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PurposeThe construction industry is facing challenges not only for workers' mobility in the pandemic situation but also for Lean Construction (LC) practise in responding to the high-quality development during the post-pandemic. As such, this paper presents a construction workforce management framework based on LC to manage both the emergency goal in migrant worker management and the long-term goal in labour productivity improvement in China.Design/methodology/approachThe framework is created based on the integrated culture and technology strategies of LC. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is taken to explore factors influencing the mobility of construction workers and to measure labour productivity improvement. The case study approach is adopted to demonstrate the framework application.FindingsFor method application, a time-and-motion study and Percent Plan Complete indicator are proposed to offer labour productivity measurements of “resources efficiency” and “flow efficiency”. Moreover, the case study provides an industry level solution for construction workforce management and Lean Construction culture shaping, as well as witnesses the LC culture and technology strategies alignment contributing to LC practise innovation.Originality/valueCompared with previous studies which emphasised solely LC techniques rather than socio-technical system thinking, the proposed integration framework as well as implementation of “Worker's Home” and “Lean Work Package” management models in the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to new extensions of both the fundamental of knowledge and practise in LC.

Many construction enterprises in the world are practicing lean construction and benefiting from it. China, with a big construction industry, has promoted lean concepts in recent years, but there are still obstacles in practice. The aim of this study therefore is to introduce a Chinese construction company, demonstrating some the most successful lean construction outcomes in China.A case study approach is used with whole process of the project's implementation being tracked. Data are collected from interviews, meetings and statistics. The study shows that three important aspects collaboration lead to the success of lean construction implementation. Relationships among culture, standardization and informatization are explored. The study recommends a lean culture frame of employee value and customer value integration and incentives providing. Standardization is employed as Work structuring tool to provide operability and offer the foundation to informatization. Last Planner®system (LPS) practice is aided by an hour level precision control to improve efficiency. This research presents a case for improving lean construction effectiveness in Chinese context.

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Knowledge collaboration is beneficial for project parties to assess valuable knowledge resources from others in order to enhance their competitive advantages. However, knowledge collaboration is hampered by the special project environment and temporary structure of construction projects. Based on relational contract theory, this study employs trust and relational norms as the two relational governance mechanisms for improving knowledge collaboration. Next, this study explores the effect of relational governance mechanisms on knowledge collaboration and the moderating role of the building information modelling (BIM) application level. We collected data from 166 responses in construction projects. Our results reveal that relational norms significantly impact knowledge collaboration, which is contrary to the effect of trust. Furthermore, the BIM application level has an interactive effect with relational norms, which improves knowledge collaboration. These findings reveal that the level of BIM application significantly affects the effectiveness of relational governance mechanisms. This study suggests that project managers should help project parties to develop BIM responsibilities in order to facilitate collaborative performance.