construction productivity has stood still or even gone backwards.

Regarding not being like for like I believe the stats factor in that a house today isn't exactly like a house of yesteryear. Also furniture and household appliances would not be construct they would he under manufacturing so if a house has a fridge today vs no fridge 60 years ago that wouldn't impact the construction productivity figures

GreatApe

BikingBud wrote: »

No progress in engineering so what about:

James Dyson, Elon Musk, Modern airliners including engines, Millau Viaduct, Nano-Tech/machines The Shard, 3d printing wireless charging uavs/drones smart phones artificial organs, mag lev trains, as a few to start

Who do you think designs all the devices? The winners of pop idol?

Bit like asking what the Romans ever did for us:eek:

The biggest gain was thanks to Thatcher destroying the unions

I used to work at a steel plant which had 30,000 workers.
It went to 3,000 workers after it was privatised
Production also tripled from about 1 million tons a year to 3 million tons a year
So there was a 9 x improvements in productivity at that site

There have been engineering improvements no doubts but no fundamental leaps which is what Peter was talking about. For instance if you look at a aircraft from 50 years ago and today is it really massively different?

A Boeing 707 which was built 60 years ago isn't fundamentally much different from a Boeing 737 Max in 2018. Sure its tech might be much improved but to the customer the speed or comfort is almost the same. Of anything we have gone backward in that thee was for a time supersonic flight and now its only subsonic.

A huge change would be something like using musks BFR rockets for intra planet travel. 30 minutes from London to Australia.

BikingBud

GreatApe wrote: »

The biggest gain was thanks to Thatcher destroying the unions

I used to work at a steel plant which had 30,000 workers.
It went to 3,000 workers after it was privatised
Production also tripled from about 1 million tons a year to 3 million tons a year
So there was a 9 x improvements in productivity at that site

There have been engineering improvements no doubts but no fundamental leaps which is what Peter was talking about. For instance if you look at a aircraft from 50 years ago and today is it really massively different?

A Boeing 707 which was built 60 years ago isn't fundamentally much different from a Boeing 737 Max in 2018. Sure its tech might be much improved but to the customer the speed or comfort is almost the same. Of anything we have gone backward in that thee was for a time supersonic flight and now its only subsonic.

A huge change would be something like using musks BFR rockets for intra planet travel. 30 minutes from London to Australia.

You really haven't got a clue have you. Why did the 707 have 4 engines and the modern airliners such as the 787 only have 2?

Ever heard of carbon fibre composite, ever heard of auto land systems ever heard of SFC? The only thing that seems to be the same is the shape, a tube with wings, an undercarriage and some engines. But all the manufacturing methods, the underlying equipment and systems have changed massively.

Improvements are not only about faster but increasingly nowadays about more efficiency and range Supersonic and Hypersonic travel is extremely inefficient, you cannot change the laws of physics.

As an aside how did that dramatic improvement in steel productivity affect other industries such as construction where the increased presence and global over-production makes it readily available for major projects.

Also I earlier asked how many weeks a year a UK worker puts in can you confirm that it is 50 weeks and provide the link as I still find that figure quite surprising.

MobileSaver

GreatApe wrote: »

so yes it now takes more man hours to build a house than it did fifty years ago.

As BikingBud pointed out, there is an obvious reason why this may be the case; you are not comparing like for like and so the above is a meaningless statement. Houses 50 years ago were much simpler affairs with little regard for security, efficiency, convenience or safety. Rather than focus on building houses quicker we now build better houses.

Similarly 50 years ago there was scant regard for the health and safety of the people who were involved in building the houses. Over that time period we have introduced measures which reduced workplace fatalities by 85% but also inevitably slowed down the building process. It just doesn't make sense to compare productivity for different products, different processes and different priorities and then proclaim one is better than the other.

GreatApe

BikingBud wrote: »

You really haven't got a clue have you. Why did the 707 have 4 engines and the modern airliners such as the 787 only have 2?

Ever heard of carbon fibre composite, ever heard of auto land systems ever heard of SFC? The only thing that seems to be the same is the shape, a tube with wings, an undercarriage and some engines. But all the manufacturing methods, the underlying equipment and systems have changed massively.

Improvements are not only about faster but increasingly nowadays about more efficiency and range Supersonic and Hypersonic travel is extremely inefficient, you cannot change the laws of physics.

As an aside how did that dramatic improvement in steel productivity affect other industries such as construction where the increased presence and global over-production makes it readily available for major projects.

Also I earlier asked how many weeks a year a UK worker puts in can you confirm that it is 50 weeks and provide the link as I still find that figure quite surprising.

End user doesn't care about the number of engines or the materials used.
They care about speed cost and comfort. Speed and comfort haven't improved much over the fifty years. Cost has improved partly thanks to engineering and partly due to competition and different business models like the budget airlines.

Total weekly hours worked in the UK is 1,026,000,000 with 32 million working that makes it a mean average of 32 hours a worker. Full time is obviously more and sort time less.

westernpromise

MobileSaver wrote: »

As BikingBud pointed out, there is an obvious reason why this may be the case; you are not comparing like for like and so the above is a meaningless statement. Houses 50 years ago were much simpler affairs with little regard for security, efficiency, convenience or safety. Rather than focus on building houses quicker we now build better houses.

I am sure this is correct. Looking at an unrelated but parallel example, in 1985 you could buy a sporty hatchback car called an Astra GTE. It weighed 2,215lbs, the engine produced 115bhp from 1.8 litres, it did 0 to 60 in 7.5 seconds and it cost £7,499. That would be be about £21,000 today according to https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php.
For that sum today you can get a 150bhp 1.4 litre Astra that has literally dozens of features the old one didn't have, weighs nearly twice as much but is still faster, quieter and more economical, and is also safer when you crash it. There really is just no comparison.

While the differences in house construction aren't as obvious they're just as significant I think.

GreatApe

MobileSaver wrote: »

As BikingBud pointed out, there is an obvious reason why this may be the case; you are not comparing like for like and so the above is a meaningless statement. Houses 50 years ago were much simpler affairs with little regard for security, efficiency, convenience or safety. Rather than focus on building houses quicker we now build better houses

They would have taken this into account and the figures would be comparing like for like. Also everything else has gotten better quality and much more productive. There has been a near 5x improvements in the productivity of food and manufactured goods while construction has stood still or even gone back wards

Similarly 50 years ago there was scant regard for the health and safety of the people who were involved in building the houses. Over that time period we have introduced measures which reduced workplace fatalities by 85% but also inevitably slowed down the building process. It just doesn't make sense to compare productivity for different products, different processes and different priorities and then proclaim one is better than the other.[/QUOTE]

Its a simple observation. Construction productivity has not improved and in many advanced countries has gone backwards. I am not saying we should build houses in the same as as 50 years ago in just pointing out a fact.

Its a big problem. If the nation wants to be better housed the construction sector needs to up its game.