350

Lean construction implementation and its

implication on sustainability: a contractors case
study
Lingguang Song and Daan Liang

Abstract: The lean construction concept has been introduced successfully into the construction industry to reduce construction wastes. While lean concepts require a rethinking of existing construction processes and practices, there is also a
need for new tools to implement lean thinking. In addition, while lean can improve project time and cost performance, it
may also have an impact on sustainability, which mainly focuses on reducing environmental impact of construction. This
paper describes the implementation of lean construction and its implication on environmental sustainability from a contractor perspective through a case study. The study observed waste in both project-level contractor coordination and operationlevel construction performance. A vertically-integrated scheduling system that features location-based look-ahead scheduling and graphic weekly work planning was developed to improve project-level contractor coordination. To implement
waste elimination solutions at the operation level, construction simulation and 3-D visualization were applied to facilitate
lean implementation. Meanwhile, the impact of lean on sustainability were observed and discussed.
Key words: lean construction, concrete construction, sustainability, scheduling, simulation, visualization.
Resume : Le concept de construction allegee a ete introduit avec succe`s dans lindustrie de la construction afin de reduire
les dechets de construction. Bien que les concepts alleges demandent de repenser les procedes et les pratiques de construction actuels, il existe un besoin de developper de nouveaux outils pour implanter la pensee allegee. De plus, la methode allegee peut ameliorer le temps consacre au projet et le rendement economique, elle peut aussi avoir un impact sur la
durabilite, qui porte principalement sur la reduction de limpact environnemental de la construction. Cet article decrit limplantation dune construction allegee et de son implication sur la durabilite environnementale du point de vue de lentrepreneur grace a` une etude de cas. Letude a examine les dechets du point de vue de coordination de lentrepreneur au
niveau du projet et le rendement operationnel de la construction au niveau de loperation. Un syste`me dordonnancement a`
integration verticale qui comporte un ordonnancement a` lecture anticipee base sur lemplacement et une planification graphique hebdomadaire a ete developpe afin dameliorer la coordination avec lentrepreneur au niveau du projet. Pour implanter les solutions delimination des dechets au niveau operationnel, une simulation de la construction et une
visualisation tridimensionnelle ont ete utilisees pour faciliter limplantation allegee. Entretemps, limpact de la methode allegee sur la durabilite a ete note et examine.
Mots-cles : construction allegee, construction en beton, durabilite, ordonnancement, simulation, visualisation.
[Traduit par la Redaction]

Introduction
Lean is a proven management strategy for achieving significant and continuous improvement through elimination of
all waste of time and other resources (Womack and Jones
2003). Lean construction has been used to improve planning
practice, construction operations, and the project delivery
Received 7 February 2010. Revision accepted 20 January 2011.
Published on the NRC Research Press Web site at cjce.nrc.ca on
15 February 2011.
L. Song.1 Department of Construction Management, University
of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
D. Liang. Department of Construction Engineering &
Engineering Technology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX,
USA.
Written discussion of this article is welcomed and will be
received by the Editor until 31 July 2011.
1Corresponding

author (e-mail: LSONG5@uh.edu).

Can. J. Civ. Eng. 38: 350359 (2011)

process (e.g., Ballard 2000b). These efforts have resulted in

the development of lean construction methodologies such as
the last planner (Ballard 2000a) and the lean project delivery system (Ballard 2000b). The practical value of lean
construction has been demonstrated in many case studies.
For example, Salem et al. (2005) evaluated the effectiveness
of lean construction techniques, including last planner, increased visualization, daily huddle meetings, and first-run
studies, and their case study showed that these techniques
achieved successful outcomes.
While the construction industry is often associated with a
conservative and change-resistant image (Davis and Songer
2009), the acceptance of lean construction is also challenged. Lean thinking is new to many contractors, and
adopting lean construction requires a change of mindset
with regard to current practices (Howell and Ballard 1998).
To promote this mindset change, much effort has been focused on providing training in lean construction, developing
lean methodologies, and demonstrating lean principles and
their benefits through case studies (e.g., Salem et al. 2005).

