Lean Construction Initiatives: An Overview

By Author: indiahomes marketing
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Whether it is a home, a commercial building, a large housing project, a foot-over bridge, a flyover, a factory, or even metro rail tracks, the principles and disciplines of Lean apply to all sorts of constructions. In lean construction practices, every individual and aspect (i.e. design/conceive, develop, execute & finish) associated with the construction comes together and works as a cohesive team. Lean construction practices modify the way work is done and make it a lot more planned and well defined. Lean construction practices are based on the core motive of maximizing returns and minimizing waste throughout all the phases of construction.

Every construction project goes through five different phases of construction i.e. project design, project development, project execution, and project finish and project delivery. Creating lean workflow is primary for every construction project. Herein you must clearly define every project stage, timelines and schedules.

1. Project Definition – The practices of lean construction suggest that every stage of construction has to be clearly defined with timelines set, ...
... teams developed and quality measures well defined in place. The key focus of lean construction practices is to eliminate waste from every phase of construction.

a. Establishment of general requirements
b. Development of conceptual design, primary design & detailed designs
c. Taking government approvals
d. Construction team development
e. Vendor development
f. Material planning and material procurement scheduling
g. Onsite planning
h. Construction & commissioning
i. Delivery and paperwork

2. Elimination of Waste/Bottlenecks – Any sort of erroneous planning and development that takes place during the execution phase of construction is termed as waste. Labors not turning up at site as per schedules or even unnecessary movement of people are part of waste in lean construction practices. These can be eliminated only through detailed on-site as well as offsite planning and aforetime allocation of backend resources/teams.

3. Development of Clearly Specified Schedules - At the onset of the project, all the teams come together and agree for project deliveries and deadlines. This further allows in shifting work to other consecutive teams to take over their work.

In lean construction practices, the project scheduling is oftentimes done backwards. This ensures all the sub-teams consider what work must be done before any scheduled activity. It also allows in citing the most probable constraints/bottlenecks in the construction process.

Lean Construction Practices In India – World over largest of the buildings are being constructed in a span of days and not months as it used to be earlier. The latest example is Mohali – India, where a 10 storey building was constructed in mere 48 hours. This resulted only from lean construction practices. The millennium city of Mumbai has very limited space and equally high Mumbai property card. Mumbai real estate market is constantly under tyranny of being immensely expensive. As a result there is a constant pressure on the builder and the Mumbai real estate developers to keep construction costs under stern control in order to prevent property prices from soaring high. They are quickly adapting to lean construction practices for keeping their expenses minimal and no waste in the construction process.

Author Bio

Nitin Sabharwal is an enthusiastic marketing explorer who redefines prospective subjects for his works in digital advertising & marketing, e-commerce, and content development. With a commanding work experience of 16 years, Nitin’s participation in digital enabled services with a special emphasis on the Internet has earned him several respectable positions in India’s premier companies. Positioned as VP-Marketing of IndiaHomes, Nitin is maneuvering the company’s branding, Performance, CRM, Contact Centre, Event Marketing and Digital Marketing. Academically, he holds an MBA degree from IMT Ghaziabad. Mumbai real estate, Mumbai real estate market, developers