From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lean construction is a translation and adaption of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the end-to-end design and construction process. Unlike manufacturing, construction is a project based-production process. Lean construction is concerned with the holistic pursuit of concurrent and continuous improvements in all dimensions of the built and natural environment: design, construction, activation, maintenance, salvaging, and recycling (Abdelhamid 2007). This approach tries to manage and improve construction processes with minimum cost and maximum value by considering customer needs. (Koskela et al. 2002)

The term "Lean Construction" was coined by the International Group for Lean Construction in its first meeting in 1993. (Gleeson et al. 2007)

Historical Development

The seminal work of Lauri Koskela in 1992 challenged the Construction Management community to consider the inadequacies of the time-cost-quality tradeoff paradigm. Another paradigm-breaking anomaly was that observed by Ballard (1994), Ballard and Howell (1994a and 1994b), Howell and Ballard (1994a and 1994b) and Howell (1998). Analysis of project plan failures indicated that “normally only about 50% of the tasks on weekly work plans are completed by the end of the plan week” and that constructors could mitigate most of the problems through “active management of variability, starting with the structuring of the project (temporary production system) and continuing through its operation and improvement.” (Ballard and Howell 2003).

Evidence from research and observations indicated that the conceptual models of Construction Management and the tools it utilizes (work breakdown structure, critical path method, and earned value management) fail to deliver projects ‘on-time, at budget, and at desired quality’ (Abdelhamid 2004). With recurring negative experiences on projects, evidenced by endemic quality problems and rising litigation, it became evident that the governing principles of construction management needed revisiting. In fact, a respondent to the 6th annual Survey of Construction Owners by CMAA (2006) included a comment: "While the cost of steel and cement are making headlines, the less publicized failures in the management of construction projects can be disastrous. Listen carefully to the message in this comment. We are not talking about just materials, methods, equipment, or contract documents. We are talking about how we work to deliver successful capital projects and how we manage the costs of inefficiency."

A New Paradigm

Koskela (2000) argued that the mismatch between the conceptual models and observed reality underscored the lack of robustness in the existing constructs and signaled the need for a theory of production in construction. Koskela then used the ideal production system embodied in the Toyota Production System to develop a more overarching production management paradigm for project-based production systems where production is conceptualized in three complementary ways, namely, as a Transformation (T), as a Flow(F), and as Value generation(V). Koskela and Howell (2002) have also presented a comprehensive review of the shortcomings existing management theory – specifically as related to the planning, execution, and control paradigms – in project-based production systems. Both conceptualizations provide a solid intellectual foundation of Lean Construction as evident from both research and practice (Abdelhamid 2004).

Recognizing that construction sites reflect prototypical behavior of complex and chaotic systems, especially in the flow of both material and information on and off site, Bertelsen (2003a and 2003b) suggested that construction should be modeled using chaos and complex systems theory. Bertelsen (2003b) specifically argues that construction could and should be understood in three complimentary ways, namely, as a project-based production process, as an industry that provides autonomous agents, and as a social system. With more developments in this line of thinking, it is very likely that the Lean Construction governing paradigm will change to it. And so, the process will keep on repeating!

What is lean construction?

Lean construction is a “way to design production systems to minimize waste of materials, time, and effort in order to generate the maximum possible amount of value (Koskela et al. 2002) ”. Designing a production system to achieve the stated ends is only possible through the collaboration of all project participants (Owner, A/E, Constructors, Facility Managers, End-user) at early stages of the project. This goes beyond the contractual arrangement of design/build or constructability reviews where constructors, and sometime facility managers, merely react to designs instead of informing and influencing the design (Abdelhamid et al 2008).

Lean construction aims to embody the benefits of the Master Builder concept. Essentially, Lean Construction recognizes that desired ends affect the means to achieve these ends, and that available means will affect realized ends (Lichtig 2004).

Lean construction supplements traditional construction management approaches with (Abdelhamid 2007): (1) two critical and necessary dimensions for successful capital project delivery by requiring the deliberate consideration of material and information flow and value generation in a production system; and (2) different project and production management (planning-execution-control) paradigms.

While lean construction is identical to Lean Production in spirit, it is different in how it was conceived as well how it is practiced.

