Lean as an appropriate approach for managing production in refurbishment projects

Refurbishments are complex projects. The complexity stems from several factors such as unforeseen site conditions, lack of as-built drawings on the existing asset, interference with building occupation and operation, short construction time frames, etc. Nonetheless, construction companies are still using traditional methods (e.g. bar charts and the Critical Path Method) for managing production in this type of project. Prior research suggests that the use of such incompatible management approaches is likely to lead to poor performance. Indeed, problems in managing refurbishments have been identified in several countries. The aim of this chapter is to show why Lean can be considered as an appropriate approach for managing production in refurbishment projects. It is argued that Lean principles such as variability reduction and time compression provide a sound theoretical foundation to deal with the complexity that is intrinsic to refurbishments, therefore driving improvements in project performance.