doi:10.1139/L11-005

Published by NRC Research Press

Song and Liang

Another barrier to the adoption of lean concepts is the lack

of effective implementation tools to support lean-construction applications. The lack of acceptance may not be because of the lack of theories, but a lack of understanding
of the implementation process and tools necessary to support
the implementation. Traditional construction management
practice is well supported by a wide variety of tools, such
as the critical path method (CPM), databases, and computerized applications. Lean construction takes a different approach in managing construction processes (Ballard 2000a),
and existing tools based on the traditional management philosophy may either find new uses in the lean construction
environment or need to be updated for lean applications.
The primary purpose of this study is to illustrate the need
for lean implementation tools and their development from a
contractor perspective through a case study. The pilot implementation of lean construction principles in a concrete construction company was studied. Another objective of the
study is to evaluate the impact of lean on environmental sustainability during the construction stage, which aims at using
sustainable materials, reducing waste generation, soil pollution, water usage, and transportation, as well as minimizing
noise and disruption to local communities. While lean focuses on improving time and cost performance and can
bring immediate economical value to a contractor, environmental sustainability is aimed at a different aspect of value,
which is reducing environmental impact. Due to this difference in their focuses, there is a need to evaluate how lean
applications affect sustainability. While past studies are primarily focused on analyzing the impact from an integrated
design and construction perspective (e.g., Bae and Kim
2008), this study is to describe the impact during the construction stage from a contractor perspective through the
aforementioned case study.
The following section describes field observations and the
justification for applying lean construction concepts. It is
followed by a discussion of the need for supporting tools in
facilitating lean implementation and their development
through three field studies. The impact of these lean applications on environmental sustainability were also observed and
discussed.

Field observations
The concrete construction company involved in this study
was new to lean and sustainability applications and the company intended to conduct a pilot study to better understand
the application of lean in concrete construction and its potential impact on sustainability. A typical project of the contractor was identified as a case study and the project
involves a mixed-use, 30-story, reinforced concrete residential building. Daily field observation of the concrete construction operation was made for three consecutive months.
In the context of lean construction, waste refers to any resources consumed by activities that do not add value to meet
the needs of a client. Traditionally, many productivity studies have been mainly focused on improving individual construction activities. Lean construction also focuses heavily
on the management of interactions among different trades
and the elimination of waste associated with coordination issues (Ballard 2000b). Therefore, in this case study, it was

351

decided that field observations would be made on both individual activities at the operation level and the coordination
of different trades or subcontractors at the project level. The
following two subsections describe waste identified as well
as lean-inspired solutions.
Waste at the project level
At the project level, close coordination of different trades
is crucial to project success. The concrete construction process consists of formwork erection, rebar and embedment installation, concrete placement and curing, and formwork
removal. In addition to the concrete contractor, several other
contractors were involved in the sample project, including
the general contractor and several subcontractors for rebar,
plumbing, insulation, and electrical systems. Coordination
issues among contractors were found to have caused schedule delays, and several observations that are of representative nature are briefly described below.
First, during weekly planning, there was inadequate review and analysis of constraints, which caused delays. For
example, the direction of post-tensioning cable runs was
changed by the contractor to ease concreting work, and this
change was implemented but without appropriate approval
from the engineer. The general contractor spotted this
change, halted the construction, and called for an engineering review to evaluate its impact. Although the change was
eventually approved, delay had been incurred. Had this issue
been identified and solved through more proactive lookahead scheduling, the delay would have been avoided. Second, delays due to unbalanced crew productivity rates and
space conflicts were not uncommon. For example, a slab
formwork crew had to slow down to avoid space conflict
with a crew working on a shear wall. In addition, when a
crew was rushed or several trades were stacked together,
safety and quality also became real concerns. Third, some
subcontractors took a very narrow view of weekly scheduling by focusing only on their own work. This resulted in coordination problems and contributed to the chaotic behavior
of the operation. From a sustainability perspective, these delays and idleness of crews and equipment can also cause unnecessary energy consumption and air emissions. In fact, the
power and fuel consumption represents about 1.2% of the
total cost of a building construction project (DOC 2005),
while construction activities produce approximately 1.7% of
total US greenhouse gas emissions (EPA 2009). Although
this impact appears to be small from an individual contractor standpoint, the cumulative impact on sustainability can
be significant considering the enormous size of the construction industry. In summary, these observed issues are directly
or indirectly related to the lack of effective team coordination and look-ahead scheduling practice. The last-planner
methodology was proposed for the look-ahead scheduling
process.
Last planner is a lean-production-based project-planning
methodology that integrates a multiple-level planning framework that includes master scheduling, look-ahead scheduling, and weekly work planning to improve the reliability of
work flow (Ballard 2000a). The master schedule identifies
work packages and the overall execution strategy of a project. The look-ahead schedule is a detail plan showing work
to be done within a look-ahead time window, such as six
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352

