Capacity building in construction SMES : a proposal through enabling lean

Abstract

Construction Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) makes a noteworthy contribution to GDP in national economy despite the challenges faced by them. One of their major problems is increase of non-value adding activities. Hence, construction SMEs need to be responsive to the challenges in implementing lean. Lean is a relatively new approach in the construction industry which minimizes waste, time and creates value. However, implementing lean may encounter challenges. Lack of capacities is the prevalent issue and hence, need to identify necessary capacities to achieve full benefit of lean implementation. Focusing on capacity building to enable lean construction will allow construction SMEs to better perform in the industry. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the importance of lean enabling capacity building in construction SMEs. Hence a comprehensive literature review was carried out to discuss the challenges faced by construction SMEs, lean philosophy, lean construction benefits, barriers and capacity building. Although, lean and capacity building related literature exists , there is a lack of research in capacity building strategies that enable lean in construction SMEs. Hence, the paper proposes a conceptual model for lean enabling capacity building for construction SMEs. The developed conceptual model will further guide this research study to identify lean enabling capacity building strategies for construction SMEs.