TY  - CONF
TI  - Exploring the Role of Lean Construction in Decarbonizing the Building Industry: Insights From Industry Experts
C1  - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
C3  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
SP  - 1137
EP  - 1148
PY  - 2025
DO  - 10.24928/2025/0173
AU  - Pozzer, Alberto E.
AU  - Rausch, Christopher
AU  - Leite, Fernanda
AD  - Ph.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
AD  - Assistant 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
AD  - Professor, 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
ED  - Seppänen, Olli 
ED  - Koskela, Lauri 
ED  - Murata , Koichi 
AB  - 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.
KW  - Lean construction
KW  - decarbonization
KW  - carbon emissions
KW  - industry experts.
PB  - 
T2  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
DA  - 2025/06/02
CY  - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
L1  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2355/pdf
L2  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2355
N1  - Export Date: 07 June 2025
DB  - IGLC.net
DP  - IGLC
LA  - English
ER  -