weeks. Work tasks are screened for their readiness through a

constraint analysis, which evaluates the potential impact of
contracting, resource, engineering, and prerequisite work on
task performance (Choo 2003). This constraint analysis reduces work-flow variability and shields downstream processes from upstream uncertainties. Look-ahead scheduling
also encourages a pull-driven approach that pulls upstream
material and off-site work to match the progress on site
(Tommelein 1998). After look-ahead scheduling, ready
work tasks of the upcoming week are then transferred to a
weekly work plan, where specific field conditions are evaluated. Based on this evaluation, realistic commitments for
work progress can be made by last planners i.e., superintendents or foremen who decide the work that is to be
done the next day (Ballard 2000a). To facilitate implementation of the last-planner methodology, an integrated scheduling system was developed. The system along with its
implication on sustainability is discussed in a later section
entitled A vertically-integrated scheduling system.
Waste at the operation level
Industry research suggests that approximately 30%35%
of construction costs are wasted and do not add value for
clients (Forsberg and Saukkoriipi 2007). Waste in construction includes over-production, unnecessary inventory, double
handling of materials, delays and waiting, unnecessary
movement of people and equipment, over-processing, and
rework (Koskela 1992; Mastroianni and Abdelhamid 2003).
Similar types of waste were observed in this study, and root
causes of this waste are many. Other than poor trade coordination and the lack of effective scheduling, as described
above, several other causes were also observed, such as
less-optimal work procedures. Waste elimination, in a broad
sense, refers to the effort to eliminate waste by improving
and standardizing activities and processes.
From a sustainability standpoint, waste elimination efforts
from a lean perspective were found to have environmental
impacts of different natures (e.g., negative, positive, or neutral) and magnitudes (e.g., negligible or significant). For example, during the early construction stage, almost 30% of
the columns had excessive height that had to be chipped off
to ensure quality rebar placement at the upper floor supported by these columns. This issue was caused primarily
by a unique slopped-floor design and this issue was resolved
by an additional survey measurement and formwork marking
procedure. While the column height problem was resolved,
excessive noise and dust associated with the rework were
also eliminated. Other waste-elimination efforts of the contractor, such as reducing rework, idling, and double handling
of materials, also have a positive environmental impact.
However, if a contractors view of lean is limited only to
improving economical performance, this narrower view
of lean may not always result in a positive environmental
impact (Lapinski et al. 2006). In this study, for example,
the ready mix concrete was often found to be over designed
to avoid any quality issue and related schedule delay.
Although this has improved productivity, over-designed concrete also consumed more resources to produce and generated more pollutants. Similarly, while just-in-time delivery
of materials reduces on-site inventory, it also results in frequent deliveries, which generate more air emissions (Bae

Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 38, 2011

and Kim 2008). On the other hand, several proposals for reducing environmental impact were dropped by the contractor due to various cost and contracting reasons. As an
example, the concrete supplier was selected solely on the
cost basis regardless of transportation distance and associated environmental impact, since the project is a lump-sum
contract and the contractor has little incentive to address
sustainability issues. Other environmentally friendly solutions, such as self-consolidating concrete and concrete recycling, were not considered during design and contracting
stages and they would have been applicable if the contractor
had been involved in the design stage. In summary, the
value concept of lean must be aligned with that of sustainability to ensure a winwin of both lean and green.
Additionally, the traditional contracting method also needs
to be adjusted to emphasize the environmental aspect of
construction and promote contractors early involvement in
design to provide better sustainable design and construction
solutions.
While there are many forms of wastes identified through
the pilot study, two representative types of wastes that are
related to slab formwork installation and bulkhead installation and removal were presented in this pilot study. The objective was to demonstrate waste elimination, challenges
encountered, solutions developed, and the implication on
sustainability. These case studies are discussed in a latter
section titled Promoting changes at the operation level.

