Rosenbaum, S; Toledo, M and González, V (2014) Improving environmental and production performance in construction projects using value-stream mapping: Case study. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 140(2): 04013045, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Current sustainable construction research has been focused mainly on the design and operation stages of projects. But the execution or production stages have not received much attention. Also, current sustainable and construction management approaches often deal with environmental and production issues separately. In this paper, a lean production tool called value stream mapping (VSM) is used to simultaneously assess environmental and production waste over the execution stage of construction projects. VSM considers the elaboration of maps that assist project managers in diagnosing the current state of production to propose improvements in a future state. While traditional tools deal with symptoms, VSM tackles root problems. This paper reports a case study of the VSM application as a green-lean approach in the construction of a hospital in order to improve its environmental and production performance during the structural concrete work stage. The main contribution of this study is to provide a fully detailed experience of the VSM application in construction, confirming its ability to detect the sources of environmental and production waste, quantify them, and suggest reduction strategies. It also presents the development of a well-established implementation process of the VSM. The case study reinforces the effectiveness of the proposed green-lean approach for improving the sustainable performance of construction projects because it can help to optimize the use of resources and reduce costs, improve quality standards, and minimize the environmental impacts generated by the construction of projects.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | green building; lean construction; project planning and design; sustainability; value stream mapping; waste |
| Index terms: | effectiveness, stream, strategy, value stream mapping, environmental impact, maps, project planning, case study, lean construction, quality standard, lean production, sustainable construction, implementation, green building, project manager, construction project, mapping |
| Subjects: | quality assurance, profession, business, water management, building construction, spatial and geospatial analysis, production management, contractual arrangements, management, design practice, manufacturing engineering, control systems, sustainable construction, performance management, environmental impact, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Design Practice, Research Practice, Engineering Principles, Sustainability, Quality Management, Roles and Professions, Procurement, Site Management, Business Strategy, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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