23rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction - Perth, Australia - 2015

Analysis of HVAC Subcontractor Mechanisms for JIT Materials Supply to a Construction Site

Daniela Viana1, Patrícia Tillmann2, Zach Sargent3, Iris Tommelein4 & Carlos Formoso5

1Ph.D, Building Innovation Research Unit (NORIE), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Phone +55 51 33083518, [email protected]
2Lean Integration Specialist, Superior Air Handling, [email protected], +1 408-630-1320
3Vice President, Superior Air Handling, [email protected]
4Ph.D., Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and Director, Project Production Systems Laboratory (p2sl.berkeley.edu), 212 McLaughlin Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1712, USA, [email protected]
5Ph.D., Associate Professor, Building Innovation Research Unit (NORIE), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Phone +55 51 33083518, [email protected]

Abstract

Industrialization has been pointed out as a major requirement to improve efficiency, quality, and safety in construction projects. Nonetheless, some of the side effects of industrialization are increasing the complexity of construction by including new technologies, engaging different subcontractors; increasing interdependencies between trades; and so forth. The aim of this paper is to develop a planning procedure for facilitating the integration between off-site fabrication and on-site installation, for achieving a just-in-time delivery, based on an action research study conducted with an HVAC subcontractor. It is part of a wider research project, aiming to develop a planning and control model for engineer-to-order (ETO) prefabricated building systems. The procedure developed in this research helped the team to review the schedule proposed by the GC in terms of constructability, get team consensus regarding installation sequence, improve communication between contractor and fabricators, support fabricators in defining fabrication rhythms and mix of production; and helped the project team solving logistic challenges. The main challenge faced in this research was related uncertainty and unforeseen changes to the developed plans. As a result, we also explored a way of tying fabrication plans to critical activities in the job site to facilitate matching fabrication rate with site demand.

Keywords

ETO building systems, Feedback mechanisms, Production planning and control systems, Just-in-time, pull-production.

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Reference

Viana, D. , Tillmann, P. , Sargent, Z. , Tommelein, I. & Formoso, C. 2015. Analysis of HVAC Subcontractor Mechanisms for JIT Materials Supply to a Construction Site, 23rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , 246-255. doi.org/

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Founded in 1993, the IGLC is an international network of researchers from practice and academia in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of the AEC industry have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the global challenges ahead.

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