Applying Lean principles to a building refurbishment project: experiences of key stakeholders

Abstract

Lean construction can be conceptualized as a process-oriented approach derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS). Elements of the approach include pull-driven scheduling, minimizing stock held on site, visual management, levelling workloads and teamwork. While there has been empirical study of Lean in relation to new-builds there is a need to analyse its applicability to other contexts, such as refurbishments. The effect of using Lean on the refurbishment of a municipal building in Germany is investigated in this study. Participant observation, archival project documentation and semi-structured interviews are used to collect data on the use of Lean. The findings indicate the difficulty of applying Lean to refurbishment projects, particularly operating pull-drive scheduling, and the experience of the project brings into question the practicalities of applying the fundamental Lean principle of having a smooth level flow of work to refurbishment projects. Minimizing stock held on site with JIT delivery of materials also proved problematic, which was exacerbated by the commercial arrangements between subcontractors and suppliers providing no incentive to Lean. The use of the visual management aspects of Lean, such as performance charts, coupled with weekly meetings, were easier to adapt to the project and generally had a beneficial impact.

Application of lean principles for building refurbishment projects in Sri Lanka

“…Despite the wider range of benefits, various challenges are encountered when implementing refurbishments. In general, refurbishing a building is a risky, complex, and less predictable task in the construction industry (Alwis et al, 2022), and has various issues which may be affected project participants and building occupants, compared to new construction (Bryde and Schulmeister, 2012;Ekanayake et al, 2018). For instance, managing refurbishment projects will encounter some unique problems when dealing with people, the project itself (Premachandra et al, 2019), and the environment (Lund et al, 2016).…”

“…The most common risks in refurbishments are characteristic uncertainty (Lund et al, 2016), because of their lack of information, space limitation for reconstruction projects, and maintaining safety and health which involves many players including building users. Moreover, it is challenging to assess the existing building and estimate its future performance (Ali et al, 2018) due to difficulties in working times (Bryde and Schulmeister, 2012;Zambotti et al, 2019)). Further, as revealed by Ali and Au-Yong (2022), the lack of involvement of responsible parties due to the lack of benefits received by them as financial sponsors (Zambotti et al, 2019) causes a lot of issues in building refurbishment projects.…”

“…Although lean offers a set of successfully implemented tools and techniques in construction projects (Kemmer and Koskela, 2012), there is a scarcity of research that has investigated the practical applications of lean in the management of building projects in Sri Lanka (Weerasinghe et al, 2023) specifically the refurbishment projects (Premachandra et al, 2019). According to the findings of Bryde and Schulmeister (2012), the lean concept has been used for refurbishment projects in a global context, but not in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the applicability of lean construction principles for successfully implementing refurbishment projects in Sri Lanka.…”

A novel heritage BIM (HBIM) framework development for heritage buildings refurbishment based on an investigative study of microorganisms

“…Restoration activities are considered to have greater complexity compared with new constructions as a result of complex building data (Ali et al , 2008), to complex cost distribution (Buys and Miller, 2011) and broad interactions amongst stakeholders (Klotz and Horman, 2010). Difficult refurbishment projects are characterised by single to multi-level construction projects, whether newbuilds or otherwise, with particular user needs for multi-faceted constructions, complex properties, complexities in the layout of the site, the structural age, the participation of multiple organisations and stakeholders and extended structural history (Ali, 2014; Bryde and Schulmeister, 2012; Kemmer and Koskela, 2012). The implementation of an intricate construction project requires a novel input to resolve the related to structural and technical design aspects with unique purpose provisions, such as the co-operation between expert professionals to prepare the project paperwork and contract details (Killip, 2013; Li and Yang, 2014).…”

Developing and evaluating a framework for process improvement in an alliance project: a New Zealand case study

“…Consequently this research investigates the potential of the application of lean concepts to alliance projects. Bryde and Schulmeister (2012) reviewed the literature on lean construction applications in different types of construction projects and pointed out that further empirical studies of lean principles in different contexts are still required. This study determines the extent to which the lean concept can be applied to projects executed using the alliance procurement system.…”