A vertically-integrated scheduling system

The need
Because master scheduling is determined by general contractors, the last-planner implementation effort within the
concrete contracting company was focused on look-ahead
scheduling and weekly work planning. During the pilot
study, look-ahead schedules were prepared for the upcoming
six weeks in bar chart format in CPM-based scheduling software. These schedules were shared with other contractors
during a regular contractor meeting. Although CPM and
bar-charts have been widely used for master scheduling,
their use in look-ahead scheduling has been questioned by
many researchers for its limited capability in modeling nonvalue-adding activities, such as various constraints, interruptions, waiting, and moving (Koskela 1992; Kenley 2005). In
particular, when CPM is applied to scheduling repetitive activities, such as repetitive high-rise concrete construction in
this study, the early start CPM schedule is not optimal because floats attached to the activities represent a significant
amount of waste (Harris and Ioannou 1998). Furthermore,
constraint analysis is a complex, multi-dimensional problem
in which various constraints e.g., time, productivity rate,
site layout, and space must be considered. Critical path
method and bar-charts are less optimal in expressing some
of the constraints and these limitations affect a project
teams capability to articulate and negotiate the constraints
with other contractors. For these reasons, a better form of
look-ahead scheduling format is thus required for the concrete construction involved in this study.
After look-ahead scheduling, ready work tasks of the upcoming week are then transferred by the concrete contractor
to a weekly work plan, which is in a calendar format. UnPublished by NRC Research Press

Song and Liang

fortunately, the calendar format was found to be less effective in conveying scheduling information for the day-to-day
crew coordination. For example, the spatial interaction
among different crews, material layout, and access constraints are not explicitly shown in a calendar schedule, thus
discourage the crews to discover potential performance issues. Therefore, there is also a lack of an effective weekly
or daily scheduling method that can facilitate scheduling at
the crew operation level.
In summary, a better integrated scheduling method that
supports scheduling efforts at different organization levels
with different levels of details and time horizons is desired.
Proposed scheduling system
The proposed vertically-integrated scheduling system supports scheduling at three different levels: (1) project master
scheduling at the general contractor level, (2) 3 to 6 weeks
look-ahead scheduling at the subcontractor level, and
(3) weekly or daily work planning at the field operation
level. Moreover, these schedules of different resolutions
must also be integrated so that information can be shared
freely among them. A literature search was conducted with
an attempt to find a system that meets the above requirements. Chua et al. (2003) developed a look-ahead planning
tool, integrated production scheduler (IPS), based on last
planner and the theory of constraints. Also based on last
planner, Choo et al. (1999) developed a program, WorkPlan,
to guide foremen in doing constraint analysis and weekly
work planning. However, both programs are essentially
based on CPM and bar charts, or their variations, whose
drawbacks have been discussed previously. While CPM and
bar-charts remain as the methods used for master scheduling, it was concluded that a new system for look-ahead
scheduling and weekly or daily work planning were needed.
Location-based look-ahead scheduling
One of the primary goals of look-ahead scheduling is to
shape a continuous and smooth work flow by fine-tuning
work sequence and balancing the work-progress rate. Kenley
(2005) argued that construction projects involve activities
that are repeated in varying quantities in multiple locations
and that these activities should be viewed as a continuous
flow instead of as discrete activities, as they are in CPM.
Based on this definition, a location-based scheduling (LBS)
method, also called flow-line or linear scheduling, was suggested for look-ahead scheduling, and commercial software
packages, such as DYNAProject and Vico Control, were
used to show that lean principles are better supported using
LBS (Kenley and Seppanen 2009). For the same reason, in
this study, LBS was adopted as the underlying algorithm for
the look-ahead scheduling of repetitive concrete construction
work.
An example of an LBS chart for a concrete construction
operation is shown in Fig. 1. An activity such as formwork
installation is represented by a sloped line, called a flow
line, in a two-dimensional time-and-space coordinate system. Activities are represented by different flow-line colors
or styles. The horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis is the location of an activity e.g., a concrete pour
section. The slope of a flow line represents its productivity
rate, which can be affected by many factors, such as work

