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This study aims to set out to identify and evaluate potential obstacles to successfully implementing lean construction (LC) as a result.

Several indicators were recognized as major obstacles following an exhaustive assessment of the literature and a multicriteria decision analysis based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) of information obtained from a questionnaire survey that was directed to practitioners in the Indian construction industry.

The results of this AHP model suggest that “Managerial” and “Inadequate resources” categories with a priority weight of “0.361” and “0.309” have the highest levels of influence, respectively, while “Inadequate knowledge” and “just in time (JIT)” categories with a priority weight of “0.053” and “0.034” have the lowest levels of influence, respectively.

Construction companies can use the study’s findings as a guide to determine whether they are ready to embrace LC, learn more about the components needed for implementation or investigate any challenges that may arise. These businesses can then create plans to promote the adoption and application of the lean philosophy.

The Indian construction industry may see great success with LC management initiatives. LC concepts have been adopted by many nations, but during the past 20 years, there has only appeared to be a limited amount of lean implementation in the Indian construction industry. It seems that several structural and cultural barriers are preventing its effective implementation. Organizations will not be able to determine what improvement efforts are required, where these efforts should be directed or which initiatives could provide the best outcomes if they are unaware of the elements that influence the effective implementation of LC.

Construction management is ameliorated by the lean construction concept in many direct and indirect ways to reduce waste of construction process and improve the value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of the implementation of lean construction in the Bangladeshi construction industry and to prioritize these factors that constitute these challenges.

A comprehensive literature review was used for shorting the global challenges of implementing lean construction. Subsequently, these challenges were incorporated into a structured questionnaire for survey. A total of 164 valid responses were collected from Bangladeshi construction practitioners involved in different types of construction organizations. The results were analyzed using the Relative Important Index (RII) and Mann–Whitney U test.

The findings revealed 41 challenges of lean construction implementation in the Bangladeshi construction industry. The highest ranking challenges are the lack of awareness about lean construction, lack of skills, training and lean techniques, unwillingness to change the existing culture, lack of management commitment, fragmented and cyclic nature of the construction project and unavailing communication between all project participants. The study also discusses some universally applicable solutions to overcome these challenges.

By the findings of this study, the Bangladeshi construction industry could get a new insight into the challenges of implementing lean construction. It could play a very important part in the body of knowledge, as it reveals the challenges of implementing lean construction for the first time with the socio-economic context of Bangladesh. Exploring the findings, the study could help the stakeholders, companies, academician, researchers and government to focus their effort and resources on the significantly appropriate issues. Furthermore, this study may beneficial to those developing countries especially in South Asia, who have shared the same socio-economic status with Bangladesh.

To deal with the present situation and recover after the COVID-19 pandemic, construction firms are required to recognise the trends in construction supply chain management (CSCM) for the upcoming years and determine the appropriate practices towards the trends for the improvement of construction activities in terms of strategy, tactic and operations. This paper aims to recognise key trends in CSCM and uses these trends as strategic criteria for the evaluation and prioritisation of lean construction (LC) tools at different project phases including design and architectural engineering, planning and control, on-site construction and safety management.

The integrated analytic hierarchy process–Delphi method is used to collect and analyse the data from construction experts to evaluate the importance levels of the CSCM trends and recommend the appropriate tools for LC practices to improve project performances.

Seven key CSCM trends are identified: lean supply chain management (SCM), supply chain (SC) integration, SC standardisation, SC problem-solving, SC information-sharing, SC flexibility and SC sustainability. Based on these trends, a set of prioritised lean tools are suggested for LC practices, in which “virtual design construction” (VDC) and “last planner system” are considered as the central tools. These two LC practices can be integrated with other effective tools to support the strategic, tactical and operational targets in construction supply chain (CSC) projects.

This study gives the managerial implications by developing an application framework of LC practices for CSC projects. The framework promotes “VDC” as a strategic tool for the phase of design and architectural engineering and considers “last planner system” as the central LC practice for the phase of project planning and control. The framework also focuses on the improvement of efficiency in construction operations by taking into account the aspects of on-site collaboration, problem-solving, improvement and safety.

Up to date, there is still a lack of researches in classifying and prioritising the significant LC tools for each project phase to deal with CSC issues in both breadth and depth. Thus, this study is performed to provide construction managers with the awareness of CSCM trends on which they can focus to have strategic criteria for selecting LC practices to improve CSC performances.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for assessing the lean construction management performance (LCMP) of engineering projects using the analytic network process-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (ANP-FCE) model.

Literature review and questionnaire surveys were used to achieve an evaluation index system for LCMP. The data needed to calculate the weights of the indices were derived from questionnaire surveys. The ANP and the Super Decisions (SD) software were used to calculate the weights of the indices and verify the validity of the weights. The FCE was adopted to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of LCMP, and the validity of the evaluation results was verified by applying the validity degree of maximum membership principle. The applicability of the method for evaluating LCMP was validated by empirical research.

The proposed method for assessing the LCMP using the ANP-FCE model is validated to be feasible. Decision makers can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of lean construction (LC) management of the evaluated project from the evaluation results.

Some subjectivity may exist in the assessment process due to questionnaire surveys, and only one case has been studied to validate the applicability of the method. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to increase the number of LC experts and cases over the world to make the proposed method more standard.

The research is expected to propose an assessment method of LCMP for construction enterprises, provide a reference to develop assessment standards for LCMP for building associations or governments and help decision makers know the improving path of LC management.

This research contributes to the literature by summarizing the commonly used lean management tools for quality, cost, time, safety and organization in practice, and proposing a novel approach for assessing the LCMP of engineering projects. The study is useful for researchers, project managers and decision makers engaged in LC.