The common spirit flows from shared principles:

• • Whole System Optimisation through Collaboration and systematic learning
  • continual improvement/pursuit of perfection involving everyone in the system
  • a focus on delivering the value desired by the owner/client/end-user
  • allowing value to flow by systematically eliminating obstacles to value creation and those parts of the process that create no value
  • creating pull production

The differences in detail flow from a recognition that construction is a project based production where the product is generally a prototype.

As Sowards stated (2004) the priority for all construction work is to:

1. keep work flowing so that the crews are always productive installing product;
   
2. reduce inventory of material and tools and
   
3. reduce costs.

While Lean Construction’s main tool for making design and construction processes more predictable is the Last Planner System (see below) and derivatives of it, other lean tools already proven in manufacturing have been adapted to the construction industry with equal success. These include: 5S, Kanban, Kaizen events, quick setup/changeover, Poka Yoke, Visual Control and Five Whys (Mastroianni and Abdelhamid 2003, Salem et al. 2005).

In lean design set based design, design structure matrices and target value design strategies are proving valuable.

"One can think of Lean Construction in a way similar to mesoeconomics. Lean Construction draws upon the principles of project-level management and upon the principles that govern production-level management. Lean Construction recognizes that any successful project undertaking will inevitably involve the interaction between project and production management." (Abdelhamid 2007)

Integrated Project Delivery

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) - a registered business mark by Lean Construction Institute with the US PTO - is a delivery system that seek to align interests, objectives and practices, even in a single business, through a team-based approach. The team primary Team Members would include the Architect, key technical consultants as well as a general contractor and key subcontractors.

[IPD is a clever solution to the tough organizational and contracting problems faced in today’s market. It relies on careful participant selection, transparency and continuing dialog. Construction consumers might consider rethinking their contracting strategies to share more fully in the benefits.](Matthews and Howell 2005)

[IPD is a Relational Contracting approach that aligns project objectives with the interests of key participants. It creates an organization able to apply the principles and practices of the Lean Project Delivery System.] (Matthews and Howell 2005)

Practical applications

(it would be good to add examples from other countries here such as Denmark, US, Chile, Brasil, Peru, Sweden, in addition to others from the UK)

In the UK, a major R&D project, Building Down Barriers, was launched in 1997 to adapt the Toyota Production System for use in the construction sector. The resulting supply chain management toolset was tested and refined on two pilot projects and the comprehensive and detailed process-based toolset was published in 2000 as the 'Building Down Barriers Handbook of Supply Chain Management-The Essentials'. The project demonstrated very clearly that lean thinking would only deliver major performance improvements if the construction sector learned from the extensive experience of other business sectors. Lean thinking must become the way that all the firms in the design and construction supply chain co-operate with each other at a strategic level that over-arches individual projects. In the aerospace sector, these long-term supply-side relationships are called a 'Virtual Company', in other business sectors they are called an 'Extended Lean Enterprise'.

The UK 'Building Down Barriers Handbook of Supply Chain Management-The Essentials' states that: 'The commercial core of supply chain management is setting up long-term relationships based on improving the value of what the supply chain delivers, improving quality and reducing underlying costs through taking out waste and inefficiency. This is the opposite of 'business as usual' in the construction sector, where people do things on project after project in the same old inefficient ways, forcing each other to give up profits and overhead recovery in order to deliver at what seems the market price. What results is a fight over who keeps any of the meagre margins that result from each project, or attempts to recoup 'negative margins' through 'claims', The last thing that receives time or energy in this desperate, project-by-project gladiatorial battle for survival is consideration of how to reduce underlying costs or improve quality'.

Last Planner System

The Last Planner System (LPS) improves both design and construction schedule/programme predictability – work completed as and when promised. It is a system of inter-related elements – full benefits come when all are implemented together, over time. Based on simple paper forms, it can be administered using Post-it notes, paper, pencil, eraser and photocopier. A spreadsheet can help.

LPS begins with collaborative scheduling/programming engaging the main project suppliers from the start. Risk analysis ensures that float is built in where it will best protect programme integrity and predictability. Where appropriate the process can be used for programme compression too. In this way, one constructor took 6 weeks out of an 18-week programme for the construction of a 40 bed hotel. Benefits to the client are enormous.

