3 Environmental Benefits of Lean Construction
Emily Newton is the Editor-in-Chief of Revolutionized Magazine. She has over four years experience writing industrial topics for the manufacturing, energy, and supply chain industries.
Lean construction allows businesses to mitigate some of the environmental impacts that can come with a construction project. While this industry often produces a great deal of waste and pollution, the right changes to material use and workflow can significantly reduce harmful effects.
These are the environmental benefits of lean construction — and how reducing material consumption and time on-site can have a surprising range of benefits for businesses that aim to be more sustainable.
1. Lean Philosophy Can Improve Maintenance and Minimize Carbon Emissions
Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a lean philosophy and maintenance approach that aims to streamline and improve the quality of maintenance operations. Businesses that employ this method waste fewer resources on sourcing, manufacturing and repairing essential construction assets.
A longer life span for a truck, excavator or earthmover directly translates into less waste. The longer you can keep equipment in service, the less carbon you generate by ordering and shipping a new machine.
Better maintenance can also make these machines more efficient, reducing carbon emissions by improving fuel efficiency. A truck with properly inflated tires and fresh oil will use less diesel than one that is not properly maintained — resulting in a lower carbon expense for the same vehicle.
The benefits of TPM are particularly pronounced for businesses currently relying on reactive maintenance strategies. This means they only repair or inspect assets when end-users recognize problems.
2. Planning, Consistency and Communication Can Reduce Construction Waste
Lean construction’s most immediate benefit is in its ability to reduce on-site waste.
Conventional approaches naturally produce a great deal of construction and demolition waste (CDW), composed of concrete, steel, wood products, asphalt and ceramic materials. In 2018, companies produced around 600 million tonsof this refuse. These materials can be recaptured and reused, but much will go to landfills, where it can cause environmental impacts over time.
Lean principles encourage careful analysis of how materials are ordered and used from design to the end of the construction process to building management. This helps businesses identify and minimize material use, plan for reuse and find strategies to otherwise divert CWD from the landfill.
For example, decorated perforated metal has a wide range of construction and architectural design uses. Businesses that use it can also plan for how leftover scraps will be used to minimize waste.
The lean philosophy may also help businesses identify other, less obvious types of waste. For example, it may help a company minimize rework, overproduction, time spent idling by vehicles, material damages or duplicate insurance coverage.
Along with tools that can improve construction quality, like new software, the lean approach can help businesses minimize revisions and keep work moving, reducing waste.
Consistency, a key lean benefit, can also reduce construction waste. When work produces mostly consistent results, construction is more likely to be accurate and less likely to need revisions or rework.
Open communication, encouraged by lean philosophy, also helps improve team cohesion and keep all workers on the same page. This improves efficiency, reduces the risk of mistakes and potentially decreases team turnover. For example, “pull planning” in lean construction involves all parties involved in a project coming together during its early phases to plan the building process, working backward from the goal.
Each worker contributes to the schedule, ensuring various perspectives are involved in planning and that each worker is aware of milestones that other parts of the team are trying to meet. This planning strategy keeps people informed and improves communication across a construction site.
3. Quicker Construction Can Minimize Runoff and Topsoil Loss
Runoff from a construction project can harm nearby communities. While construction is active and site soil is disturbed and exposed, rain and on-site water use can carry pollutants from the job site to local rivers and streams.
During the construction project, runoff can contribute “more sediment to streams than can be deposited naturally during several decades,” according to the EPA.
Most construction project managers will take advantage of methods that reduce runoff and preserve site topsoil — or, at least, prevent runoff from escaping the site and flowing into local waterways.
However, as long as construction is ongoing, the risk of runoff and topsoil loss is likely. Regenerating or replacing lost topsoil once construction is complete is possible, but this process is typically expensive and time-consuming.
Minimizing construction time by reducing the need for revisions and rework can help companies that use runoff control methods further mitigate their environmental impact.
Using Lean Principles to Improve Construction’s Sustainability
Adopting the lean philosophy can allow construction companies to make their projects much more eco-friendly. Builders also benefit by enjoying smoother workflows and an improved chance of meeting deadlines.
Changes to project workflow that reduce waste, improve communication, streamline maintenance and accelerate timelines contribute to more sustainable buildings.
