Production planning approach for implementing sustainable building projects

Sustainable buildings have received effective responses for application in recent years and are gradually becoming a part of mainstream in the construction industry. However, the process of delivering a high sustainable-performance building has led to a more complex construction practice by the increment of specialized processes involved. In great extent, the complexities associated are deemed to be related to the different emerging needs that current construction management systems are unable to meet effectively. In this study, Production Planning Process (PPP) is considered essential in helping to make sure that resources are capable of meeting the planned schedule whilst sustainable practice is implemented. Otherwise the requirements and constraints imposed by sustainable building practice can impact construction sequencing and timing, resulting in workflow variability that can lead to exceed the estimated construction time and cost of the building.;This study aims to measure the performance of the PPP with incorporating sustainability attributes and propose a system for its improvement when implementing and delivering sustainable building projects. The system is named PLAN-SB and was developed by the integration of Lean Construction principles and metrics and Six Sigma methodology. PLAN-SB was designed to measure the performance of the PPP, to reveal how construction activities with relation to sustainable deliverables affect production performance in construction site and to identify the main causes for workflow variability that can lead to its improvement. Results obtained from the implementation of PLAN-SB demonstrated important improvements in the reliability of the PPP and its successful control over time. It was found that the production performance and causes of variability of activities related to sustainable deliverables are different from those activities with no relation. While the difference in the production performance is not considerable significant, the difference in the causes of variability is. It was also found that sustainable building projects present different and unique sources of variability that affect the overall production performance of construction activities. The findings of this study imply the intrinsic importance contained in the reliability of PPP when implementing sustainable building projects and validate the effectiveness of the system proposed in this research for improving its performance.