Construction management is enriched in many ways by direct and indirect support of lean construction concept. The objectives of this study are to assess the current level of awareness about lean construction practice, to identify the potential benefits and challenges to implement lean construction in the Bangladeshi construction industry and to prioritize them.

A comprehensive literature review has been done to design a questionnaire for the survey. The final questionnaire has been designed with 27 lean tools, 41 challenges, and seven benefits of implementing lean principles in the construction industry. A total of 164 valid responses have been collected from Bangladeshi construction practitioners involved in different types of construction organizations. The result has been analyzed by Relative Important Index (RII).

The findings revealed 41 challenges to implement lean construction with seven benefits in the Bangladeshi construction industry. The result shows that an appreciable number of respondent familiar with the techniques of lean construction but they don't practice. The findings have also pointed out that the lean construction approach adds a positive impact especially on quality, safety, cost, productivity, and environmental level. The top-ranked challenges to implementing lean construction are: lack of awareness and skill, poor management, traditional culture and attitude of employees, inadequate resources and equipment and nonuse of modern techniques and technologies.

This study reveals real scenario of lean construction in Bangladesh. It contributes to the body of knowledge, as it uncovers for the first time the awareness level, benefits and challenges to implement lean construction with reference to the social, economic and cultural context of Bangladesh. Exploring the findings, the study could help the stakeholders, construction firms, academician, researchers and government to focus their effort and resources on the significantly appropriate issues. Again, the study may be beneficial to developing countries especially in South Asia which share the same socio-economic status with Bangladesh.

The construction industry is facing challenges not only for workers' mobility in the pandemic situation but also for Lean Construction (LC) practise in responding to the high-quality development during the post-pandemic. As such, this paper presents a construction workforce management framework based on LC to manage both the emergency goal in migrant worker management and the long-term goal in labour productivity improvement in China.

The framework is created based on the integrated culture and technology strategies of LC. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is taken to explore factors influencing the mobility of construction workers and to measure labour productivity improvement. The case study approach is adopted to demonstrate the framework application.

For method application, a time-and-motion study and Percent Plan Complete indicator are proposed to offer labour productivity measurements of “resources efficiency” and “flow efficiency”. Moreover, the case study provides an industry level solution for construction workforce management and Lean Construction culture shaping, as well as witnesses the LC culture and technology strategies alignment contributing to LC practise innovation.

Compared with previous studies which emphasised solely LC techniques rather than socio-technical system thinking, the proposed integration framework as well as implementation of “Worker's Home” and “Lean Work Package” management models in the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to new extensions of both the fundamental of knowledge and practise in LC.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

The construction industry is inefficient in terms of quality products, productivity and performance worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand. The construction industry is becoming more innovative, competitive and complex; and more participants are involved in construction projects. There are new attempts to implement the Lean construction philosophy, integrated project delivery method and building information modelling (BIM) technology in construction industry to improve productivity and efficiency. This paper aims to identify Lean and BIM integration benefits in construction industry globally and in the New Zealand.

A systematic literature review and case studies were used to identify various benefits of the integrating Lean and BIM in construction industry. It focused on articles published between 1995 and 2021.

Lean and BIM benefits identified in the study were documented such as benefits over the traditional approach, critically increased efficiency and visualization, better building process, better building performance, mitigating risk and reduce cost. Also, several factors were identified as major benefits such as improved onsite collaboration, better coordination, improve onsite communication, increase productivity, mitigating risk, reducing waste and reduced cost. The study showed integrating Lean and BIM in construction management practice will help reduce several challenges which affect expected goals and customer anticipation. The research outcome ultimately will assist different stakeholders in applying Lean and BIM in construction management practice.

This study practically focused on using the integration of BIM and Lean principles to improve the construction industry productivity and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and theoretically explain the general barriers to adopting lean construction practices in the construction industry regardless of the country or the company size or specialization, and to suggest future research studies in this field.

Systematic literature review was conducted to identify and explain the list of the barriers from scientific sources that were published before May 2018.

Twenty-nine barriers were identified and explained, and a proposed model to classify the sources of the barriers was chosen. Seventeen barriers were classified as internal environment-related barriers, five were labor-related, three were materials-related and four were exogenous barriers. In addition, some directions for the future research studies were suggested.

The barriers that are related to the advanced levels of lean construction (LC) implementations, to a specific location or to a specific LC tool were excluded.

This review will help to increase the understanding of the new concept of LC and might help to encourage the adoption of LC practices. Also, it might be useful for identifying the strategies to achieve successful application of these practices.

The purpose of this paper is to present the current knowledge surrounding social value (SV) and show how lean approach supports SV realisation in the delivery of construction projects.

A critical literature review was adopted, to gather the current knowledge surrounding SV from mainstream management sciences, construction management and lean literature. A total of 70 studies were critically reviewed.

The study establishes that the current level of awareness on SV is still low and there is a dearth of scholarly publications on SV especially in the construction management literature. The investigation reveals the potentials of lean approach in supporting the delivery of SV on construction projects.

This study conceptualises the community and the physical environment around where the construction project is executed as customers using lean production approach. It shows that the transformation, flow and value view supports smooth workflow, which enhances the achievement of SV objectives. This creates a new insight into how SV can be realised in construction project delivery.

This study extends the on-going debate around the need for SV in construction project delivery and contributes to construction management and lean construction literature on SV. Future studies could build on this to obtain empirical data and develop an approach/method that would support the evidencing of SV delivery on construction projects.