353

quantity and complexity, crew composition, and labor skill

levels. Below, we summarize how the look-ahead scheduling can be effectively implemented using some features provided by LBS.
 Constraint analysis. LBS can graphically display constraints related to activity precedence logic, productivity
rate, and time and space buffers among different crews.
Other constraints, such as those related to resources and
weather, can also be traced.
 Work continuity. In LBS, the same activity performed in
different locations is represented as line segments of the
same style, and disconnected line segments indicate interruptions. This allows work continuity to be graphically
examined and manipulated.
 Work flow coordination. In LBS, parallel flow lines generally indicate a well-balanced and well-coordinated operation. Planners can study and shape the work flow in
the best achievable sequence and productivity rate based
on project objectives.
 Pull-driven scheduling. LBS allows planners to move a
flow line or a group of flow lines to a different start
time so that unnecessary waiting time and interruptions
can be eliminated.
Daily graphic schedule
For the more detailed weekly or daily work planning at
the crew level, a number of different scheduling formats
were evaluated, such as check lists, daily schedule forms,
crew planning charts, and pre-task planning forms (Hinze
2008). Jongeling and Olofsson (2007) presented a method
for the planning of work-flow by the combined use of location-based scheduling and 4D CAD. The introduction of 4D
CAD into daily work planning would definitely make fieldlevel communication more efficient, but 4D CAD is still a
fast-growing field and their applications to daily operation
of building construction has not been fully investigated.
Therefore, considering the practicality of various potential
solutions, a daily graphic schedule format, which overlays
daily activity scheduling information onto facility layout
drawings, was chosen as the basis for the weekly work planning. This graphic schedule format was chosen over other
formats because it closely resembles the actual site layout,
which makes it attractive to last planners.
Figure 2 shows a sample of a manually prepared graphic
schedule for a working day for a concrete construction operation. Activities and their locations are marked on the building floor plan, and a set of such scheduling charts can be
prepared based on the look-ahead schedule for each day of
a specified period. The graphic schedule places activities in
their working locations on the site-layout drawing, and thus
interference among activities, site logistics, and other types
of project information can be highlighted and analyzed
graphically. These features have greatly facilitated weekly
work-planning and schedule presentation by displaying complex data in an easy-to-understand way.
In summary, the proposed vertically-integrated scheduling
system uses three different scheduling methods, namely
CPM or bar-charts, LBS, and graphic scheduling, for master
scheduling, look-ahead scheduling, and weekly or daily
work planning, respectively. However, preparing and updatPublished by NRC Research Press

354

Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 38, 2011

Fig. 1. Sample location-based schedule.

Fig. 2. Sample graphic schedule.

ing LBS and graphic schedules manually proved to be very

time consuming because of the rather frequent changes of
project conditions. It is for this reason that the first attempt
to implement the proposed manual system failed. To make
the system practical to use, a decision was made to computerize the system. Due to the dominating popularity of
bar-charts, the contractor insisted on the use of bar-charts as
the primary way to create look-ahead or weekly schedules,
which means that the computerized system must be able to
allow schedulers to easily convert bar-chart schedules into
LBS or graphical schedule formats.
System development
The scheduling system allows users to create look-ahead
schedules and weekly work plans using commercial CPM
or bar-chart software, and then converts these schedules
easily into LBS or graphic schedules. After the conversion,
users can analyze, optimize, and communicate these LBS or
graphic schedules based on the last-planner methodology.
From a system development perspective, the scheduling sys-

