The emergence of lean construction in the Norwegian AEC industry

Since the introduction of Lean Construction, implementation of Lean Construction method, tools, and thinking has been a challenge. The success of Lean Construction is evident, but still implementation challenges emerge, among others, culture, training, leadership, but also partial implementation of Lean Construction. Some reports indicate that the major implementation challenges are related to misconceptualization of lean construction tools, and case studies have found that often Lean Construction was either partially or incorrectly applied. Denmark is one of the pioneer countries in the Lean Construction journey, with the driving force of Sven Bertelsen and MT Højgaard among others. It is considered a country with a widespread and deep implementation of Lean Construction. But how disseminated is Lean Construction in reality? And do those who claim to apply lean construction actually do lean construction? On the basis of these questions this research contributes with a survey with a magnitude of 500 practitioners from the Danish construction industry. Results of this survey are compared with recent IGLC research on implantation challenges of lean construction. This research itself does not put forward any improved guide on how to implement lean construction. Instead it brings light to how lean construction is actually applied. In itself this is very interesting, and is valuable knowledge that can be used in further research on lean construction theory and on implementation of lean in the industry.

13th International Group for Lean Construction Conference: Proceedings, 2005

Through different conceptual initiatives lean construction has entered many construction environments around the world and is now an established and widely recognised approach to the management of construction activities. The adoption of the lean philosophy has taken, and continues to take place, under different social, organisational and structural conditions. These contextual factors are reflected in different issues being emphasised through the local application of lean ideas. A phenomenon illustrated in this paper with examples drawn ...

Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2021

Identifying lean construction (LC) practice variants can facilitate LC benchmarking and adoption, provided that national institutional influences on LC practices are acknowledged. Given that motivation, this study contributes to identifying LC practice variants in Sweden — therefore mapping that context, but also offering a research template to extrapolate in other construction sectors and thus aid in developing a versatile understanding of LC practices. Methodologically, a systematic literature review captures the related empirical studies, and their themes (industrialized or conventional construction), process coverage (design, production, partnering and stakeholder collaboration, planning, strategy, supply chain), paradigms (systems theory, business economics, behaviorism, interpretivism), and content, are analyzed. Through this analysis, the variants of industrialized construction, production processes, production strategy, design, planning, and logistics and supply chain, were derived — largely indicating that Swedish LC practices primarily focus on improving technical process parameters. But aside such improvements, subpar results of Swedish LC practices have also been observed — which can mean that besides processes, the effect of LC on organizational needs, culture, value streams, development, growth, and human interaction, should be further investigated.

Proceedings of the 36th Annual ARCOM Conference, 07-08 September 2020, 2020

Studies on lean construction (LC) can possibly point to differences in its practical realization (i.e. different coverage of construction processes), in order to fit certain purposes. Different LC practices may entail the implementation of parts of the bundle of concepts that constitute LC (e.g. Last Planner), or the integration of LC with other frameworks and tools (like BIM). The identification of such practices may lead to the emergence of certain positive outcomes, like initiating a discussion on suggesting new and/or updated LC tenets. Here, the contextual characteristics of different construction sectors are appreciated by focusing on the Swedish national context. We explore the last decade of research output documenting cases of LC practices in Sweden, and then we critically analyse this output to categorise these practices according to the construction processes they cover. Methodologically, a systematic literature review utilising the augmented concept-centric framework was conducted, and the abductive method was utilised to analyse the review outcomes. The main LC practices in Sweden are found to pertain heavily to production and strategy, while covering partnering, stakeholder collaboration, design, planning, and supply chains to a lesser extent. However, the knowledge of these practices is scattered, which precludes a more advanced adoption of LC in Sweden and prevents it from fully countering issues it is supposed to tackle – as shown in a recent report on the productivity in the Swedish construction sector. Moreover, through the years, there has been a heavy focus on industrialised, rather than “conventional”, construction. However, while the study of the former – which has a well-defined, but also modest market share in Sweden – has been precise and extensive, the needs of the latter have yet to be adequately addressed. These findings may entail that more work is needed for a stronger requirements-driven adoption of LC in Sweden.

