Glenn Ballard

The foundations of lean construction

Looks at a broad range of topics related to the processes of design and construction. Its overall aim is to look at ways that clients can improve the value for money outcomes of their decisions to construct buildings.

Target value design: using collaboration and a lean approach to reduce construction cost

Target costing is an effective management technique that has been used in manufacturing for decades to achieve cost predictability during new product development. Adoption of this technique promises benefits for the construction industry as it struggles to raise the number of successful outcomes and certainty of project delivery in terms of cost, quality and time. Target value design is a management approach that takes the best features of target costing and adapts them to the peculiarities of construction. The concept of target value design is introduced based on the results of action research carried out on 12 construction projects in the USA. It has been shown that systemic application of target value design leads to significant improvement of project performance—the final cost of projects was on average 15% less than market cost. The construction industry already has approaches that have similarities with elements of the target value design process or use the same terminology, e.g. partnering and target cost contracts, cost planning, etc. Following an exploration of the similarities and differences target value design is positioned as a form of target costing for construction that offers a more reliable route to successful project outcomes.

COMPETING CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT PARADIGMS

The Lean Construction Institute’s (LCI) goal is to develop and deploy a new way of thinking about and practicing project management. Projects are conceived as temporary production systems, to be designed in light of the relevant ‘physics’ of the task to be accomplished. It is claimed that complex, quick, and uncertain projects cannot be managed in traditional ways. Detailed CPM schedules, after-the-fact tracking, earned value analysis, and competitive bidding are inadequate to the challenge of today’s dynamic projects. There are four roots of this Lean Construction approach: success of the Toyota Production System, dissatisfaction with project performance, efforts to establish project management on a theoretical foundation, and the discovery of facts anomalous (impossible to explain) from the perspective of traditional thinking and practice. The last of these four is explored in this paper, which presents the current state of construction management thinking as one of conflict between competing paradigms.

Learning to see work flow: an application of lean concepts to precast concrete fabrication

Reducing the lead time for engineered‐to‐order products can allow more time for exploration and testing of design alternatives, reduction of project durations, or some combination of both. Combined with improved reliability of work flow on site, more fabricated products can be pulled to site when needed, thus avoiding unnecessary inventories. Lead time reduction benefits both the design and the construction phases of projects, and it benefits the fabricator as well. Integration of engineering and detailing may offer the greatest potential for lead time reduction. However, fabrication lead times can also be reduced. This paper describes the application of lean production concepts and techniques to structural precast concrete fabrication. The key change was learning to identify and utilise work flow as opposed to focusing management effort on keeping workers and plant busy. Results included shop cycle time and lead time reduction, increased throughput rate, and improved productivity.

Uncertainty and project objectives

The idea that project objectives can be set ‘once and for all’ is challenged by recently-collected data which shows that significant uncertainty remains as late as the start of construction. Findings from the data raise questions which are answered by an examination of the role and nature of objectives.

Management Thinking in the Earned Value Method System and the Last Planner System

Management theory has been neglected in the construction industry, which has rather focused on best practices. This paper investigates the theories implicit in two prevalent project control systems: the earned value method (EVM) and the last planner system (LPS). The study introduces two fundamental and competing conceptualizations of management: managing by means (MBM) and managing by results (MBR). The EVM is found to be based on MBR. However, project control based on MBR is argued to be inappropriate for managing at the operational level where tasks are highly interdependent. The LPS is found to be based on the MBM view. The empirical evidence from literature and case study suggested that the MBM view is more appropriate to manage works when it is applied to the operation level where each task is highly interdependent.

Lean management methods for complex projects

This paper reviews the principles, history, applications and current research issues associated with lean construction, in order to provide a foundation for future research in this area. Lean is a management approach that emerged in the automobile industry and spread initially to other forms of repetitive manufacturing and ultimately to service industries. Despite its success in practice, the lean philosophy and methods have not been fully evaluated and incorporated into the academic literature. The question remains to what extent lean management methods are unique and beneficial and how they are related to principles and models in management science, production management and related fields. One of the relevant issues is the adequacy of lean methods to the management of complex projects. As project complexity increases, emergent phenomena increase. Consequently, leadership must become more adaptive and less prescriptive in order to be successful. This paper describes some of the key lean management metho...

Understanding project success through analysis of project management approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that project success is dependent on the project management approach selected, relative to the challenges posed by the project, and to develop an analytical model for analyzing the performance of the project organization. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on literature review, model development, interviews, and case studies. Findings – The findings define two different approaches in project management: The prescriptive approach focusses on the formal qualities of the project organization, including governing documentation and procedures. The adaptive approach focusses on the process of developing and improving a project organization, project culture and team commitment. The two approaches have been identified through studies of three different case projects. An analytical model, referred to as the Pentagon model, has been applied for analyzing the performance of the project organization and explaining the project management approach. The mod...

Value Stream Mapping for Make-to-Order Products in a Job Shop Environment

This paper investigates the use of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) for make-to-order products in a job shop environment, specifically the fabrication of Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) sheet metal ductwork. The use of VSM for analyzing the production of repetitive units has proven to be successful in different industries. The use of VSM for studying the production of non-repetitive units requires some adaptation from repetitive-unit uses in order to successfully capture the attributes of multiple product families required at different frequencies and volumes. The VSM for a job shop environment has to be flexible to deal with the dynamic nature of job shops, e.g., maps may change daily according to the products scheduled for fabrication. Other aspects of the production system for sheet metal ducts that should be captured in the maps include the availability of a multi-skilled workforce for shop and site work, single flow of product and worker, and development of forecasts and capacity allocation to deal with frequent changes on incoming orders from project sites. Besides discussing the peculiarities of this job shop environment and their representation in a VSM, the authors discuss the process for elaborating VSMs for this production system and the definition of data used to develop them. Finally, the authors present a VSM for the fabrication of sheet metal d ucts and discuss it using Lean Production concepts and recommend systematic data collection to reveal current practices and opportunities for improvement.

Construction Engineering—Reinvigorating the Discipline

Construction engineering is all about production, and producing something useful is the very reason for projects to exist. How then to explain why construction engineering has progressively fallen out of focus in construction project management education and research? For an answer, the development of the discipline of construction management since the 1950s must be understood, a development that yielded a non-production-oriented approach to project management, one that provides the currently accepted operating system for managing the work in projects. This paper first traces the history of the development of the traditional operating system and related commercial terms and organizational practices. It argues that traditional practices rest on an assumption that careful development of a project schedule, managing the critical path, and maximizing productivity within each activity will optimize project delivery in terms of cost and duration. Subsequently, an alternative operating system, developed and prop...