Increasing productivity in public works maintenance: The effects of job estimates based on engineered performance standards

Abstract

Data regarding the size of conventional labor hour estimates based on Engineered Performance Standards (EPS), and labor hours expended in completing jobs were collected from a carefully selected sample of Navy Public Works offices. An analysis of 266 work orders sampled from 12 Navy activities revealed that EPS estimates were significantly lower than conventional estimates but that the difference diminished with time from between 35% to 40% early in the EPS program (1958) to between 5% to 7% in 1963. This reduction was attributed to a learning effect which caused a lowering of conventional estimates as they were shown to be excessively high. Other analyses showed that estimated hours were consumed on the job regardless of how grossly they appeared to overestimate actual requirements, indicating that EPS utilization increased productivity by an amount roughly corresponding to the initial difference between EPS and conventional estimates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)