tem contains two software components, which are LBSbased look-ahead scheduling and graphic weekly or daily
work planning. These components were developed using
Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic for Application (VBA).
The system also interfaces with two popular CPM-based
scheduling tools, Microsoft Project and Primavera Project
Planner, with which schedules in the form of CPM and barcharts are developed. Integration of these three scheduling
methods simplifies the sharing of scheduling information
and eliminates almost entirely the need for data re-entry.
Discussion of the software development is beyond the scope
of this paper, but the main features of the developed system
are described below from an end-user perspective.
Look-ahead and weekly schedules are first developed in
Microsoft Project or Primavera Project Planner and then
they can be converted into the LBS format for look-ahead
scheduling. Before the conversion, the system allows users
to define and filter activities and to specify flow-line style,
the look-ahead time window, and the sequence of work locations. Screenshots of the user interface are shown in
Fig. 3. The look-ahead schedule in bar-chart format and the
converting options are shown in Fig. 3(a), and a converted
LBS chart is shown in Fig. 3(b), along with a dialog box
showing a tasks attributes.
The converted LBS schedule provides a base schedule
that allows users to add detailed tasks, shape work flow, adjust buffers, and balance productivity rates. For constraint
analysis, in addition to the time and space constraints shown
in LBS, other types of constraints can be traced as task attributes, such as those shown in Fig. 3(b). While some attributes can be transferred from CPM schedules, new data
can be added manually or even automatically from external
applications. For example, the system can pull weather forecasting information automatically from an online weather
forecast service (National Weather Service 2005), as shown
in Fig. 3(b). This function enables users to factor weather
conditions into scheduling. Easily accessible attribute data
and constraint information allow users to better analyze constraints and to track outstanding issues.
Published by NRC Research Press

Song and Liang

355

Fig. 3. Bar chart and converted LBS chart. (a) Master schedule and exporting options; (b) LBS chart and task attributes.

In the weekly work-planning component, users can generate a base daily graphic schedule by transferring information
from a look-ahead schedule. To achieve this, users must first
define task locations in a construction layout diagram, which
can be prepared with the drawing tools embedded in Microsoft Excel or by importing a layout drawing from CAD programs. Based on these inputs, the system can automatically
generate daily graphic schedules for each working day
within a user-specified time frame, as shown in Fig. 4.
These schedule charts describe activities and their locations
on the site-layout diagram, and additional constraint information can be added graphically to the chart, and then
shared with others.
The use of this computerized program made the second
attempt of applying the proposed vertically-integrated scheduling method successful. The time required to manually prepare LBS and graphical schedules were eliminated and

schedulers spent more valuable time in analyzing, optimizing, and sharing information with other project participants.
As a result of this careful scheduling and closer coordination, several schedule delays related to unnecessary work
discontinuity and stack of activities were forecasted and
avoided later.
On the sustainability front, the new scheduling system
does not appear to immediately affect sustainability. However, effective scheduling improves work flow and minimizes conflicts, which reduce project duration and
unnecessary idling, thus making less of an environmental
impact. For example, the pull-driven approach of last planner effectively minimizes unnecessary floats attached to repeating activities and ensures a continuous work flow that
is more economically and environmentally efficient. Better
yet, there is no or little additional cost associated with better
management practices to achieve positive sustainability imPublished by NRC Research Press

356

Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 38, 2011

Fig. 4. Daily graphic schedule.

pact. This practically makes green free. Waste elimination

through lean-improved management practices provides a
unique approach for achieving this free green concept.

Promoting changes at the operation level

To put lean thinking to work, changes to traditional practices are almost inevitable, and unfortunately these changes
frequently face resistance, as was the case in this study. Resistance to change is considered a significant factor in the
failure of many improvement initiatives (Bovey and Hede
2001). There are various reasons for this resistance, but this
study was particularly focused on the lack of (1) understanding of the need for and benefits of changes, and (2) training
on changed processes. Two case studies are presented below
that show how simulation and visualization can improve the
understanding and training along with a discussion on the
implication on sustainability.
Identifying the need for and benefits of changes
Many change initiatives fail at the very beginning because
people fail to see the need and benefits associated with the
changes. Simulation techniques have been used as a valuable tool for evaluating the potential level of productivity improvement that can be achieved by lean (Tommelein 1998;
Halpin and Kueckmann 2002). In this study, simulation was
used to demonstrate the benefit of changes in an effort to
overcome the inertia of the status quo. A simulation study
of slab formwork installation is presented here as an example. The formwork installation operation involves lifting and
installing prefabricated timber slab panels and the subsequent carpenter finishing work. Major resources required by
this operation are a formwork crew, a tower crane, and prefabricated formwork panels.
Ideally, these resources should be coordinated to ensure a
continuous flow of work that minimizes waste i.e., waiting and interruptions. However, field observations showed

