33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33) - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan - 2025

https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0173

Exploring the Role of Lean Construction in Decarbonizing the Building Industry: Insights From Industry Experts

Alberto E. Pozzer1, Christopher Rausch2 & Fernanda Leite3

1Ph.D. Student, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, USA, emmanuelpozzer@utexas.edu, orcid.org/0009-0001-6755-0176
2Assistant Professor, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin., USA, c.rausch@utexas.edu, orcid.org/0000-0002-8927-2285
3Professor, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin., USA, fernanda.leite@utexas.edu, orcid.org/0000-0002-7789-4474

Abstract

The building and construction industry continues to be one of the major contributors to carbon emissions, representing 37% of the global share. Across the approaches being used to decarbonize this sector, the reduction of waste is a shared aim with lean construction. While previous studies have reviewed the associated factors of lean to decarbonization, the actual impact and applicability in real-world practice still require feedback from industry practitioners. This paper aims to address that gap with a mixed-methods approach that includes a literature review to identify lean enablers of decarbonization, and input from industry members to evaluate their effectiveness. According to the assessment, the main factors are the optimization of design, the enhancement of processes on-site and off-site, the improvement of transportation, and avoiding rework. Waste reduction is already included in these factors since they reduce different types of waste, including materials, time, and energy. The industry practitioners qualified optimization of design as the most impactful factor, while optimization of transportation was the least impactful and showed significant variance across responses. The participants highlighted that lean construction contributes to reducing carbon emissions while also decreasing the project cost and duration, which is a significant difference from other decarbonization strategies.

Keywords

Lean construction, decarbonization, carbon emissions, industry experts.

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Reference in APA 7th edition format:

Pozzer, A. E., Rausch, C. & Leite, F.. (2025). Exploring the Role of Lean Construction in Decarbonizing the Building Industry: Insights From Industry Experts. In Seppänen, O., Koskela, L., & Murata , K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33) (pp. 1137–1148). https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0173

Shortened reference for use in IGLC papers:

Pozzer, A. E., Rausch, C. & Leite, F.. (2025). Exploring the Role of Lean Construction in Decarbonizing the Building Industry: Insights From Industry Experts. IGLC33. https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0173

 

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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