The Saudi Arabian construction industry has been noted to face a boom in the last twenty years. Several contractors have been noted to rely on the significance of employing lean construction. The construction concept is based on the Toyota production systems which have been harnessed to a new method of construction which is highly systemized. The system aims at completing a project that meets the requirements of the clients through the reduction of waste. The system emphasizes that every process is important within the construction process and it is critical for the improvement of the project. Lean construction also leads to the minimization of the direct cost which is effective to the project.
However, the implementation of lean construction in Saudi Arabia has not been growing. The implementation of the lean system is a very complex project. The failure of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to adopt the Lean construction system has been caused by a lack of various factors like poor equipment, semi-skilled and unskilled workforce and also the ineffective planning. To increase the awareness and comprehension of the concept of lean in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its construction company, there is a need to have an overview of the current status in the lean construction system. There is, however, no such studies due to the lack of real data (Sarhan, et al., 2015, p. 432).
Lean construction involves the techniques of designing production systems with an aim of minimizing wastage of materials, labor and hence maximizing cost-effective value.it focusses on pursuing concurrent and improvements in the design, activation, and recycling in building projects (Sha’ar, et al., 2017, p. 245).
The concept of waste in construction is still evolving. The effort of construction management community for the comprehension of waste is relatively small as compared to other topics. Waste is understood under two dimensions; intrinsically and instrumentally. The interpretations are different in the construction that needs empirical justification, comparability that is statistical and motivation for action. The best solution that can lead to the reduction of waste in the design construction is the creation of value (Sarhan, et al., 2017, p. 22).
In the last decade, much effort was put to try and educate people and create awareness of the importance of lean construction, the guidance provision and sharing the knowledge related to lean construction by schools, by the researchers and other organizations such as the lean construction institutes and construction excellence. However, the firms mentioned above are amongst other which operate mostly in Europe and hence it is not easy to share the knowledge they have globally (Banawi & Bilec, 2014, p. 34). Many publications on lean construction have been done but the greatest challenge is the educational issues which appear to be cutting across most parts of Saudi Arabia. The common educational issues addressed include lack of awareness from workers, inadequate training and information asymmetry.
The top management in firms plays a vital role in ensuring that the implementation of the innovative strategies is followed to the latter. To realize the achievements of lean construction requires the commitment of top management in planning and the adequate provision of the resources required in the management of the changes which arise from the implementation. Research shows that poor strategy implementation, management issues, and poor definition are the primary issues that face the implementation of lean construction (Omran & Abdulrahim, 2015, p. 98).In addition to this, lack of adequate time for innovation and the prolonged period of implementation are also factors hindering the adoption of the lean construction. There is poor communication, lack of adequacy in the determination of goals, inaccuracy in preplanning, delays in making decisions, organizations structure that are not suitable for lean construction system the existence of a weak procurement and poor administration. The above-mentioned challenges appear to be very usual but they are very important for accomplishment if any given organization want to meet a smooth running of a construction process.
Implementation of lean construction requires adequate cash aimed at providing the relevant materials and equipment, the employment of lean staff who guide the workers in the implementation of lean is expensive and hence a firm will require adequate cash. Many organizations face the finance-related challenges and hence it becomes difficult to employ lean construction system (Xu, et al., 2017, p. 34).
Human attitude affects the implementation of lean construction. Lack of cooperation by workers, not understanding the brief of the client, lean practice misconception, poor leadership commitment, lack of commitment, fear of unfamiliar practices are among the challenges facing the lean construction under human attitude (Erol,, et al., 2017, p. 242).
There is also the resistance of the employees in the organization to change the culture of their working. Workers in most cases find it hard to apply new working styles and change the way they used to work and the way things are supposed to be done. Despite learning to do things differently from the methods they have been using before, most workers will prefer to do things just the way they have been doing. This is a big challenge to the lean construction practice in most parts of Saudi Arabia (Banawi & Bilec, 2014, p. 254).
The lack of long-term forecast of the gains of lean construction of the organization mostly by the topmost managers to the lean construction practice. The organizations might engage lean practice but the existence of poor and long-term forecast of its ability to contribute to the immature support and commitment that comes from management to a totally full investment in the lean construction (Banawi & Bilec, 2014, p. 254).
Another challenge that faces lean construction system is the continuous and never-ending journey of improvement that may take a very long time for the implementation to be made. There is time needed to train workers, the application of principles the selection of the appropriate tools that would be utilized in the implementation of them in the site, the management of change to working culture and then carrying out an evaluation for the purposes of identifying areas which require improvement. Therefore, lean construction sees this as a long-term investment (Sarhan, et al., 2017, p. 247).
One of the biggest challenges of lean construction is the costs that are attached to it. The latter will involve the cost associated with its implementation the costs associated with training the workers, the fees made for consultancy (Sarhan, et al., 2015, p. 156). Conducting workshops and the purchase of visual management alert is also an expense. The above-mentioned sectors make lean to be perceived by the expertise as costly.
