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Lean construction promises to help contractors with many of the biggest challenges, improving productivity, increasing client value, and reducing waste. But while the idea of lean construction practices—and why you’d want to adopt them—is relatively easy to grasp, implementing them are not.
While its sister philosophy, lean manufacturing, has transformed productivity in that sector since the ’60s, construction productivity has been going backward, according to McKinsey. The firm notes that while manufacturing productivity doubled between 1962 and 2002, productivity dropped in construction by 20 percent in the same period. The need to improve construction productivity is extreme.
Many modern construction projects, especially capital ones, take longer and are more expensive and complex than ever. To meet these and other challenges, contractors are rethinking how they work, leveraging the lean principles popularized in post-WWII manufacturing. Unlike manufacturing, though, production is by nature unpredictable, and that makes workflows and processes hard to forecast. The goal of lean construction, says McKinsey, is to dramatically reduce variability while minimizing the costs of predictable processes.
With so much being unpredictable, how can a contractor navigate the lean construction journey, reducing waste, increasing productivity, and continuously improving the business?
Would it surprise you that the answer is AI? (It shouldn’t.)
How AI helps achieve lean construction
We’ve written before about how much AI can transform construction. Let’s look at how AI specifically helps contractors meet several key elements of lean construction, such as optimized project planning and management, efficient resource allocation, and quality control in construction (among many others).
AI-powered planning
AI is a tremendous boon to construction planning. For example, AI-based data analytics, like those used by Briq, can analyze historical data to generate more accurate and efficient project plans. Since finances touch every part of a project, the deeper insights that Briq AI delivers lead to better control and optimization of construction planning, streamlining the process, and reducing waste.
Of course, better planning leads to better project performance and less waste. (It’s like the “measure twice, cut once” of the whole project.) Those improved insights embedded into the project plan ultimately also help with resource allocation, help to reduce material waste and improve construction sustainability.
Improved project management
Waste isn’t just extra material used to correct labor mistakes, address changes, or, as the earlier maxim suggests cutting material to the wrong lengths. Wasted time is a major issue in construction, whether because of overproduction, waiting, inefficiency, or excessive processing (often to accommodate other areas of waste).
AI improves project management by automating routine tasks, facilitating collaboration, and enhancing decision making. This helps achieve the continuous workflow desired in lean construction, ensuring stages are done sequentially (to avoid waiting and downtime), and aiding in the communication of workflow issues should they arise. After all, even AI can’t eliminate all the unpredictability of construction.
As they have in manufacturing, AI-powered quality control systems and smart cameras can detect defects, improve inspection accuracy, and minimize rework, resulting in cost savings even as they improve quality.
Smart asset management and maintenance
Another cause of waste in construction projects is the transportation of equipment, materials, and workers to the jobsite. Waste during transport can come from physical assets and resources being moved to a site before needed, but also the unnecessary transmission of information. Eliminating this is especially important as to operate lean, contractors make the move to “just-in-time” inventory versus traditional “just-in-case” inventory. Excess inventory ties up budget, demands storage and may degrade while sitting unused.
By providing contractors with more up-to-date information, AI can help contractors solve the challenge of whether to have inventory sitting and waiting to be used or delivered when needed—with the potential of being late. Either approach is improved, and waste and waiting reduced, through the insights AI brings.
As mentioned, better planning helps with resource allocation, but AI can go further. By tracking and analyzing data using AI, contractors can optimize maintenance and work schedules to minimize downtime. AI can also use data from sensors or IoT (Internet of Things) tools to track and direct workers to equipment. On top of that, AI can identify energy savings opportunities, helping save money and address sustainable construction goals.
Enhance safety with AI
Since lean construction is about focusing on value, and safety is a key value in construction, putting controls and plans in place to better protect workers is essential.
By analyzing the historical data from jobsites and past jobs, AI can enhance safety and quality control on construction sites. It can help contractors to identify potential hazards before they become issues, automate safety regulation compliance monitoring, and—most importantly—reduce accidents and injuries.
One of the most important aspects of lean construction is a focus on owner value. By helping contractors adopt lean construction, AI helps build a better new owner-contractor dynamic.
The cost savings, faster project delivery, improved quality, and enhanced client satisfaction that AI brings aren’t nice to have, but competitive necessities in today’s market. The benefits of lean construction are much needed, and AI is the tool to help realize them.
Want to learn more about how Briq and AI can transform your business and aid you on your lean construction journey? Schedule a demo with us.
