The growing context of globalization permanently increases pressure on the construction companies to improve their performances in order to resist to the constraints of competitiveness in the international market. It has become ineluctable to look for introducing a new alternative capable of bringing creative improvement to the traditional production system. This paper will relate mainly to the most relevant management techniques in the construction industry, and more specifically, the lean construction concept. Initially, we will determine the main characteristics of the construction industry compared to the manufacturing industry according to three levels: on-site production, one of a kind projects, and complexity. Subsequently, we will focus our attention on the main sources of waste in the construction industry. Finally, a rigorous comparative study will be carried out to show the contribution of the lean construction tools in the promotion of traditional construction especially at the level of the following factors: Creating value and eliminating waste; Planning and mutual coordination; Site organization. Lean construction as Last Planner System (LPS), Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Just-in-Time philosophy, Visual management (VM) and 5S have shown a great ability to improve the traditional production system through waste reduction, encouraging people involvement, ensuring a pull flow production, and promotion of a continuous improvement philosophy.

The construction industry is considered among the largest consumers of natural resources (non-renewable materials, fossil fuels, water...). It is also an important source of generation of solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to its negative impacts on the environment, most construction projects are characterized by the non-respect of the triptych (Cost, Time, Quality) and a high accident rate compared to other sectors. Lean construction (LC) is a new production philosophy which has the potential of bringing innovative improvements in the construction sector. It is a systemic approach to meeting customer expectations by maximizing added value and reducing all forms of waste. Based on international standards (AFNOR, GRI, UNEP, ISO 26000...) and recent researches published in the most reliable databases, this study aims at exploring the concept of sustainable development in the context of the construction industry and examines how the LC tools (Prefabrication, Value Stream Mapping, Poka-Yoke, visual Management, and 5S) can have an impact on the three dimensions of sustainable development (environment, economy, society). This work brings a new reflection by constructing an interaction matrix between the Lean Construction tools and sustainable development.

The development of more effective management techniques has become essential for the improvement of working conditions within the company. The construction industry is characterized by unpredictable and fluctuating construction processes which increase the level of risk of accidents. In this context, this work aims at conducting a synthesis of the most reliable research in the field of safety management in order to study the contribution of Lean Construction practices in the promotion of safety. The study evaluates the potential effectiveness of Lean Construction tools such as (Last Planner System, Visual Management, 5S, Error-proofing) in promoting the safety on construction sites. This study shows that lean construction tools have a great potential to improve the safety performance. Several Lean Construction practices such as the correlation between scheduled tasks and the ability of the staff working on site, choosing of working methods in compliance with safety requirements, the incorporation of visual tools, and the Simplification of workflow could minimize the risk of accidents and promote the worker safety through minimizing hazards, motivating people involvement in the planning phase and preventing human errors.

In the new global economy, Lean Construction has become an effective way to design construction systems, which aims at reducing all forms of waste and creating the maximum of value for the customer. However, previous studies have reported that there are various implementation approaches, and most construction practitioners have applied this management philosophy according to their own understanding of Lean Construction principles. The main aim of this study is to develop a conceptual model for a successful deployment of lean construction. In this paper, an original generic model has been proposed based on a rigorous analysis of six relevant Lean Construction models that have been designed, validated, and tested in several countries (USA, UK, Malaysia, Germany, and Brazil). The findings of this work show that there are nine main Lean Construction principles and which are: customer focus, supply, continuous improvement, waste elimination, people involvement, planning and scheduling, quality, standardization, and transparency. Moreover, these principles have been divided into 33 sub-principles based on an extensive literature review of reliable documents (research papers, review papers, books, conference papers, and thesis) that have been published between 1992 and 2017.

The big challenge for each company is the implementation of an appropriate risk management strategy. Through this work, we seek to draw up an inventory of Moroccan companies supply chain. The objective is to identify the main risks, their relationship with the performance of the supply chain and to establish an overview of the risk management systems. For this reason, a research model was developed and concretized by quantitative data collected from 29 Moroccan companies. The analysis of the data show that the performance of the supply chain is strongly influenced by the importance of supply chain risk in particular the supplier and demand risks, and leads to insist on the importance of integrating a device adapted to the management of these Risks, especially in the upstream part of the supply chain.