For years, the construction industry has suffered from high costs and limited productivity, sometimes leading to huge budget overruns. But what if there was a way to combine two different strategies to counteract this? Enter optioneering and lean construction: two practices designed to maximize efficiency and quality while reducing cost.
In this article, we’ll take a look at why they’re such an ideal combination and how you can start using them together to improve project planning.
What is optioneering?
When a contractor performs an extensive analysis of multiple construction alternatives to determine the most optimal building strategy, this process is known as optioneering. Key benefits of optioneering include:
- Lowered costs
- Reduced possibility of delay
- Lessened environmental impact
The larger and more complex a construction project is, the more difficult it becomes to choose the best option for building. Numerous factors can impact the scheduling of large building projects, raising risk.
Rather than having to manually evaluate variables that may affect your projects, you can employ optioneering platforms like ALICE. With ALICE, you can explore numerous ways to potentially build your project. General contractors and owners have been able to more effectively plan and optimize their available resources, achieving significant cost savings in labor and equipment.
What is lean construction?
Lean construction, on the other hand, is a type of project delivery process and an approach that looks to reduce waste and improve collaboration through ‘lean methods’.
When comparing construction to other sectors, labor efficiency and productivity in other industries have increased (almost double or more) since the 1960s—meanwhile, for the construction sector, it has only decreased. Currently, 70% of projects are delivered late and over its originally estimated budget.
The construction industry also sees hundreds of deaths and injuries per year, putting strain on an already aggressive labor shortage.
The construction industry sees significant waste in the delivery system. This may be due to, for example, a lack of trust, which fosters systems of checks and overspecification to avoid legal ramifications.
These are the issues that lean construction seeks to resolve. Evidence shows that projects that implement lean building experience much better outcomes across various benchmarks.
Optioneering and lean construction: a perfect match
Companies that adopt lean construction methods can be well supported by optioneering, because these practices pretty much have the same goal in mind: optimization. Combining these two methods allows you to create an efficient, cost-effective, and safe building strategy that minimizes waste while maximizing value.
Here’s how optioneering and lean construction go together.
Risk reduction
The power of this combination comes from both processes working together to reduce risk. Optioneering provides a proactive approach to assessing potential risks ahead of time, while lean construction helps to reduce waste and optimize the use of resources during the project for a lower risk of project failure.
More confident decision making
When optioneering is combined with lean construction methods, contractors can feel more comfortable taking risks, as they have already pre-evaluated the project’s potential outcomes and identified areas for improvement. This allows them to make decisions with confidence and assurance that they’re taking the best possible route.
Cost savings without quality reduction
When implemented together, optioneering and lean construction can also help contractors save costs while still meeting client expectations in terms of quality, safety, and timing. This combination eliminates the clashing of efforts and resource waste that could otherwise drive up the cost of the project.
In addition, combining optioneering with lean construction methods allows contractors to better manage their resources. By taking a systematic approach, they can easily identify opportunities for improvement and optimize the entire process from start to finish.
Increased productivity
Integrating optioneering with lean construction means more accurate predictions for scheduling, budgeting, progress reporting, and other processes in a building project. Consequently, contractors will be able to work faster, allowing them to complete projects sooner and with greater accuracy.
Improve project delivery by combining optioneering and lean construction
The combination of optioneering and lean construction allows contractors to deliver projects on time and within budget. By using these two practices together, contractors can reap the benefits of both.
Overall, optioneering and lean construction are a perfect match, and will improve project outcomes and help contractors stay competitive. With optioneering and lean construction working together, contractors can feel confident they have the best possible solution for their projects.
By delivering projects with better quality, improved safety, and increased efficiency, contractors can increase their success rate and become more profitable in the long run.
