Application of Lean Principles to Improve Rebar Productivity in Heavily Reinforced Structures

The goal of any construction project is to meet the objectives with the optimised cost and within the prescribed time; it is, however, noted that most construction projects fall behind schedule and, therefore, use additional resources to meet relevant deadlines, which results in cost overruns. Techniques like lean construction have been applied in the construction industry over the years with varying levels of success. This report studies the application of lean construction techniques in construction projects with heavy reinforcement, specifically dealing with the accuracy of schedules and difficulties in estimating productivity. Many of the core lean concepts have predictability as their goal; predictable behaviour improves schedule quality, which improves cross-team coordination, which in turn leads to improvement in predictability. Firstly, in this paper, literature is studied to understand the current research related to reinforcement productivity and ways to predict it. Next, efforts are made to predict productivity based on parameters defined using reinforcement design parameters. The data is analysed to understand the reason for productivity loss seen in heavily reinforced structures based on the prediction models.