Lean construction practice is faced by the challenge of misconception among workers and this was borrowed from philosophy. Most of the workers see it as a technique of saving production cost through the reduction of the number of working staff, offering low payments or even forcing workers to complete a task over a little period of time so that at long run they would be paid little cash. Other staff might also misinterpret it as doing the job faster (Sarhan, et al., 2017, p. 187). The above can make workers dislike their job and due to this, they start giving little concentration to what they are doing and this makes it hard to the achieve the goals and objectives of the lean construction demands that explain that a worker should work smartly and efficiently so as to attain the objectives of the firm.
The lean management expects high returns as soon as the lean construction is implemented. The top management expects to see sudden, significant and dramatic improvements as far as productivity of lean construction is implemented. The management also needs to see cost recovery within the shortest period of time and also see that time has been saved so that they do not incur additional costs (Banawi & Bilec, 2014, p. 189). These are just a few factors that would drive the management to apply the lean construction. This will result in workers being put to pressure in their working areas and it can easily lead to disappointments in the case whereby the production has not reached the level the management expected.
The fact that lean construction was adopted from lean manufacturing makes many workers and managers not conversant with the concepts of lean. There can be no lean construction in any firm without the prior knowledge of lean concepts (Sarhan, et al., 2015, p. 267). Due to the above problem, most organizations do not advocate for employing lean construction since they view the idea as an internalization of a totally new concept in the management and workers which has to be learned from scratch.in addition to this, the workers might also be reluctant to the new concepts of lean construction and tools introduced by the firm.
Lean construction involves both the application of lean construction and the development of that culture among the working staff so that the organizations experience continuous and endless pursuit of improving all organizational units (Xu, et al., 2017, p. 63). Lean is not only practiced in the site environment but is also applied in the administrative activities too which are within the office environment. The latter is viewed by managers as being too intricate and complex thing to adopt amongst the workers and also the managers.
For any organization to achieve its goals and objectives, the employees should strive to work together in harmony and as a team and follow the instructions which are issued to them by the top management. Most workers do not follow the instructions given to them by the lean consultants mostly when the incentives for doing such are not given. This problem does not affect many firms (Sarhan, et al., 2015, p. 153). The management can the working culture of workers and have new working styles and change the way they used to work and the way things are supposed to be done (Erol,, et al., 2017, p. 135).
Workers are paid so that they do their jobs. However, appreciation of their efforts apart from just giving them their salary motivates them to even do better. Giving out incentives can make workers more aggressive since they have a sense of belonging and they also feel that they are part of the common set goal. Through the offering of incentives, lean construction can be easily internalized and hence improvement of productivity can be witnessed (Banawi & Bilec, 2014, p. 162).
Conclusion
There have been several factors affecting the implementation of lean construction across the globe. The factors that act as barriers are many ranging from managerial, financial, education to human attitude towards the implementation of lean construction. For the firms in Saudi Arabia to achieve the best in the application of lean construction, there is need for firms to enlighten workers on the benefits of lean construction practice, simplification of language of lean construction, education of workers, employ clients to assist the workers on the application of lean and also be persistence in rewarding or providing incentives for the workers.
References
Banawi , A. A. & Bilec, M., 2014. Applying Lean, Green, and Six-Sigma Framework to Improve Exterior Construction Process in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management, 4(1), pp. 22-44.
Banawi , A. A. & Bilec, M., 2014. Applying Lean, Green, and Six-Sigma Framework to Improve Exterior Construction Process in Saudi Arabia. ournal of Construction Engineering and Project Management, 16(3), pp. 243-276.
Erol ,, H., Dikmen , I. & Birgonul, M. T., 2017. Measuring the impact of lean construction practices on project duration and variability: A simulation-based study on residential buildings. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 14(5), pp. 240-250.
Omran , A. & Abdulrahim, A., 2015. Barriers to prioritizing Lean construction in the Libyan construction industry. Acta Technica Corviniensis-Bulletin of Engineering, 8(1), pp. 87-103.
Sarhan , J. G., Xia , B. & Fawzia, S., 2017. Lean construction implementation in the Saudi Arabian construction industry. Construction Economics and Building, 17(1), pp. 17-20.
Sarhan , J., Xia , B., Fawzia , S. & Karim, A., 2015. Barriers to implementing lean construction practices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) construction industry.. Construction Innovation, 12(4), pp. 478-491.
Sha’ar , K. Z., Assaf , S. A. & Bambang , T., 2017. Design–construction interface problems in large building construction projects. International Journal of Construction Management, 17(3), pp. 239-251.
Xu , G., Chen , C. H. & Wei, Y., 2017. Cloud asset-enabled integrated IoT platform for lean prefabricated construction. Automation in Construction, 23(2), pp. 123-143.
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