Lean project delivery promises to maximize productivity on the job site. Why hasn’t it become more widely accepted?

When the construction community discusses how to best implement change, there are more than enough clichés to choose from: lead by example, collaboration is key, change comes from the top, etc. But when the shovel hits the dirt, few have determined how to change the delivery process to make projects more successful.

It’s no easy task to maximize productivity in the construction process while minimizing waste and building a project to the highest standards of quality.

Additionally, making this a shared goal of the owner, contractor and architect can seem almost impossible without the proper delivery process guiding the team.

Lean project delivery is one method that just might reform how the construction process is managed. Greg Howell, co-founder of the Lean Construction Institute (LCI) says the lean system facilitates planning and control, maximizes value and minimizes waste throughout the construction process.

“We think of a project as a network of commitment – design is a social act,” says Howell, who is considered the creator of lean construction along with LCI co-founder Glenn Ballard.

Setting the Stage
Born from the Toyota Production System, the lean concept is not new. The most basic definition is: Maximize value and minimize waste. In construction, lean facilitates collaboration among stakeholders from the get-go. These stakeholders determine how work will flow with the intent to boost productivity while cutting back wasteful steps and materials in the process.

According to Howell, lean creates three opportunities that are not available using today’s traditional construction process: better coordination, better work structuring and better aligning of the interests of those involved. “All three of these are aimed at maximizing things at the project level as opposed to piece by piece by piece,” he says.

The Next Level
Although other project delivery methods today facilitate some form of teamwork and collaboration, lean project delivery takes that to the next level by creating a team where the owner, architect and contractor collaborate at the project’s inception. To facilitate this, LCI developed a technique known as the Last Planner System (LPS). LPS gets early-on commitment from all players involved in the construction process, and helps establish an understanding that all involved must meet the commitments they’ve made to the project.

“There is a parade of trades that occurs on projects, in which one trade follows another,” says Cynthia Tsao, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Because of the lack of plan reliability, the person at the end of the parade of trades will become responsible for picking up the slack propagated by the series of earlier trades that fail to complete work as planned.”

Rather than focusing solely on their own productivity and profitability, members of the project team have incentives to plan in advance how work and hand-offs will flow for the benefit of the project as a whole. “LPS makes people become much more realistic in planning as opposed to being optimistic,” says Tsao, who has been researching lean project delivery since 1997.

Convincing Results
Although it is difficult to quantify, Tsao and Howell believe more owners in the United States and abroad are using the lean practice on new-build projects. In Europe and South America, there’s been an even greater acceptance. Domestically, healthcare giant Sutter Health committed itself four years ago to delivering all projects using the lean methodology. Others have followed since then, but there’s no denying there is resistance among the construction community.

The barrier to widespread acceptance and implementation of lean principles is current thinking, Howell says. “The current practices rest on a set of ideas that are deeply engrained and embedded,” he says. “Lean rests on a different set of ideas. It’s a change in the operating state of project management.”

Instead of emphasizing individual cost control on a project, Howell says if all involved enter with an investment mentality, all involved will reap the rewards and see the results. “General results don’t persuade people,” Howell maintains. “Just having results won’t convince people. What does is a plausible explanation of what happened and if they are spoken to with passion and clarity.”

Enabling the Process
There are two significant enablers of lean project delivery: virtual design technology (e.g., building information modeling, 4-D modeling and 3-D scanning) and relational contracting, Tsao says. Relational contracts, first introduced by California attorney Will Lichtig, further facilitate collaboration by having shared risk and reward linked to the value produced by the end-product. This differs from traditional contracts, which focus on the individual and his or her specific tasks on the job. BIM facilities early collaboration among the project starting with design inception, thus enabling all involved to see the big picture of how work will flow. “BIM has been an enabler of lean project delivery because it provides a means for people to communicate and express what they mean,” Tsao notes. 

Although technology is helping advance the design and workflow, without an efficient method of delivery, little will change, says Timothy Douglas, senior product marketing manager for Autodesk, the manufacturer of BIM software known as Revit. “Technology is only half of the equation when it comes to the adoption of BIM and lean project delivery – a change in methodology and process are vital if firms want to truly utilize all that BIM has to offer,” Douglas says. “Many firms assume that … BIM will drastically change the way their firms work and their projects are delivered. However, true change can’t be achieved through technology alone. Industry studies have identified poor communication as the root cause of many problems in project and program deliveries, such as schedule delays and increased costs and poor productivity.”

According to Douglas, overcoming communication barriers will require the AEC industry “to re-evaluate current methodologies and rethink the contractual models and team structures that have pitted different disciplines (architects and construction managers) against one another, with the owner suffering the consequences. Firms need to examine their current processes and practices and be willing to change these to achieve maximum results.”

Douglas says another challenge to implementing BIM is “the archaic process of compartmental disciplines that only integrate at a surface level. BIM brings together all players in a design team in a new, integrated collaborative process from design through construction and operations. While BIM brings about a new method of design integration, the process cannot be implemented in a blanket approach. In the AEC industry, with every new project comes a new team, so processes need to be re-assessed separately on a case-by-case basis.”

For those thinking of implementing lean, Howell suggests learning as much as possible by talking to peers who have used the process, visiting other job sites to visualize the process, or attending seminars or workshops. From there, designate someone to take the lead in making lean a part of the building process. “You need someone in the organization who says they are going to be responsible for getting this done. That can be a very powerful thing,” he says. “The larger the embrace of the process, the more effective it will be.”