Sacks, R and Partouche, R (2010) Empire State Building project: Archetype of "mass construction". Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 136(6), pp. 702-710. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Analysis of historical projects, with the dual benefits of hindsight and modern concepts of construction systems, can help fill the gaps in our theoretical understanding of production in construction, which have increasingly been identified as a barrier to progress in improving construction project management. The richness of the historical record describing construction of the Empire State Building provides a unique opportunity to analyze and compare it with the paradigms of craft, industrialized, and lean construction. Its size and its record rate of construction, which has not been broken since for tall buildings, make it of prime interest. The project progress was reconstructed using line-of-balance software and its different flows were assessed. The results lead to the conclusion that it is an archetypal example of what we propose be called "mass construction." This enables a richer understanding of the taxonomy of production systems in construction, and should aid theoreticians and practitioners alike to devise better production systems for construction projects.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | buildings; high-rise; lean construction; production management |
| Index terms: | production management, production system, lean construction, tall building, practitioner, mass construction, construction project, construction system, construction project management, archetype, paradigm, taxonomy |
| Subjects: | building construction, manufacturing engineering, education and knowledge transfer, project management theory and practice, production management, modelling and simulation, project delivery, strategic project management, data analysis and analytics, construction type, practitioner |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Roles and Professions, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Site Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here