Figure 1: intense discussion during a programme compression workshop

Before work starts, team leaders make tasks ready so that when work should be done, it can be. Why put work into production if a pre-requisite is missing? This MakeReady process continues throughout the project.

Figure 2: part of a MakeReady form for documenting the process of making tasks ready (this one for use in design)

There is a weekly work planning (WWP) meeting involving all the last planners – design team leaders and/or trade supervisors on site. It is in everyone’s interest to explore inter-dependencies between tasks and prevent colleagues from over-committing.

Figure 3: part of a Weekly Work Plan form used by trade foremen on site or design team leaders to prepare for the WWP meeting.

This weekly work planning processes is built around promises. The agreed programme defines when tasks should be done and acts as a request to the supplier to do that task. The last planners (that is the trade foremen on site or design team leaders in a design process) only promise once they have clarified the conditions of satisfaction and are clear that the task can be done.

Figure 4: the promise cycle (after Fernando Flores)

Once the task is complete the last planner responsible declares completion so that site management or the next trade can assure themselves that it is complete to an appropriate standard.

A key measure of the success of the Last Planner system is PPC. This measures the Percentage of Promises Completed on time. As PPC increases. project productivity and profitability increase, with step changes at around 70% and 85%. This score is measured site-wide and displayed around the site. Weekly measures are used by the project and by individual suppliers as the basis for learning how to improve the predictability of the work programme and hence the PPC scores.

A key part of the continual improvement process is a study of the reasons why tasks promised in the WWP are delivered late. The following chart shows typical reasons:

Figure 5: example of a reasons Pareto chart

Recording the reasons in a Pareto chart like the one above makes it easy to see where attention is most likely to yield the most results. Using tools like 5 Why analysis and cause-effect diagrams will help the team understand how they can improve the clarity of information and ensure that there are sufficient operatives.

Last Planner benefits don’t stop at project predictability, profit and productivity; it contributes to positive changes in other industry KPIs. Danish research shows almost half the accidents and up to 70% less sickness absence on LPS managed sites.

Last Planner System development continues under the direction of Lean Construction Institute Directors Professor Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell with support from users around the world. For more information about the development process see Ballard (1994, 2000) and Ballard & Howell (2004) for example

For a more detailed description and list of benefits see here For more on Learning how to implement Last Planner see here

Differences between Lean Construction approach and Project Management Institute (PMI) approach

The differences between lean approach and PMI approach are listed below:

• Managing the interaction between activities and combined effects of dependence and variation, is a first concern in lean construction because their interactions highly affects the time and cost of projects(Howell,1999);in comparison, these interactions are not considered in PMI.
• In lean construction optimization efforts focus on making work flow reliable (Ballard, LPDS,2000 ); in contrast PMI focuses on improving productivity of each activity which can make errors and reducing quality and result in rework.

• The project is structured and managed as a value generating process (value is defined as satisfying customer requirements) (Howell, 1999), while PMI considers less cost as value.
• In lean approach, downstream stakeholders are involved in front end planning and design through cross functional teams (Ballard, LPDS, 2000); on the other hand PMI doesn’t consider this issue.

• In lean construction, project control has the job of execution (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000); whereas, control in PMI method relies on variance detection after-the-fact.

• In lean method, pull techniques are used to govern the flow of materials and information through networks of cooperating specialists (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000); in contrast, PMI uses push techniques for releasing the information and materials.

• Capacity and inventory buffers are used to absorb variation(Mura). Feedback loops are included at every level, to make rapid system adjustments, (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000); in comparison, PMI doesn’t consider adjustments.

• Lean construction tries to mitigate variation in every aspect (product quality, rate of work) and manage the remaining variation, while PMI doesn’t consider variation mitigation and management. (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000)

• Lean approach tries to make continuous improvements in the process, workflows and product (Howell, 1999); whereas PMI approach doesn’t pay that much attention to continuous improvement.

• In lean construction, decision making is distributed in design production control systems (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000); by comparison, in PMI decision making is centered to one manager some times.

