Lean Processes for Sustainable Project Delivery
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132, Issue 10
Abstract
Facility owners and project teams often struggle to engage “green” or “sustainable” requirements on building projects and can incur additional project costs as a result. Although “investments” in high performance building features can be paid back through operational savings, the project delivery methods currently adopted by most teams are laden with process waste. Lean production principles have been proven to reduce waste and improve process performance in highly complex development and production environments. Adopting these lean principles, this paper reports a study that identified the presence of value and waste in a sustainable building project. Through an empirical investigation of the Real Estate and Facilities Division of Toyota Motor Sales, Toyota’s capital facility delivery process was mapped to identify both the steps in project delivery critical for success (value) and those that are waste. The investigation focused on the South Campus Facility, which received U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification at a project cost equivalent to a conventional facility. Through post hoc process-based analysis, insight about what added value and waste in sustainable project delivery at Toyota was obtained. The results also identify further improvement opportunities to Toyota’s delivery process. For corporate facility owners and the Architecture Engineering Construction industry, the results unearth insights about how to successfully and economically deliver sustainable facilities.
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Acknowledgments
The writers of this paper wish to thank Toyota Motor Sales Real Estate and Facilities, and the Lean and Green Research Initiative and the Partnership for Achieving Construction Excellence (PACE) at Penn State for their support of this research.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132 • Issue 10 • October 2006
Pages: 1083 - 1091
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 25, 2005
Accepted: Mar 20, 2006
Published online: Oct 1, 2006
Published in print: Oct 2006
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