The emerging concept of lean construction is considered from an overtly critical perspective. It is contended that the current debate is based on a highly selective interpretation of the available literature. The extent to which methods of lean production are applicable beyond the Japanese context remains hotly debated. An extensive body of critical opinion argues that the application of lean methods depends upon the hegemony of management over labour. Whilst the lean rhetoric of flexibility, quality and teamwork is persuasive, critical observers claim that it translates in practice to control, exploitation and surveillance. The accepted research agenda for lean construction is primarily confined to the limited domain of instrumental rationality. Little attention has been directed at the externalities that lie beyond narrow definitions of technical efficiency. In this respect, the activities of construction researchers are seemingly shaped and controlled by the prevailing ideology of neoliberalism. The funding agencies continually exert an insidious pressure to generate outputs that are 'relevant' to the needs of industry. The result is an inevitable conservatism whereby the only research that is valued is that which preserves the status quo. This widespread failure to challenge the propaganda that shapes and controls the research community serves to dis-empower the workforce and erode the industry's intellectual capital. Industry and society at large are becoming increasingly impoverished as dogma triumphs over thoughtfulness.

Proceedings of the 9 th International Group for …, 2001

For the ideas and practices of Lean Construction (LC) to be successfully disseminated, effective communication is at a premium. This communication takes place in various contexts: workshops, seminars, conferences, and ‘out there’, in the industry. Conventionally, a number of distinctions, the most common of which is one between theorising and practice, are used to characterise what goes on in these different settings. We suggest that, when we wish to address cultural phenomena like LC praxis (theory/practice), where the communication of what it is we mean plays such a vital role, such distinctions are misleading and give rise to much confusion. Instead, therefore, we propose that statements about LC, which might be assumed to have a distinct theoretical or abstract status, be seen as a kind of act and be treated as any other kind of act. In other words, we will suggest that talk about LC, whether this be referred to as theorising, explaining or describing and practice (doing LC) should be conceived of as essentially the same kinds of activity.

Computing in construction, 2023

Implementation of Lean Construction (LC) can result in profound operational transitions in companies. The paper explores how different-sized companies in Finland, are approaching the Lean transition: which problems they have solved, and their current priorities. The objective is to increase the level of understanding of the LC implementation in Finland, following the latest publications in the field. The gained results provide starting points for future studies on LC Implementation and can increase opportunities for Lean managers to be more involved in all levels of the construction process. Data collection comes from Qualitative Analysis of semistructured interviews with collaborative visualization.