• Lean construction tries to increase transparency between the stakeholders, mangers and labourers, in order to know the impact of their work on the whole project (Howell, 1999); on the other hand, PMI doesn’t consider transparency in its methods.

• In lean construction a buffer of sound assignments is maintained for each crew or production unit (Ballard, PhD thesis, 2000); in contrast, PMI method doesn’t consider a backlog for crews.

• Lean construction is developing new forms of commercial contracts to give incentives to suppliers for reliable work flow and optimization at the deliverable-to-the-client level (Howell, 1999); while PMI doesn’t have such policy.

• Lean construction production system design resists the tendency toward local suboptimization. (Ballard thesis); however, PMI persists on optimizing each activity.

• The PMI-driven approach only considers managing a project at the macro-level. This is necessary but not sufficient for the success of projects. Lean Construction encompasses Project and Production Management, and formally recognizes that any successful project undertaking will inevitably involve the interaction between project and production management. (Abdelhamid et al 2008)

Lean Construction FAQs

- answers provided by Lean Construction Institute (Greg Howell and Tariq Abdelhamid)

1. When did Lean Construction begin?

When current practice died. It died a slow death as the ideas and insights that form LC today came together. LC began with an insight that revealed the inability of the current planning system to produce predictable workflow. This was in the middle 1980s. A more formal start could be identified as the first meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction in 1993. We have no idea when LC will be completely defined let alone understood.

2. Is Lean Construction just applying Lean Production in construction?

No. The word "just" makes it sound as if Lean production itself were something small. Lean Construction started as an attempt to reform the way work in projects is managed. Once the obvious was understood, that work moves between specialist in construction by the administrative act of making an assignment, it was possible to adapt principles and practices direct from Toyota.

3. What is Lean Construction?

Lean Construction a different way to see, understand and act in the world. For example, waste in current practice is normally understood as labor utilization. Learning to see contingency as waste is the big step we need if we are to make a step change in construction, one commensurate with managing inventory just in time.

Lean Construction is a philosophy - a comprehensive system of ideas that lead to the flawless delivery of the built environment. This philosophy is practiced using the Lean Project Delivery System, which continues to evolve as more is learned from practice and research.

Lean Construction is the soil that allows us to “socially construct” the built environment. Lean Construction is something that people do - a philosophy or an orientation of sorts.

4. What are the major difference between a project run based on Lean Construction and one that is not?

Lean works because the work on the project is designed and managed by those who do it. LC designs and activates the network of commitments necessary to deliver the project.

The “tragedy of the commons” is prevented; The individually rational decision is destructive to the overall project. The local optimization driven by labor utilization versus system optimization that is driven by throughput. Work on Lean Construction projects is deliberately and systematically organized to maximize the project and not the pieces, and commercial terms are adjusted to align interests, and promote improvement and minimize risk to the involved parties.

Another difference is that the construction process, the building operation and maintenance, and the recycling/salvage needs are inputs to the design and not outputs of it; inputs needed to start the work are provided and issues (waste) that prevent finishing started work are eliminated; problem solving and learning is the job of those involved in the project and not just part of the job; Where possible, materials are brought to the site in the same way concrete is; The aim is for a zero punchlist and not to zero-out the punchlist.

5. BIM aims to build a collaborative relation between designers and constructors, so how is that different from LC?

BIM is technology. It doesn't aim, it does make possible different conversations. LC structures those conversations and connecting design, logistics and installation. LC designs and activates the network of commitments necessary to deliver the project. It is necessary to enable Lean Construction ideals but not sufficient.

6. Is Lean Construction like LEED where you have to commit to a certain level of compliance and the project is checked against that?

No. Lean is a way to manage and improve work. LEED and GREEN are value propositions - an end. Lean Construction is the means to better arrive at that end.

7. What percentage of the US construction industry is adopting it?

There is now way of knowing. Lots of hospitals, lots of suppliers etc. There is still time to be an early adopter.

8. Is Lean Construction accepted more in other countries than in the US?

We have no way of making a well grounded assessment. There is significant implementation in Germany, UK, Denmark (the longest running with strong Union support, Sweden, Brasil, Chile and Peru. I would not say the US is ahead.

9. What is the primary difference between Lean Production and Lean Construction?

• Lean production is the inspiration for lean construction, but cannot be grafted onto construction.
  

