Combining Lean Methods to Improve Construction Labour Efficiency in Renovation Projects

Abstract

The construction industry has experienced stagnation and perhaps even a decline in construction labor productivity for decades. This is problematic as labour costs in construction constitute up to 60% of the total project costs.This research aimed to investigate further how much complimentary lean construction tools could impact Construction Labor Efficiency (CLE). CLE is a key element in the denominator when calculating Construction Labor Productivity (CLP) because CLP focuses on maximizing value-adding-work time (numerator) and minimizing nonvalueadding-work time (denominator).A case study research approach with four renovation projects was used to collect Lean Implementation Degree (LID) and CLE data. The research findings showed a strong positive correlation between LID and CLE in the four renovation projects.The findings have implications for both academia and industry professionals. Academia now has initial results on which future research can be built. Industry professionals now have a better understanding of how lean improves efficiency and hereby better arguments for why lean construction methods must be implemented in future renovation projects.The research was limited by a small sample size of only four renovation projects. Thus, further research is needed to validate the effects in renovation projects and other types of construction projects as well.

Activity sampling in the construction industry: a review and research agenda

“…Activity sampling manually observes and records labourers' time on different categories of activities, such as productive and non-productive time. Later, lean terminology is added to activity sampling (Agbulos and AbouRizk, 2003;Neve et al, 2021). The time spent on other necessary and unnecessary waste activities, such as preparatory work, material handling, tools and equipment, travel, personal and waiting, is also identified (CII, 2010).…”

“…For productivity study, activity sampling increases productivity by identifying waste in the workflow (Cristina et al, 2015;Khshati and Breesam, 2020;Nassri et al, 2021) and eliminating the identified waste through appropriately planned strategies (Hajikazemi et al, 2017;Karunarathna et al, 2019;Lavado-Guzman et al, 2021). The lean implementation degree was strongly correlated with productive time (Neve et al, 2021). The positive correlation between productive time identified by activity sampling and labour productivity improvement has also been quantitatively identified (Gouett et al, 2011).…”

Correlation of Construction Workers’ Movement and Direct Work Rates

“…Over the years, the technique has been employed by practitioners and researchers for several different purposes: (a) to measure and conceptualize flow and workflow (Kalsaas, 2011;Wernicke et al, 2017); (b) to identify the share of time spent on a single activity of the same construction process on different job sites, e.g., transport (Pérez et al, 2015); (c) to provide insight for comparing the average productive workforce utilization to respective work processes in various projects (Picard, 2002); (d) to measure labor efficiency and inefficiency (Neve et al, 2021; (e) to set up a baseline measure for improvement and to serve as a challenge to management and the workers (Neve and Wandahl, 2018); (f) to understand the evolution of the share of time spent in different work categories along the years (Wandahl et al, 2021), among others.…”

Location-Based Work Sampling

“…Over the years, the technique has been employed by Lean practitioners and researchers for several different purposes: (a) to provide insight for comparing the average productive workforce utilization to respective work processes in various projects (Picard, 2002); (b) to measure labor efficiency and inefficiency (Neve et al, 2021;Ramaswamy, 2009); (c) to measure and conceptualize flow and workflow (Kalsaas, 2011;Wernicke et al, 2017); (d) to identify the share of time spent on a single activity of the same construction process on different job sites, e.g., transportation (Pérez et al, 2015); (e) to set up a baseline measure for improvement and to serve as a challenge to management and the workers (Neve & Wandahl, 2018); (f) to understand the evolution of share of time spent in different work categories along the years (Wandahl et al, 2021), among others.…”