BIM applications to leveraging lean principles in modern construction

This research aims to examine and model the synergy between Building Information Modelling (BIM) and lean principles in terms of attributes of modern construction methods. We present the pairing and reconciliation process as a system capable of optimising project total value and to minimize wasteful cost including financial, time, effort and materials. Multiple sources including scholarly publications, government guidelines and best practices were relied on to identify components of lean paradigms and features of BIM. A semantic matching was then conducted to formulate the interaction between BIM and lean. The developed model was then validated using cases borrowed from literature. The validation process comprised of testing applicability of the proposed model to the scenarios explained in selected publications. It was demonstrated that joint use of BIM and lean had the potential to overcome challenges mentioned in validation cases. As the result, BIM applications can leverage nine lean construction principles namely cycle time reduction, pull approach adoption, process visualisation for management, focus on project delivery, value for client, performance-based method selection, design efficiency, cooperative relationship, and eliminating waste. Millstone verifications through the course of formulating the synergy between BIM and lean were also conducted by referring to relevant government reports, documents and different forms of expert input. Our formulation depicted the mechanism through which the two novel processes of lean and BIM contribute to each other's efficiency.