• Production & construction are different; construction is more like ship-building or airplane-building, where the workers move and the product is stationary instead of the product moving between stationary workers like in production.
  

• In production, typically the same part is produced in mass volume. This is not the same as construction, unless major generalizations are made (i.e. a wall is a wall, even if made of different material and on different projects). So, lean construction focuses heavily on the similarity in the process of constructing more so than on the product of construction.
  

• Sven Bertelsen holds that we need to move from construction on to project production in general because he sees the project as the basic form of production where mass production is just the simplified version Toyota and Shingo showed us new thoughts but we have to establish our own thinking.
  

• Lean Production primarily focuses on the reduction of the time from order, of any transaction be it assembly, billing, supply, etc, to delivery. This reduction of time is achieved by the elimination of waste (the unproductive use of resources) that is captured in “ DOWNTIME”. Respect for people and continuous improvement guides the reduction of waste. Lean Construction has been inspired by this but also by other paradigms. Production in construction is conceptualized as a transformation of inputs to outputs through a flow process of materials and information that is directed at maximizing value to the client. Lean Production is not about maximizing value to the client, otherwise, we would have had the Cadillac for the price of the Chevy, the Lexus for the price of the Camry, etc. Lean Construction also draws on the new theories regarding project management as well as social science, and complexity theory. A construction project is really a project-based production system.
  

10. Can the concept of Heijunka be used in construction? Why?

• Heijunka = production leveling. Production leveling for a manufacturing plant relies on being able to “create” stable demand, so that the Takt time for the plant is constant. Toyota does this through its marketing and sales division. The TPS is so vulnerable otherwise. Of course, it is not always perfect but they strive for this stability, especially with tactics such as mixed-model production.
  

• In construction, we are project-based and we know what needs to be done for a project – the quantities are known, with a time and budget constraint. What we need is stability and reliability in the workflow so that we are not going in fits and stops. We achieve this using the Lookahead and weekly work planning process with a constraint screening process, and not just an FYI coordination meeting. The act of keeping a workable backlog is designed to keep work flowing and progressing.
  

• The use of the line of balance (linear scheduling, flow lines) is a nice tool to visualize the production rates of different activity and avoid the interruption of work as well as the problem of overproduction. However, in Lean Construction we don’t want to see one crew finish too fast or too slow.
  

• Crew balancing is not an example of heijunka. Crew balancing may lead us to locally optimize at the expense of the system throughput.
  

11. Contrast “lean work structuring” with “work breakdown structure”.

• A WBS should not be used as the sole planning tool for a project. It is a great brainstorming tool to understand the project. It is probably the best scheme to develop a MASTER schedule. The problem is that we use it for more than what it is capable of. We can’t determine project cost and project duration by simply working the WBS. The WBS is looking at activities in an independent fashion in support of transformation thinking. The WBS assumes that optimizing the part will optimize the whole – reduce the part cost and duration and you will reduce the cost and the duration of the whole. Get the lowest price and the shortest time for drywall separate from electrical and plumbing and you find on site that the work of these three trades is so intertwined that the cost and duration you received for drywall was a pipe dream.
  

• A WBS is a tool to use in Lean Work Structuring.
  

• LWS is thinking production, operation, maintenance, and recyclablity during design. It also focuses on work package (not trade or contract packages), i.e. the wall, or the ceiling.
  

12. What are the differences between project control and production control?

• Project control monitors progress using lagging indicators such as schedule and cost variance. It is sometimes too late to do anything about the project going off-track or it takes too much to get it back on track. So, project control is reactive. Think of the stock market. The DJI‎ - Dow Jones Industrial Average – only tells you what has happened to the market after the fact. It’s like taking the temperature of a patient – it tells you whether the person has a fever but not why.
  

• We need to practice production control such that we make things happen to prevent the project from having a fever. Production control is pro-active in the sense that you are doing all that you can to make work happen by removing the constraints that you know about.
  

13. Is Value Stream Mapping (VSM) a tool for construction?

VSM has a place in construction. In fact, it is probably being implemented but we just don’t know about it. And this applies to many other tools and techniques that are being used to enable the lean construction ideals, but we don’t know about them. The Last Planner System is one example.

