How can lean, IPD and BIM work together?

Abstract

As buildings have become more complex, the construction industry has become more specialized, but it is under greater pressure to become more efficient, productive and integrated. Thus, all recent and novel attempts including Lean Construction (LC) philosophy, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) method and recently Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology are greatly aiding to improve productivity and efficiency via enhanced collaboration and integration. They have been very useful and resulted many benefits, but their drawbacks and challenges prevent them to take fully satisfying results from their individual implementation. The objective of this paper is to investigate if LC, IPD and BIM can play all together complementary and synergistically, then to draw benefits and challenges of their collaboration. The research is archival in nature and an extensive literature review has been conducted on the implementation of LC, IPD and BIM in the complex project settings. No trilateral collaboration is found and so this study is focused on bilateral collaboration experiences to perceive the demarche of their combination. This paper presents a combination scheme for LC, IPD and BIM in an effort to provide pragmatic solutions to the complex project problems. Challenges, which need to be addressed, are also highlighted.