Construction Research Congress 2020
Lean Construction Impact on the Environmental Footprint of a Construction Project in Colombia: A Case Study
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2020: Project Management and Controls, Materials, and Contracts
ABSTRACT
The construction industry has positioned itself as one of the main drivers for economic growth and infrastructure development in the world. Nevertheless, this industry remains as one of the most polluting, non-environmentally sustainable, and less committed to the implementation of long-term solutions for sustainable development. Lean construction, as a project management philosophy, has had a positive impact on resource efficiency and productivity of construction projects. However, there are still no several studies that have quantified the environmental impact of this philosophy. The purpose of this research is to quantify the impact of lean construction on the environmental footprint of a project. The methodology of the study consists of a comparative case study, between two projects, one using lean construction principles and the order following a very traditional approach. Both projects were assessed from the environmental perspective through a life cycle analysis using Open LCA. The main results show that there is a quantifiable relationship between the implementation of lean construction and the reduction in the environmental footprint of the project in a range of decrease between 18–24%.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Ricardo Uribe for his participation and help that make this research possible. As well as to the support provided by the Research Group of Engineering and Construction Management (INGECO) at Universidad de los Andes.
REFERENCES
Augenbroe, G., Pearce, A., Guy, B., & Kibert, C. (1998)."Sustainable construction in the United States of America." Proceedings of the CIB-W82 World Congress, Gaevle, Sweden (Vol. 712).
Bare, J. (2011). TRACI 2.0: "the tool for the reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts 2.0." Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 13(5), 687-696.
Brown, M., & Bardi, E. (2001). Handbook of emergy evaluation. A compendium of data for energy computation issued in a series of folios Folio, 3.
Brundtland, G. H. (1989). "Global Change and Our Common Future." Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development., 16-43.
DANE. (2019). "Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) - IV Trimestre de 2018 preliminar." Bogotá.
Eggleston, H., Buendia, L., Miwa, K., Ngara, T., & Tanabe, K. (2006). IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Japan.
EPA, U. (2003). "Lean Manufacturing and the environment research on advanced manufacturing systems and the environment and recommendations for leveraging better environmental performance." United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Fercoq, A., Lamouri, S., & Carbone, V. (2016). "Lean/Green integration focused on waste reduction techniques. Journal of Cleaner Production,".
García Arbeláez, C., Vallejo, G., Higgins, M. L., & Escobar, E. M. (2016). "El Acuerdo de París. Así actuará Colombia frente al cambio climático." Cali, Colombia: 1ed. WWF-Colombia.
Houvila, P., & Koskela, L. (1998). "Contribution of the principles of lean construction to meet the challenges of sustainable development. 6th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction". Guaruja, São Paulo, Brazil, 13-15.
Kibert, C. (1994). "Establishing principles and a model for sustainable construction." In Proceedings of the first international conference on sustainable construction. Tampa, Florida.
Koranda, C., Chong, W., Kim, C., Chou, J.-S., & Kim, C. (2012). "An Investigation of the Applicability of Sustainability and Lean Concepts to Small Construction Projects." KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering 16(5), DOI, 699-707.
Koskela, L. (1992). "Application of the new production philosophy to construction (Vol. 72)." Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Koskela, L. (2000). "An exploration towards a production theory and its application to construction." VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
Martínez León, H., & Calvo Amodio, J. (2016). "Towards lean for sustainability: Understanding the interrelationships between lean and sustainability from a systems thinking perspective." Journal of Cleaner Production.
Ng, R., Choong Low, J. S., & Song, B. (2015). "Integrating and implementing Lean and Green practices based on proposition of Carbon-Value Efficiency metric." Journal of Cleaner Production 95, 242-255.
Ng, R., Yeo, Z., Shi, C., Rugrungruang, F., & Song, B. (2012). "An algorithmic approach to streamlining product carbon footprint quantification: a case study on sheet metal parts." IJTA 6(3), 312-321.
Novak, V. M. (2012). "Value Paradigm: Revealing Synergy between Lean and Sustainability." Proceedings for the 20th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction.
Ogunbiyi, O. O. A., & Goulding, J. (2013). "An empirical study of the impact of lean construction techniques on sustainable construction in the UK." Construction Innovation Vol.14, 88-107.
Oliver, L., Miracle-McMahill, H., Littman, A., Oakes, J., & Gaita, R. Jr (2001). "Respiratory symptoms and lung function in workers in heavy and highway construction: A cross-sectional study." American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 40(1), 73-86.
Piercy, N., & Rich, N. (2015). "The relationship between lean operations and sustainable operations." International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol 35 Issue:2, doi., 285-315.
Rosenbaum, S., Toledo, M., & Gonzalez, V. (2012). "Green-Lean Approach for Assessing Environmental and Production waste in Construction." Proceedings for the 20th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction.
Salvatierra-Garrido, J., Pasquire, C., & Thorpe, T. (2010). "Critical review of the concept of value in lean construction theory." Proceedings 18th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, 33-41.
Sertyesilisik, B. (2014). "Lean and Agile: Construction Project Management: As a Way of Reducing Environmental Footprint of the Construction Industry." Optimization and Control Methods in Industrial Engineering and Construction.
Sertyesilisik, B., Remiszewski, B., & Al-Khaddar, R. (2012). "Sustainable waste management in the UK construction industry." International Journal of Construction Project Management, 173.
Valente, C., Mourão, A., & Neto, J. (2013). "Lean and Green: How both Philosophies can interact on Strategic, Tactical and operational levels of company." Proceedings IGLC-21, July 2013, Fortaleza, Brazil.
Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2003). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Yu, M., Wiedmann, T., Crawford, R., & Tait, C. (2017). "The carbon footprint of Australia's construction sector." Procedia Engineering 180, 211-220.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Construction Research Congress 2020: Project Management and Controls, Materials, and Contracts
Pages: 379 - 387
Editors: David Grau, Ph.D., Arizona State University, Pingbo Tang, Ph.D., Arizona State University, and Mounir El Asmar, Ph.D., Arizona State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8288-9
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 9, 2020
Published in print: Nov 9, 2020
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.