As far as VSM is concerned, it provides a big picture view of the flow problems in whatever system you are studying. It’s a flow improvement tool and not a process improvement tool (flow kaizen vs. process kaizen). A great bottleneck finder.

VSM has been applied to reduce the time for processing specialty contractor payment applications (from 40 days to 5 or so – see IGLC11 in a paper by Mastroianni ). An architecture office also is using it for streamlining the submittal and show drawings review and approval process because of delays and complaints by contractors. An example for application on a construction site is that of a construction company that specializes in suspended ceiling and drywall installation. They used VSM to identify time that drywall sheets and tiles spend before being put in place. They used the results to justify the cost of using a temp warehouse (supermarket) close to the site and deploying a pull delivery system (the best they could do). The result, using the SAME installation process, was less time per SQFT because material handling was almost down to single touch – from the truck to the installation location. Interestingly, they then used work sampling techniques (as described in Oglesby, Parker and Howell 1989) to improve the drywalling process itself.

In Brazil, VSM is being used mostly by academics. As any other tool developed for manufacturing it needs some adaptation in order to become useful for construction. Some of my colleagues at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) have developed some innovative applications of VSM for administrative and design processes and also as part of production system design of construction projects. They have published a few papers in previous IGLC conferences.

14. Is Integrated Project Delivery the same as Lean Construction?

No. In fact, the ideals of Lean Construction are enabled by using the Integrated Project Delivery approach. IPD is necessary but not sufficient. In other words, just having an IPD will not guarantee that we meet the Lean Construction ideals. IPD is defined on this page (scroll up).

IPD is a Relational Contracting approach that aligns project objectives with the interests of key participants, through a team-based approach. The primary Team Members would include the Architect, key technical consultants as well as a general contractor and key subcontractors. It creates an organization able to apply the principles and practices of the Lean Project Delivery System.] (Matthews and Howell 2005). IPD is defined at http://www.leanconstruction.org/glossary.htm. For more information see http://www.leanconstruction.org/lcj/V2_N1/LCJ_05_003.pdf

[IPD is a registered business mark by Lean Construction Institute with the US PTO]

Commercial arrangements that support IPD and Lean Project Delivery

There are at least five principal forms of contract that support Lean construction

• Integrated Form of Agreement for Lean Project Delivery (IFoA)(USA) developed around explicit lean construction principles for Sutter Health by their legal counsel, [[Will Lichtig]http://mhalaw.com/mha/attorneys/lichtig.htm], and used by various other owners/clients.
• ConsensusDOCS300 (USA) a derivative of IFoA http://www.consensusdocs.org/
• AIA C191-2009 Standard Form Multi-Party Agreement for IPD (USA) AIA uses IPD to refer to a new project delivery system. http://www.aia.org/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aias076340.pdf for a list of distributors
• PPC2000 International (UK) http://www.acarchitects.co.uk/publications.htm
• Alliancing Agreement (Australia) a new standard form is under development

These papers will be helpful to explain IPD and IFoA http://www.leanconstruction.org/lcj/V2_N1/LCJ_05_003.pdf and http://www.leanconstruction.org/lcj/V2_N1/LCJ_05_008.pdf

for discussions of Alliancing, PPC2000 and IFoA please see http://www.lean-in-public.org/lips_en_proceedings.html

LC Networks, Teaching and Research

• The Lean Construction Institute conducts research and industry outreach activities

• There are national Lean Construction Institutes in UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Chile and Germany

• The International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) holds an annual conference

• The European Group for Lean Construction holds meetings twice a year

• The Lean Construction Journal launched October 2004.

• Project Production Systems Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley The Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL) is dedicated to developing and deploying knowledge and tools to manage project production systems and organizations producing and delivering goods and services through such systems. Research includes lean construction.

• (C2P2AI) The Center for Construction Project Performance Assessment and Improvement(C2P2AI) at the School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University investigates and develops efficient and effective construction processes that result in a built environment with maximum value to both the construction client and participants. The center provides research, outreach, and education services to the construction industry.

• A number of universities around the world teach and conduct research on lean construction. No University yet offers a fully integrated lean construction programme.

