The construction industry, known for its multifaceted operations and inherent complexities, has long sought ways to enhance efficiency, reduce waste and ensure timely project delivery. Risk management (RM) is crucial in preventing unexpected events and keeping projects on track, but current RM practices often fall short, leading to disruptions, inefficient resource use, safety issues, financial setbacks, and time overruns. These issues undermine the purpose of RM and jeopardize projects. Meanwhile, lean construction, grounded in lean thinking, offers a promising solution by identifying and minimizing constraints and inefficiencies. The goals of lean management, like waste reduction and value optimization, align well with RM, which focuses on identifying and mitigating threats to project success. Although there has been extensive research on lean management and RM as separate entities in construction and evidence of their integration in other sectors, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding their intersection in construction. This presents a research opportunity to explore how integrating lean management with RM strategies can improve project outcomes.
This research explores how lean tools can improve RM in the construction industry to enhance the ability of construction organizations to anticipate, mitigate, and respond to risks. It does so by analyzing the RM process to identify gaps and deficiencies in existing knowledge and practices. It then examines the nature and potential of lean tools to address these deficiencies.
The aim of this research is to understand the common issues in construction RM and highlight the potential for integrating lean tools into the RM process to achieve more resilient and efficient operations in the construction sector.
The result of the research is a conceptual lean RM framework, developed based on issues identified in the literature and supported by practical evidence, along with an analysis of lean construction tools and their potential to address chosen RM challenges. The framework spans the tender, planning, development, and construction phases. In addition to the framework, the approach to its application is outlined, including potential short-term and long-term benefits, inherent limitations, and potential integration challenges. The framework’s potential application environment is conceptually explored, and recommendations are offered for construction companies, standard developers, prospective users of the framework and future research efforts.