AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR USING BIM AND LEAN THINKING IN CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The construction industry in Egypt is in rapid expansion, witnessing a steady growth rate in recent years. That notwithstanding, the Egyptian construction industry is still suffering from many problems, including low product quality, low working efficiency, projects exceeding projected budgets, huge construction wastes and an unsustainable Construction Project Footprint. Generally, the process of construction is carried out in several smaller processes whereby success is contingent upon achievement of harmonious continuity between these smaller processes. Amid the execution of the processes, waste is generated as in any other process and there is a growing need to manage the generation of waste and mitigate non-value adding activities in order to reduce waste and save costs. LEAN and BIM have been two major developments that shifted the management of construction projects and provided hope for the reduction of waste and augmentation of value in construction projects. Lean thinking is defined as a conceptual approach aimed at producing the right product at the right time in the right quantity for the customer. On the other hand, BIM is defined as “transformative information technology” involving computer aided and digital machine-readable tools and processes that visually document and simulate a building’s plan, construction, performance and operation. Construction management is defined as a systematic and coordinated set of activities and practices through which an organization optimally and sustainably manages its constructions and construction systems, their associated performance, risks and expenditures over the lifecycles of projects for the purpose of achieving organizational strategic plan. This thesis, through the study of a real construction project case scenario, sought to model the application of BIM and Lean construction methods and use Arena simulation software to simulate the current state as well as the projected future state of the project. This was in an effort to provide an in-depth practical justification for the interaction between BIM-Lean functions and principles and the importance of the interaction to the construction industry in Egypt. The research in pursuit of precision, focused on the design phase submittals process of the project and relied on accurate on-site data from authoritative on-site personnel of the project under study. Based on real on-site data for planned and actual activity execution timelines, the research value stream mapped the current state of the construction project’s submittals processes and simulated the current state to determine the issues apparent. The research then projected a future state of the project’s submittals processes based on the application of integrated BIM-Lean functions and principles to the project. The research found that, the application of BIM-Lean interaction in the future state of the project would afford the project significant reduction in the time taken for submissions in the design phase. Pursuant to the need for veracity, the research featured an actual case of the implementation of BIM-Lean Common Data Environment in an ongoing project to verify the percentages of time savings for submissions in the design phase of an actual project as well as the advantages of the same to the construction phase of an ongoing project.