Embending Sustainability Dynamics in the Lean Construction Supply Chain Management

Abstract

The world's habitat is being deteriorated despite of the precautions taken. Construction industry is among the industries which highly effect the environment adversely not only through its outputs but also through the construction process and its inputs. The main focus in dealing with the reduction of its footprint has been on sustainable building certificates which mainly analyse the output of the construction activies. There is need to analyse the construction supply chain as a whole and to embed sustainability dynamics in construction supply chain management. Lean construction project management contributes to the reduction of the environmental footprint of the construction industry, enabling reduction in waste, and increasing value added activities. For this reason, based on an in depth literature review, this paper analyses and establishes the principles of the integration of the sustainability dynamics into lean construction supply chain management.

Green supply chain management in construction: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

“…The majority of papers in the dataset did not attempt to define Green SCM in construction. Most of the papers that focused on secondary SCM concepts offered definitions of these, for example: green manufacturing (Seth et al, 2016), green procurement (Shen et al, 2017), sustainable supply mix and sustainable materials management , sustainable or lean construction (Sertyesilisik, 2016), waste management (Kucukvar et al 2016), and reverse logistics (Chileshe et al, 2016). Balasubramanian (2014) proposed that Green SCM in construction is based on three dimensions: environmental, economic and operational performance, and these may also be interpreted as dimensions for evaluation.…”

“…The role of the construction client/developer as a catalyst for environmentalism was argued by some (Udawatta et al, 2015). The role of designers was underlined as important given their influence over the choice of material and the final product design Arroyo et al, 2016;Sertyesilisik, 2016), although Wong et al (2016) noted that designers may have limited incentives to collaborate fully in green supply chains.…”

“…Fragmentation was mentioned by Dainty & Brooke (2004) and Aho (2013), while Arroyo et al (2016) and Neppach et al (2017) considered the complexity of projects and the multiple stakeholders involved. A few papers considered the structure and processes of construction systems (Sertyesilisik, 2016;Wong et al, 2016). Balasubramanian and Shukla (2017a, b) discussed the project-based operational processes of construction and the large number of firms involved in short-term, dyadic contractual relationships.…”

Employment of Unskilled Craft Workers in the UAE Construction Projects: Explicating the Reasons

“…), industrial construction (e.g., oil & gas platforms and mining infrastructure) and residential and commercial construction (e.g., single-family dwellings, office buildings, condominium developments etc.). Occupationally, the sector includes array of skill and job categories, professionals, managers, for technical and manual jobs; ranging from Architects, Engineers and Project man-agers, to Carpenters, Electricians, Steel fixers and general labour workers [15].…”

“…While the UAE's construction industry is almost entirely made up of non-citizens, nearly every foreign worker in the UAE construction sector -from the highest paid Architects, Engineers, Surveyors, and Designers to the lowest paid demolition workers, water carriers, and cleaners -is a migrant on a temporary work visa. UAE citizenship is only very rarely granted to foreigners [15]. Roughly 80% of the UAE's total population is comprised of migrants, both high and low skilled.…”