ABSTRACT:

Learn managerial initiatives in the building sector in Great Britain might be quite worthwhile. The Committee on Egan underlined this, which said that the ideas of lean thinking will contribute to improved quality and efficiency for the UK building sector (Sarhan, S. and Fox, A., 2015). Although the adoption of Lean Construction (LC) ideas has brought major advantages to some states across the world, the lean application of lean construction in the UK remains restricted during the past two decades, especially after the release of the Egan Report. There seem to be several structural and cultural impediments to its successful implementation. In failing to identify the elements affecting the effective implementation of LC, businesses will not know how to improve, how to target those efforts, or what efforts may achieve the greatest outcomes. This study was therefore aimed at identifying and assessing the potential obstacles to effective LC implementation in the UK. Following a comprehensive study of literature followed by a statistical analysis of data obtained from a survey questionnaire targeting UK construction professionals, several obstacles have been identified as major impediments (Cano, S., Delgado, J., Botero, L. and Rubiano, O., 2015). Further study has highlighted the significance of only three obstacles. The findings of this study might be utilized to help researchers, practitioners, and businesses from the UK construction sector focus on important problems that are vital for the LC to be implemented successfully.

Keywords: Lean Construction, UK construction industry, Structural and Cultural Barriers

INTRODUCTION:

According to academics, the construction industry has become a slowly moving business with many difficulties, to assess its performance and propose ways to improve it over the past 60 years. The industry has produced several studies (Wandahl, S., 2014). The most recent was the Egan study, ‘Rethinking Construction,’ released in 1998 to address customer problems related to construction industry services. The Egan study focuses on the wish to make a shift in the industry’s culture, style, and management. The paper analyzed case studies from all across the world, including instances of building enhancements. In the main geographical zones of the UK, the Built & Human Environment Revision has grown to promote the adoption of lean ideas, as shown by seminars organized by the Ciria and Construction Productivity Network (CIRIA) (CPN). The Building Line Enhancement Program(CLIP) which BRE set up in 2003 to support case studies generated by Building Excellence has been expanded to cover these activities. The creation of LCI and Lean Constructing consultancy and promotional firms also contributed to the understanding of LC Principles. Lean Construction Institute in the UK (LCI-UK). Some companies and institutions now provide LC education, which helped to move lean thinking into the mainstream of building education (Mano, A.P., da Costa, S.E.G. and de Lima, E.P., 2020). Despite this ongoing work, the research found that a lean culture is much less present than that stated by big UK building businesses. The degree of developments in other nations in the LC literature review compared to those in the UK shows an even greater disparity.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Transforming Construction Using Lean Thinking: Lean Construction

Lean thought is a philosophy that is based on lean manufacturing ideas. The lean principles stem from Henry Ford’s introduction of the assembly line idea at least as far back as the 1900s that revolutionized the manufacture of automobiles. At the beginning of the 1950s, Toyota lead by engineer Ohno developed lean production management concepts (Li, S., Fang, Y. and Wu, X., 2020). Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, has been focusing on discovering ways of converting ‘made waste into value and shifting attentions and thoughts on workers’ efficiency attention production in machines from the limited emphasis of craft production to the entire production system. The research team, working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s International Motor Vehicle Programme, has designed the word “lean” to represent the nature of the Toyota manufacturing system’s waste reduction and to contrast it with the artisan and mass production methods. Alternatively, Koskela is ascribed to the first study of lean production principles for usage within buildings. This key technical paper examined thoroughly the concepts presented in the machine Changing the World in building context, formulating the production model for transformation fluid value, known as production theory of TFV, which may lead to better performance. He suggested that construction production should be reviewed as a combination of conversion and flow processes to eliminate waste, where conventional construction thinking focused on conversion operations and ignored concerns of the flow and value. There are widely acknowledged 8 categories of trash here: Transporte, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-Processing, Defects, Misuse of Skills Since then, scholars have been working closely on TFV theory and lean approaches with practitioners. In 1993, it also published, and followed by initiatives like the Lean Construction Institute, the International Lean Construction Group (IGLC) was established. Womack and Jones therefore outlined the lean process of thought and laid down the five Lean Production Principles. This theoretical base is referred to by them as ‘lean thinking’ to distinguish it from pure production. The five Lean principles are: value, stream value, flow, sweat, and perfection. The work carried out by Womack and Jones (1996) was viewed as a strategic approach to the lean manufacturing system outlined in 1990. “There was in a sense Koskela”s overall philosophy of management. The Lean Project Delivery System (LPDS) and Last Planner System (LPS) of the Production Control were created by LCI, founded in 1997 by Howell and Glenn Ballard, which implements the idea of building in manufacturing. The LPDS consists of the definition of the project, the lean design, the lean delivery, and the lean assembly. The system Last Planer is a tool that focuses on the construction planning function using functions such as the ‘see-forward plan’ to plan what can be done by removing constraints and the ‘Percent Complete Plan’ (PPC) that monitors the Look-ahead Plan and requires delays, which are analyzed in the root causes. A different approach to project management is Lean Construction (LC) since it has clear objectives for the delivery process, aims to maximize customer performance at the projects level, simultaneously designs products and processes, and applies production control from conception to delivery throughout the product’s entire lifetime. LC’s main principle is to minimize or eliminate waste, which is reflected in non-value-adding operations, and to enhance value-adding effectiveness (Dave, B., Hämäläinen, J.P., Kemmer, S., Koskela, L. and Koskenvesa, A., 2015). LC includes just-in-time (JIT) practice; use of pull-driven scheduling; decrease in labor productivity variability; improved flow dependability; waste disposal; operational simplicity; and the introduction of benchmarking. Evidence from the usage of lean thinking showed that the application of lean concepts to construction has several advantages. These benefits include higher productivity, more dependability, better quality, greater customer satisfaction, increased predictability, shorter timelines, lower waste, cost reduction, improved design build-ability, and enhanced safety. Slight building initiatives might prove very profitable for the UK building sector. Diverse nations have achieved major gains with lean ideas, but it does not appear to be often used among UK construction companies. There appear to be a variety of hurdles to successful magnitude (Mossman, 2009). This study thus aims to identify the obstacles that might hinder the effective adoption of LC in the UK and enable the building sector to focus on genuine concerns.

Barriers to the Successful Implementation of Lean Construction:

Before many concepts about manufacturing, the construction industry opposed the view that construction is different since the building projects are one-of-a-kind, more complicated, and take place under several uncertainties and restrictions. The building business is often claimed to be extremely different from manufacturing since each product is unique. Egan (1998) disagrees with this assumption as he considers that there are many repetitive procedures in the building sector. The task forces say that the building sector has two options: “either disregard all of this by believing that construction is so unique that no lessons can be learned, or to strive to better by rebuilding, and to get to know those who have done it abroad as much as possible.” These kinds of obstacles are just transitory; they can delay but not block spread (Bashir, A.M., Suresh, S., Oloke, D.A., Proverbs, D.G., and Gameson, R., 2015). In various nations throughout the ………………………………………………………..

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