Lean thinking and the delivery of sustainable construction projects

The construction industry is affected by factors that are forcing change. The demand for 'sustainable' construction was brought to the forefront by the adoption of the Kyoto protocol and the Brundtland report, both of which force an appraisal of the energy efficiency and sustainability of materials selected for use within buildings. Moreover, the demand for competence, as outlined in the Egan Report with its focus on progress in the areas of time, cost and quality of the construction process, is pushing the building industry towards the use of lean construction techniques. The main objectives of this research are to develop a methodology that links the principles of sustainable construction together with the principles of lean thinking into one strategic approach to the control of waste in the construction process. The extent to which sustainability and lean thinking are mutually exclusive is explored in this paper. Then, the possibility of merging lean thinking and sustainability to the benefit of productivity in construction projects is introduced.