Over the years construction industry in the UK has been placed under scrutiny by several reports, including Latham (1994) and Egan (1998; 2002). These reports suggest that the construction industry is plagued with problems such as low productivity, cost and time over-runs and the value delivered to the client being questionable, often leading to failure of projects. Egan (1998) in his report said "Lean thinking presents a powerful and coherent synthesis of the most effective techniques of eliminating waste and delivering significant sustained improvements in the efficiency and quality". The report also suggested the use of lean as the strategy to achieve sustained performance improvement. Thus, the report looks at lean thinking as a solution to solve the current problems faced by the construction industry.
This report is structured in four sections. The first section tries addresses problems within the construction industry. The framework for the study was taken from a similar study done by Eric Johansen and Walter (2007) in the German construction industry. The second section creates a theoretical foundation to justify the use of lean and its applicability within the construction industry and is largely based on the 'Toyota Production System' as described by Liker (2004). In the third section, the authors have proposed a strategy for adoption within construction companies, which is intended to ensure future projects are more efficient and effective. The strategy has been divided into stages to bring about slow change within existing culture of the company. However, this section emphasises on a 'whole system approach' and is against implementation of individual or combination of tools. The final section describes the tools that are suggested as vehicles of change in the strategy section.