Project delivery through lean principles across all disciplnes of construction in a developing country environment

Abstract

Construction Industry has to counter many challenges and research studies have indicated that large projects across various asset classes typically take longer to finish than scheduled and tend to overshoot the budgeted cost. Improving labour productivity in all trades of construction has been found to be very challenging as compared to the manufacturing industry due to migrant labour, low skills and lower penetration of technology and mechanisation at the work sites. The high percentage of wastes generated in construction projects also puts tremendous pressure on natural and human resources. In order to mitigate the above-mentioned challenges and risks and to improve our way of working, an organization embarked on the Lean journey starting with its Residential Towers using Partnering and other Lean principles for multiple stakeholder management across all our projects. Also, to make the planning process predictable and create commitment based culture the organization amalgamated Lean into Critical Path Method by creating a Milestone Schedule given by the Top management. The Phase Schedule is derived from the Milestone Schedule and further broken down for weekly tracking into Look Ahead Plans (LAP). The LAP is prepared by field teams and is reviewed using Last Planner Meetings (LPS) and other lean tools and methodologies. This paper portrays an organisation's Lean journey from residential to industrial projects using case studies with key learnings to explain how the success of Lean implementation is possible only when there is a cultural change brought among all the project stakeholders to strengthen team spirit and drive improvement initiatives with strong support from the Top Management. A focussed approach and imbibing the cultural changes in the organisation help to overcome all the barriers faced in the Lean Journey.