Finding the Way to Success in Implementing Lean Construction in an Unfavourable Context

Abstract

Developing countries are facing sever productivity problems in their construction sectors. Lean Construction has proven to be an effective solution for such situations. However, when it comes to lean implementation, the operational attributes of the countries can cause significant impacts on the priorities, tools and techniques. This paper took Iranian construction as a sample and sought to identify and prioritise the factors that could significantly contribute to the success of the lean implementation in its context. A comprehensive literature review identified 44 critical success factors (CSFs) in a global setting. The factors were classified into four groups and were presented to industry and/ or academic professionals in the form of semi-structured open-ended interviews that enabled collecting experts' opinion about the priorities to be given. A thematic analysis of the results indicated that lack of awareness and knowledge of lean construction is the main obstacle for the Implementation. It was also established that more priority should be given to Organisational and Project Management Factors when creating Lean Construction implementation roadmap of the country. This is the first study of its type in Iran and is expected to shed light on the factors that can turn the implementation of Lean Construction a successful story, even in this unfavourable context.

A Review of Components and Configurations of Survey Research in Lean Construction

“…Yet, thematic and statistical analysis were the most prominent methods of analysing the qualitative and quantitative data, respectively. Similar to data collection, this component was also present in all of the reviewed studies(Bygballe and Swärd 2014;Enshassi and Abu Zaiter 2014;Koohestani et al 2020). 6.…”

“…Almost 90% of the studies involved pre-design field exploration that was conducted based on literature reviews, interviews, observations and questionnaire surveys in the order of their frequency. The associated data was found to be of qualitative nature except in one case that quantitative data was collected using a questionnaire survey (Abduh and Roza 2006;Koohestani et al 2020;Li et al 2019). 3.…”

Readiness Factors for Sustainable Lean Transformation of Construction Organizations

“…Construction projects are unique and differ from each other in scope, objectives physical setting, and characteristics [25], and it is not possible to generalize a common methodology for all projects. In addition, the peculiar nature of the construction industry and its difference from organizations in other sectors poses issues, and the differences can result in significant impacts on the choices of tools, techniques, and methods to be adopted [26]. Therefore, readiness assessment is extremely important and to date, there are no studies that have holistically investigated and established the lean readiness factors and framework to assess the readiness of construction organizations for lean transformation [27].…”

Lean and Sustainable Project Delivery in Building Construction: Development of a Conceptual Framework

“…Analyzing the literature on LC reveals certain themes which have been studied considerably. These topics include, but are not limited to, LC and BIM (e.g., [33][34][35][36][37][38]), waste and value (e.g., [39][40][41][42][43]), LC and sustainability [44][45][46][47][48][49], design and planning (e.g., [50][51][52][53]), LC implementation barriers and enablers (e.g., [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]), and implications of LC application (e.g., [3,[62][63][64][65]). LC-BIM and LC-sustainability themes are explained and discussed further in the following text, as they are closely connected to the purpose of this study.…”