While other industries, spurred by international competition, were forced to seek new methods and technologies ensuring a reduced cost for their products, the building industry – with its captive home markets, and lacking the regulatory mechanism of natural selection – has been able to adhere to its traditional methods for decades, passing on the price of its shortcomings to its consumers, In fact, no systematic attempt was made by it to study its production costs until after the Second World War, when the widening gap between the demand for construction volume (especially in housing) on the one hand, and the limited available production capacity on the other, compelled governments in many countries to intervene. A steadily growing amount of research has since been devoted to the construction process as a whole and to the methods employed. Actually, although the need to increase the industry’s capacity (subject to the limitations of the available labor force) is a more immediate factor than the desire to reduce costs, the importance of the economic aspect is fully recognized today: it is a vital question for the efficiency-conscious contractor – and even more so for the national economy as a whole. Consequently, cost analysis is gaining in scope, and with it, the importance of applying and developing appropriate study methodologies. Earlier attempts to compare construction costs at national and international levels have indicated the fundamental difficulties inherent in it, and the scarcity of available cost information in most countries.