Producing things or production flows? Ontological assumptions in the thinking of managers and professionals in construction

Abstract

New approaches to production management can be conceptualized as treating production as flow rather than transformation. These alternatives can in turn be regarded as reflecting opposing ontological positions, holding respectively that reality is constituted of temporal process, or atemporal substance. The new production philosophy thus arguably represents a process ontology radically different from the atemporal metaphysics underlying conventional methods and theories. Moreover, research in physics education has identified the disjunction between ontological categories of 'substance' and 'process' as a particularly acute barrier to understanding process phenomena. Studies are presented which demonstrate the possibility of specifying and classifying mental models, with regard to two important management solutions in construction. Thus, procedures typically adopted in Quantity Surveying and the implementation of Structural Engineering Design are examined. Methods of measurement used in Quantity Surveying are designed to account primarily for physical, rather than temporal properties. In design, the emphasis is on representing properties of finished structures, rather than the construction processes. The process is then managed by treating the design and its Things or Flows? Rooke, Koskela, Seymour 2007 1 execution as separate products. It is argued here that alternative, more effective management solutions are derived from a process ontology.

Current condition and future directions for lean construction in highways projects: A small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) perspective

“…identified from the macro-factors in Lean implementations and SMEs as outlined in Section 2.1 from the investigations of Alarcon et al 2005, Johansen and Walter (2007), Rooke et al (2007), Jørgensen and Emmitt (2008), Leong and Tilley (2008), Mossman (2009), Sarhan and Fox 2013, Wandahl (2014), Cano et al (2015), Pasquire et al (2015a) and Pasquire et al (2015b). This kind of theory grounding forms one of the fundamental approaches in qualitative data analysis (Dillon and Taylor, 2015).…”

“…(2) Project delivery systems: commercial, design, procurement and contractual issues (Rooke et al, 2007;Sarhan and Fox, 2013;Cano et al, 2015;Pasquire et al, 2015a),…”

Evaluation of the Promotion of Through-Life Management in Public Private Partnerships for Infrastructure

“…Firstly, it can be thought that the question is about failed change management: the targeted state is well-known, and consists of the use of new methods and tools, but it has been difficult to realize that change due to organizational inertia. Secondly and, perhaps more importantly, it can be argued that TLM also requires new underlying theories and new behaviours, that is, cultural and cognitive change [96][97][98], which is much more difficult to achieve than just the implementation of new methods and tools.…”

Performance measurement in the UK construction industry and its role in supporting the application of lean construction concepts

“…First, aggregating the BoQ items into self-contained construction operations is done by client representives and may not match the way the contractor intends to do the works (Hoare and Broome, 2001). The second is due to the lack of transparency in the way that prices are made up as to the contractor's assumptions about profit and quality of work (Rooke et al, 2007). In total, two methods were identified by Rooke et al (2007) as examples of results-based thinking (CESSM and the design/construction dichotomy) while three as examples of flow-based thinking (the activity schedule, the LPS and claims planning).…”