that this operation was rather unpredictable and that there

was no clear and stable pattern of work flow. The actual
performance ranged from a perfect, continuous flow of installation work without any interruption to a flow that was
frequently disturbed for various reasons. One of the scenarios of the current practice was captured in a simulation
model using CYCLONE (Halpin and Riggs 1992), shown in
Fig. 5, which represents the scenario in which a formwork
panel is lifted by the tower crane, settled in place, and then
completed with carpenter finishing work. After one panel is
done, the same work cycle is repeated to install the next
panel, and each pour section is assumed to have six panels.
This work procedure represents the worst-case scenario because the formwork crew is frequently forced to wait for
the crane between two such work cycles whenever the crane
is relocated to satisfy requests made by other crews.
To keep the focus on the formwork operation as a schedule-critical activity, crane requests made by other crews are
modeled as a random process with an exponentially distributed arrival time and normally distributed service time. It is
desirable to reduce waiting time of the formwork crew and
unnecessary movement of the crane. Based on the pulldriven concept, an ideal solution is to complete all panel
lifting and settling for a pour section at once so that the
crane can be released and carpenter finishing can then commence. This scenario is represented in a simulation model
shown in Fig. 6. Panel lifting and settling activity has a
higher priority than carpenter finishing and request processing, and this mechanism ensures that all panels are lifted
and settled continuously and without interruption. Many
other variations based on models shown in Figs. 5 and 6
can be configured for comparison studies. In this paper,
only the performance of the above-mentioned models is
compared and described below.
Although a seemingly easy solution, its implementation
relies on reliable formwork panel supply and collaboration
among crews sharing the tower crane. When the revised inPublished by NRC Research Press

Song and Liang

Fig. 5. A scenario of the current installation process.

357
Fig. 7. Productivity improvement against the crane demand.

Fig. 6. Ideal installation process.

stallation process, as described in Fig. 6, was presented, the

superintendent and several foremen involved were initially
skeptical about the benefits and effect of the proposed
change. As a result, there was a lack of motivation for the
change. To promote a common understanding of the need
for and benefits of the recommended change, a comparative
simulation study of the two installation processes was conducted. In this study, the benefit of the change is measured
by the percentage improvement of the formwork installation
productivity, which is measured by hours per panel. While
most inputs to the simulation models are relatively fixed
(e.g., panel lifting, settling, and finishing time), the arrival
time of crane requests made by other crews and the service
time of these requests depend upon how busy the job site is.
These inputs can vary considerably along the project timeline. A factorial experiment was conducted to determine the
sensitivity of productivity improvement against varying levels of crane demand, and the levels of request arrival time
were modeled as exponential distributions with mean values
of 5, 10, 15, and 20 min. Levels of service time were modeled as normal distributions, with mean values of 5, 10, 15,
and 20 min, and the standard deviations were assumed to be
20% of the mean value. Simulation experiments were conducted, and Fig. 7 shows the magnitude of productivity improvement against different levels of crane request and
service time. The experiments also show that, while the
formwork installation productivity is improved, the cranes
service to other requests is not affected. This result is con-

sistent with the actual observations in the field. More importantly, the experiment results inspired discussions among
different crews regarding the impact of this change and the
need for collaboration. From a sustainability perspective, reducing waiting time of the formwork crew and unnecessary
movement of the crane represents a positive environmental
impact. For example, tower crane is often regarded as a top
energy guzzler on a building construction project and a large
amount of fuel and energy is needed to support its operation.
Although the overall spending on power and fuel represents
only about 1.2% of building construction costs (DOC 2005),
considering the enormous size of the construction industry,
even a small improvement can lead to substantial economic
and environmental savings.
Training on changed processes
Bulkhead installation and removal are presented here to
illustrate how process visualization has helped in communicating a changed process to the operation-level workforce. A
bulkhead is a temporary formwork strip that blocks fresh
concrete from a section of forms or closes the end of a
form at a construction joint. Holes are first drilled into the
strip to allow rebar, cables, and conduits to run through,
then the bulkhead is installed along the edges of a slab
formwork. This is followed by the placing of rebar, cables,
and conduits, and finally by concreting. After the concrete
has cured, the bulkhead is removed using prying tools. Carpenters normally install the bulkhead as one piece to save
time, but this makes bulkhead removal difficult and time
consuming because the bulkhead as a whole piece is blocked
by conduits, rebar, and cables running through the concrete
slab. Intense prying actions may also break the concrete slab
edge and cause quality problems. These problems can be
avoided by revising the installation process. The new procedure calls for an additional step of cutting the bulkhead horizontally into two pieces along the centerline, through which
most of the rebar and cables run. The bottom piece of the
bulkhead is installed first, followed by the routing of cables,
conduits, and rebar, and finally by the installation of the top
piece of the bulkhead.
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358

