APPRIASAL OF LEAN CONSTRUCTION PRACTICES ON BUILDING PROJECTS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Lean construction as the introduction of a new form of waste management, it deals with waste reduction, which is one of the basic concepts of lean thinking. In general, project managers tend to conceptualize ‘waste’ as physical construction waste, but lean thinking believes that there are noticeable wastes hidden in construction processes (such as nonvalue-adding activities and waiting time). The aim of this research is to appraise lean construction practices with a view to revealing the predominant lean practices for avoiding construction waste and putting the necessary collective efforts to minimizing waste in the study area. The study population comprised construction professionals who have participated / used lean construction method(s) on building projects executed from 20132019. A structured questionnaire on a five point Likert’s scale was adopted for data collection. The methods for data analysis included the Mean Item Score (MIS) for ranking the lean construction practices used in building projects, evaluating the critical success factor, challenges and the benefits of engaging lean construction practices on building projects; Factor analysis was applied to reduce the large number of items to a sizable number of factors; One way ANOVA was adopted to examine the views of construction professionals on the factorized components. The study revealed that the most lean construction practices used in building projects are plan of conditions and work environment, Identify and collect appropriate data which are relevant to the defects and the process that needs improvement, conduct each day with a meeting. Also, the success factor for the implementation of lean construction practices was revealed to be top management’s commitment and leadership, organizational change with, and application of appropriate lean tools/techniques while the challenges to the implementation of lean according to this study are materials unavailability, lack of management commitment and lack or inadequate resources. The benefits of engaging lean practices on building projects was revealed to be that it enables materials to be delivered just in time, it improve the corporate image of the organisation and it gives a better opportunity for projects to be completed within budget. From the study, it was concluded that construction professionals uses just a few lean construction practices more than other lean practices, also the unavailability of materials was the major challenges to the implementation of lean practices while the benefits for engaging in lean construction practices was also revealed by the construction professionals who have been involved in the use of the construction practices. Therefore the study recommends the need for a high level of awareness on the usage of other lean methods, develop a process to guide and assist organizations in assessing the likely factors that will lead to waste.