• • there is a proposal for a global Masters programme by action research and learning to be delivered by a group of collaborating universities.

• There are a number of practitioner support and networking groups on the web
  • Lean Construction Institute on Linkedin
  • Lean Construction Institute UK on Linkedin
  • Lean Construction Network on Linkedin. LCN offers a number of Regional Sub-groups

References

Owen Matthews, Gregory A. Howell (2005). Integrated Project Delivery An Example of Relational Contracting. Lean Construction Journal.

Owen Matthews, Gregory A. Howell, and Panagiotis Mitropoulos (2003). Aligning The Lean Organization: A Contractual Approach”. Proceedings of the 11th conference of the international group for lean construction, Blacksburg, Virginia, 22-24 July 2003.

Koskela, L., Howell, G., Ballard, G., and Tommelein, I. (2002). “The Foundations of Lean Construction.” Design and Construction: Building in Value, R. Best, and G. de Valence, eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, Elsevier, Oxford, UK.

Abdelhamid, T.S., El-Gafy, M., and Salem, O. (2008). “Lean Construction: Fundamentals And Principles.” American Professional Constructor‎ Journal.

Abdelhamid (2007). Lean Construction Principles. Graduate class offering at Michigan State University. http://www.slideshare.net/tabdelhamid/lean-construction-introduction

Abdelhamid, T., S. (2004). “The Self-Destruction and Renewal of LEAN CONSTRUCTION Theory: A Prediction From Boyd’s Theory”. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, 03-6 August 2004, Helsingør, Denmark.

Ballard, Glenn (1994). “The Last Planner.” Northern California Construction Institute Spring Conference, Monterey, CA, April, 1994.

Ballard, G. and Howell, G. (1994a). “Implementing Lean Construction: Stabilizing Work Flow.” Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Santiago, Chile.

Ballard, G. and Howell, G. (1994b). “Implementing Lean Construction: Improving Performance Behind the Shield.” Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Santiago, Chile.

Ballard, G. and Howell, G. (1998). “Shielding Production: Essential Step in Production Control”. Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management, Vol. 124, No. 1, pp. 11 – 17.

Ballard, Glenn (2000a) , Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham

Ballard, Glenn (2000b). “Lean Project Delivery Systems.” LCI white paper-8, (Revision 1)

Ballard, G., and Howell, G. A. (2003). “Competing Construction Management Paradigms.” Proceedings of the 2003 ASCE Construction Research Congress, 19-21 March 2003, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Cain, C. T. (2003). ISBN 0-415-28965-3. 'Building Down Barriers-A Guide to Construction Best Practice'. A simple guidebook explaining supply chain management and lean thinking, primarily aimed at the demand-side client.

Cain, C.T. (2004a). ISBN 1-4051-1086-4. 'Profitable Partnering for Lean Construction'. A detailed action-learning guidebook that explains how to set up the extended lean enterprises that are the essential first step towards lean construction. The book provides case history evidence that the approach advocated can deliver savings of over 30% and explains what clients need to do differently to enable lean construction to flourish.

Cain, C. T. (2004b). 'Performance Measurement for Construction Profitability'. ISBN 1-4051-1462-2. A detailed action-learning guidebook aimed at supply-side construction firms (including trades contractors) explaining why performance measurement is the key to lean construction.

Gleeson, F. and Townend J. (2007). "Lean construction in the corporate world of the U.K. construction industry", University of Manchester, School of Mechanical, Aerospace, Civil and Construction Engineering.

Howell, G. A. (1999). “What is Lean Construction.” Lean Construction Institute

Koskela, L. (1992). “Application of the New Production Philosophy to Construction”. Technical Report # 72, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Stanford University, CA. www.leanconstruction.org/pdf/Koskela-TR72.pdf 10 mar 07

Koskela, L. (2000). An exploration towards a production theory and its application to construction, VVT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Koskela, L. and Howell, G., (2002). “The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete.” Proceedings of the PMI Research Conference, 2002, Pg. 293-302.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

Bertelsen, S. (2003a). “Complexity – Construction in a New Perspective”. Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

Bertelsen, S. (2003b). “Construction as a Complex System”, Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Blacksburg, Virginia.

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