Evaluating the Implementation of Lean Construction into Construction Education

Abstract

Lean construction is growing in popularity throughout the A/E/C industry. The concepts of lean construction promise to effectively delivering construction projects with ever increasing complexity and ever shrinking resources. As a result, many construction companies are beginning to use lean construction as ‘standard operating procedure’ on their projects. Despite this trend, the concepts and practices of lean construction are not widely taught in undergraduate construction education programs. In response, one undergraduate construction management program redesigned the required scheduling course utilizing the Last Planner System™ framework to introduce lean construction concepts. The goal of this course redesign was to integrate lean construction principles and practices, while maintaining the traditional learning outcomes for a construction scheduling course. A comparison of course learning outcome assessment results after the redesign validated this approach. Recommendations are presented for implementing lean construction into similar construction education courses.