An issue in implementing this change is educating workers about the change. The majority of workers in the sample
project cannot communicate very well in English, and they
also relocate frequently from job to job. These issues made
the proposed change difficult to implement effectively and
consistently throughout the company. Therefore, effective
training was necessary, and the training format was expected
to be highly graphical and easy to understand without relying heavily on verbal or written instructions. Three-dimensional process visualization can easily illustrate the process
change, and the underlying model can be updated for future
continuous-improvement efforts. Therefore, process visualization of the bulkhead installation process was developed
using Autodesk 3ds Max. The viewing perspective is fixed,
and the scene, consisting of about 3000 frames, is then rendered. Figure 8 shows a screenshot of the process animation,
which proved to be very effective in explaining the changes.
With the new procedure, the time required for bulkhead installation is slightly increased, but bulkhead removal time is
significantly reduced, and damage to concrete is minimized.
Figure 9 shows a comparison of bulkheads removed with the
old procedure and the new procedure. These two pictures indicate that the new procedure allows the top and the bottom
pieces of a bulkhead to be removed easily without painstakingly shattering it into debris for removal, as is the case with
the old procedure. Some of the bulkheads can also be reused. The 3-D visualization was easily understood by the
crews and it was also used in several other job sites. From
the sustainability perspective, according to EPA (2009),
wastes from construction projects account for about 25% of
the total US solid waste volume and about 50% of these
construction wastes are disposed in a landfill. Although a
minor change, the revised bulkhead work process not only
improves time and quality performance but also brings positive environmental impact by reducing construction wastes
and promoting material re-use.

Can. J. Civ. Eng. Vol. 38, 2011

Fig. 8. Visualization of bulkhead installation.

Fig. 9. Bulkhead removal with (a) the old procedure and (b) the
new procedure.

Conclusions
As shown in this case study, waste in construction can be
found in areas from contractor coordination to individual
work procedures, and much of this waste can be traced to a
lack of planning and to a resistance to changing the status
quo. At the project level, lack of coordination among contractors and crews was cited as the major factor contributing
to project delay. To improve the coordination, a verticallyintegrated scheduling system was developed and it features
an interface with CPM-based schedules, a location-based
look-ahead scheduling algorithm, and a graphic weekly
planning method. Although the immediate application of
this system is for repetitive concrete building construction,
day-to-day operations performed by many subcontractors
are essentially repetitive, and these contractors face scheduling problems similar to those that are addressed in this paper.
At the operation level, waste is pervasive, and many solutions are seemingly straightforward. However, their implementation may well be resisted by the operation personnel
for many reasons. Among them are a lack of understanding
of the benefits of change and inadequate training on the revised processes. Simulation was found to be very valuable

in identifying the need for changes and evaluating the benefits of lean thinking prior to field implementation. More importantly, it can inspire the talk among project members for
collaboration and continuous improvement. Furthermore, effective training is an important step for implementing
changes. Three-dimensional process visualization offers a
self-explanatory way to educate work-force on revised work
processes.
From a sustainability perspective, lean can result in environmental impacts of different natures (e.g., negative, positive, or neutral) and magnitudes (e.g., negligible or
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Song and Liang

significant). A contractors narrower view of lean that focuses only on economical measures may actually result in a
negative impact on sustainability. Therefore, the value defined in lean must be aligned with that of sustainability to
achieve green-value while improving time and cost performance. Furthermore, at the project management level,
improving management practices using lean concepts incurs
little or no additional cost for achieving both lean and
green values. This free green approach provides a
unique and low-cost strategy in achieving sustainability. At
the field operation level, to promote effective waste-elimination that is of value to both lean and sustainability, innovative contracting methods should be applied to emphasize the
environmental aspect of construction and promote contractors early involvement in design to provide better sustainable design and construction solutions.

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