Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton

Lean is a body of knowledge dating back hundreds of years focused on sustainably growing an organization.

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During the last 20 years the construction industry has been rapidly adopting some of these tools to improve productivity.  

Field Productivity: What is Lean Construction? Maximize customer value while minimizing waste by leveraging people.

Major advancements were made by Henry Ford and during WWII with the Training Within Industry (TWI) program.  

Toyota made major contributions to the body of knowledge from 1948-1975

The term “lean” was only coined 30 years ago in 1988 by John Krafcik with Greg Howell and Glen Ballard starting to apply the concepts to construction around 1995.  


The core concept of lean is maximizing customer value by minimizing waste and leveraging people.  

The book Lean for Dummies elegantly defines value-add to the customer as having to meet 3 criteria:  

  1. The customer must be willing to pay for it.
  2. It must transform the raw materials (inputs) in some way.
  3. It must be done correctly the first time.

Learn to identify and eliminate your waste

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Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

The Six Pillars of Task Productivity in the Field
Contractors can guarantee labor productivity on their projects by leading their project teams to focus relentlessly on ensuring that these 6 Pillars of Productivity are supporting each task on the job site.
Lean Principle - Stop Work (Until Problems Are Corrected)
All construction projects will run into some degree of problems. It is how the project team chooses to manage these problems that ultimately determines the outcome of the project.
Lean Principle - Kaizen (Every Detail Matters)
As contractors build their businesses, it is important to look at every detail from the first meeting with a potential customer through winning and building the project. This same attention to detail also applies to supporting operations and talent.