Lean Construction & Housing

Lean Construction is based upon proven production management practices as applied to project delivery and outcomes. Lean Thinking principles have delivered a revolution in design, supply chain, contracting, services delivering applied operational efficiencies to an extent never seen before, globally in most business and industry sectors including the construction and building sector.

Lean changes the way we think about work and opens our eyes to how well it is done now and to how it could be throughout to whole construction process from design to hand over.
LEAN CONSTRUCTION links the combination of objectives to deliver a project with:
• High quality outcomes.
• Lowest cost or highest customer value.
• Shortest delivery time.
• Most flexible service delivery.

Lean Thinking as applied to Construction Processes strives to provide “Continuous Synchronous Flow” to maximize value and minimize the 8 wastes of Lean. By using the specific Lean techniques, tools, and applications in project delivery you should achieve new exceptional levels of efficiency and tender competitiveness. Lean Construction challenges the traditional belief that there must be a trade off between time, cost, and quality to deliver a project.

The Lean Principles

• The identification and elimination of waste
• Precisely specify value from the next process owner and ultimate customer
• Clearly identify key parts of the process that deliver what the customer values (the value stream) and eliminate all non value adding steps
• Make the remaining value adding steps flow without interruption or constraints by managing the interfaces between trades, supply and the different steps
• Let the next process and customer pull – don’t make anything until it is needed, then make it quickly
• Pursue perfection by reflection of the lessons learnt along the way and apply continuous improvement to make them better for next time

Critical success factors

• LEAN Thinking understanding and initial hands on Lean support from experts in LEAN tools and techniques
• Design is based on facts and accurate information, based largely on the performance of products, systems, suppliers and components
• Where possible use proven process elements, carry-over of proven suppliers, materials, systems, and components to new projects.
• Spend time analyzing and planning up front, using cross functional knowledge incorporated in the design faze to prevent problems during supply, manufacture and construction
• Maximize concurrent working between supply, supplier, contractor and construction during design development and project management.
• Rely more on performance, flexibility and actual activity and less on formal contracts and price (Lowest overall cost)
• Use benchmarking and referee’s of suppliers’ performance against each other on a range of generic criteria
• Develop close relations with first tier suppliers and involve them in the design and project management plans (Encourage them to have similar relations with 2nd 3rd tier supplier's)
• Gain a LEAN in depth understanding of production processes and the resources involved in them
• Allow a level of autonomy with responsibility, authority and accountability to be placed with the workforce
• Real time feedback on performance
• Training and multiskilling

We have affiliates who have many years of experience in Lean Construction delivering major savings and improvements. Contact us to meet and discuss the opportunities and support needed for you to train and lead your team, suppliers and contractors to delivering improved outcomes to your customers whilst improving your bottom line profits.

Allow us to assist you in:

• Having the best in class coordination of supply, trades and construction
• To examine and improve projects like your construction production system
•  Providing a process holistic approach, a collective end to end view and development of a seamless workflow
• The application of this proven approach introducing key concepts, principles and techniques for the first time into your business, to potentially give you a distinct competitive advantage, increased capacity and profits.

Contact us for more information