Leveraging BIM and Mixed Reality to Actualize Lean Construction

Lean construction is made of principles, measures and methods that aim at maximizing process efficiency. Several tools have been developed to minimize waste, maximize customer value, improve the conduction of processes, and pursue other sub-objectives in construction. This effort is becoming more and more important due to the rising construction project size and variety, displacement of resources in diverse geographic locations, high-performance pressure. This paper reports the development and on-site tests in a real-life demonstrator of two management tools, which apply some principles of lean construction management at the design and delivery phases. The first one takes advantage of the integration between BIM and mixed reality, having the final aim of improving collaboration and communication among the actors involved. The second one exploits BIM modelling and search algorithms within a process-based management platform, in order to facilitate short-cycle planning and distributed decision-making in the production process. Both tools have been tested in the case of a building renovation project. The results show that they can improve communication efficiency, reduce rework, speed up work monitoring, control and supervising in construction management, and that they can address several of Liker’s lean principles, as classified by the 4P model.