Final report 13940, 2023

Lean construction (LC) has been discussed by Swedish contractors since ca. 2007. Those 16 years up to 2022-2023 also saw an increasing Swedish research interest on LC. Hundreds of relevant publications and dozens of BSc, MSc, Licentiate, and PhD theses have been produced over the years. This seems to show that the discussion on whether LC can help in tackling issues in Swedish construction, has remained vibrant – both regarding long-standing challenges (e.g., productivity, efficiency, value creation), as well as emergent ones (e.g., climate goals, unstable markets, inflation). However, limited studies on the sector-level LC practice have been offered so far. Studies featuring empirical cases do exist but are few compared to the total number of relevant publications, and the empirical material itself mostly clusters around a few specific companies pioneering LC in Sweden. Moreover, industrialized construction tended to be very visible in many research and practical efforts, to a degree disproportionate to its market share. Swedish construction is still dominated by on-site production, even if there is a well-embedded practice of using prefabricated components and other specific off-site elements. As such, this project sets out to clarify the current Swedish LC state-of-art, by investigating how well the relevant research output reflects Swedish practice in 2022-2023, and empirically surveying the actual state to which LC is currently found within the Swedish construction sector. In doing so, it also identifies the variants in which LC is practically implemented in Sweden – as identifying LC practice variants in a national context can facilitate LC adoption in a way that fits actual industry needs, provided that national institutional influences on LC practices are acknowledged. Methodologically, the study comprises a systematic literature review of Swedish LC research featuring empirical content (even if narrow), followed by a nation- and sector-wide questionnaire survey targeting all construction-related firms (excl. industrialized house builders) across all geographical regions in Sweden. The companies were asked about what, when, and how much they are doing with LC in their practice. The results following the analysis of the literature review and the survey response data, were qualitatively synthesized using abduction. The reviewed studies were analyzed in terms of their themes (industrialized construction or conventional construction), process coverage (design, production, partnering and stakeholder collaboration, planning, strategy, supply chain), paradigms (systems theory, business economics, organizational behavior, interpretivism), and content. Through this analysis, the preliminary variants of LC: Industrialized construction, production processes, production strategy, design, planning, and logistics and supply chain, were derived – indicating that Swedish LC practices primarily focus on improving technical process parameters. Moreover, the studies featuring empirical content were few compared to the total number of Swedish LC-related publications, and that content itself mostly clustered around a few specific companies pioneering LC in Sweden – indicating a lack of a sector-level understanding of the actual LC state-of-art. Finally, as mentioned before, industrialized construction monopolized the interest of many research efforts – disproportionately to its market share. Those problematizations deriving from the literature review served as the background of the nation- and sector-wide questionnaire survey conducted from August 2021 to January 2022. Targeting 1342 companies, it received 471 valid responses, thus having a 35% response rate. The survey showed that there is a large discrepancy of LC knowledge and practices across Sweden. In certain cases, the survey respondents indicated through their answers a well-adapted implementation of LC. However, 286 out of 471 respondents (i.e., 61% of the total responses!) claimed to not even know what LC is. Nonetheless, a sub-group of the surveyed companies claiming to be unaware of LC, still went on to answer to the survey in a way indicating that, in fact, they did know about LC. In other results, while there have been some precise cases of undertaking communication, training, and other auxiliary activities (e.g., simulation), most responses exhibited a not particularly detailed application. Furthermore, previous and present states of LC implementation were mostly piecemeal – certain LC elements, like waste elimination and customer value increase, have been comparably applied in the past and now, but others, like Last Planner, have gone through phases of varied application. The analysis of the responses of companies that have been implementing LC, shows four practical LC variants: (1) a variant related to IT-supported design, (2) a production variant, (3) a planning variant using Last Planner, and (4) a supply chain and logistics variant focused on partnerships with suppliers. Compared to the preliminary variants found in the literature review, the variants found in Swedish LC practice through the survey are fewer (four instead of six), more narrowly defined, and more simplified – indicating that, in practice, only specific LC elements have been more popular (e.g., Last Planner). The survey has shown that lean construction has been implemented by both large contractors and SMEs (e.g., subcontractors, HVAC installers) which claim to be LC-competent. Moreover, the emergent practical LC variants show that the Swedish adoption of LC (when it happens in the first place) follows patterns apparent in the adoption of many other management concepts – i.e., picking parts of the full concept and shaping it to local needs, thus giving the adoption different scopes in the building processes and firms. This might mean that each variant could be further customized to fit the business activities, business model, corporate culture, organizational structure, and even local peculiarities of a specific company. As such, while those variants can be disseminated to interested parties via communication and training activities, it is highly probable that each party will then take the variant that applies most to them, and further contextualize it to completely fit their case. This is the first Swedish research study investigating the LC state-of-art on such a scale. It provides empirical evidence of a Swedish state-of-art that cannot be found in previous, narrower studies. It also shows that the diversified implementation of LC in Sweden departs from a more “purist” understanding of LC. As such, LC research, training, information, and dissemination, might need redirection to realistically meet industry demands. In parallel, LC practice should possibly be informed by a combination of top-down and bottom-up strategizing. Finally, a stronger cross-industry collaboration may be needed for facilitating LC knowledge and practice in Sweden. Future work can include the continuation of the present study into shaping the way forward for practical LC implementation in Sweden – as issues claimed to have been solved by LC (e.g., high production costs), are still apparent. This could mean that besides processes, the effect of LC on organizational needs, culture, value streams, development, growth, and human interaction, should be further investigated. This can include the enrichment of the identified variants with more relevant concepts, processes and tools able to help attaining industry and company demands, the incorporation of those enriched variants in the portfolios and strategy of organizations advocating for the use of LC, and, crucially, considering the integration of sustainability and circularity with LC, through a stronger focus on processes like end-of-life disassembly instead of demolition, and production oriented to recycling and reusing.

2015

Ireland is emerging from a deep recession following a 75% reduction in Architectural, Engineering & Construction (AEC) output, causing reduced demand, employee redundancies, workforce emigration and company closures. This paper proposes Lean Construction (LC) as an antidote. However, LC theory is not widely taught in Irish universities and field research and case studies are very limited – sector research is 0.002% of industry research expenditure. LC is in its early stages in Ireland and is gaining momentum thanks to the Lean Construction Institute Ireland (LCII) Community of Practice (CoP). This paper looks at professionals understanding of lean and LC and compares LC theory with current practice. Research was gathered through a literature review, three surveys (n=48; n=42; n=116), three focus groups (n=22) and eight interviews (six expert) and was analysed through NVivo Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS). The main findings show that LC theory does not comp...