Coordination of teams, meetings, and managerial processes in construction projects: using a lean and complex adaptive mechanism

Abstract

In a construction project, the ‘production planning and control’ function drives the deployment of construction operations. A reliable function is therefore essential. Currently, this function is supplied using economic/contractual and production processes. This approach, however, disregards the explicit regulation of teams, meetings, and the linkages between the function’s elements. Using Lean Management and Complexity theories, we studied a mechanism to address this issue. Using data from an 18-storey building construction project in a case study, this paper analyses a prototype system for driving the function using their linkages. A questionable behaviour beyond the function’s capability was found. This behaviour involves complex, flexible, and push features, focused on execution, where the linkages driven by teams, meetings and processes cause variation from 10% up to 54% in the failure reasons, the progress, and the reliability. These findings suggest a function driven by its complexity level. These new insights require further study.

Keywords:

• Lean management
• Last Planner^® System
• complex adaptive systems
• design structure matrix
• coordination
• production planning and control

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Omar Zegarra

Omar Zegarra is a Civil Engineer from the Universidad San Antonio Abad del Cusco (Perú). He received a MEng and currently is pursuing a PhD in Civil Engineering from the Universidad Católica de Chile. He is a researcher of the Production Management Centre (GEPUC) of the Universidad Católica de Chile. His interests include Project management, lean construction and production management, production planning and control systems, research and development systems and complex adaptive systems in the construction industry. He is a former project engineer of GyM S.A., a company of the Graña y Montero group, the leading Peruvian construction contractor, where he participated in the construction of projects for the mining, gas and transportation industry.

Luis F. Alarcón

Luis F. Alarcón is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is a Civil Engineer from the Universidad Católica de Chile Chile and MS, MEng and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He works in the areas of project risk modelling, strategic planning in construction, lean construction and production management. He has published several books, and numerous research papers in diverse areas of project management and lean construction. He is currently Director of the Production Management Centre (GEPUC) of the Universidad Católica de Chile, and an active member of editorial boards and reviewer of international journals. The has been Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University, USA, at Salford University, UK and the Shimizu Visiting Professor, at Stanford University, US.