Implementing Rapid Construction

Construction Process Flow

as

Innovation

in

Muhamad Azani Yahya 1 , Mohamad Ibrahim Mohamad2

Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,

81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
(email: 1azani@upnm.edu.my, 2mibrahim@utm.my)

Abstract
There is a need to take a holistic approach to reviewing the factors impacting
the construction industry performance. Improvements need to be implemented by all
parties along the entire construction flow for lasting transformation to occur.
Therefore, new concept has to be considered for this new era in delivering project.
Enhancement the speed of the construction process flow is the vital to build a
sustainable local or foreign construction industry that is poised to compete with the
global players. CIDB (2007) have stated the need of innovative through research and
development to be adopted in new construction methods as their strategic thrust to
improve the delivering method. Simultaneously with the requirements and
specification will drive for rapid construction. Survey was done to get the overview
among civil engineers, project managers, project planners, quality system managers,
quantity surveyor and construction researchers. The construction players found the
problems faced by construction industry related to conventional construction method
are because of its nature, management process, site production efficiency and resource
related. Because of these problem faced by conventional construction, rapid
construction concept should be practiced as a modernizing construction in the
industry and provides a significant opportunity to reduce the congestion associated
with the construction phase.
Keywords: Construction efficiency, Rapid Construction, Time reduction, Innovation

1.0

Introduction

The global construction market is constantly changing in a business

environment that increasingly requires greater client focus, better value for money and
construction that on time and on price (Flanagan & Jewell, 2004). Globalisation has
created markets and economies that are interlinked and interdependent with
innovation. The construction industry has its own characteristics and qualities that
make it distinct from other industries (Hayroman et. al., 2009). A construction is
unique and involves many different parties. Innovation is encouraging to make
construction faster, safer and efficient. On top of that, concept of rapid construction
seems to be one of innovation way in modernizing the industry. Construction projects
are characterized by highly variable production rate (Smith, 2007). The effect of
variability on construction cycle times can be considered on different project levels,
from micro variability on the level of individual resource utilization up to macro

variability of overall cycle time. Insufficient management of micro variability induces

fluctuation at higher levels, thereby making projects less stable and introducing waste.
Many reasons are given as to why construction projects are often completed late and
significantly over budget (Bourn, 2000). The needs to be a greater concentration on
achieving a better construction which meets the needs of the end user drive for rapid
construction.
2.0

Objectives

The need to place a greater emphasis on achieving a better construction

technology which meets the needs of the end user at the earlier processes will make
this research flow by the objective of:
1.
2.
3.

3.0

Identifying the lack of traditional construction process flow;

Integrating the need of rapid construction as innovative construction in
Malaysia; and
Identifying the benefits and the way to achieve innovative
construction.

Methodology

The effective way usage of the revenue will only be achieved using the
suitable method. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure data and information gathered to be
exact and in line with the information and objectives of the study. This research
methodology will touch on the aspects of innovative construction in the
implementation of this study to ensure that the findings can be operated more orderly
and effectively. This matter aims to ensure all data gathered are based upon valid
sources and it is in accordance with objective of the study. The area will be covered
in Malaysian construction scenario. The procedure will be starting by understanding
the construction problem and the elements of innovative construction. The concept of
rapid construction as innovative way in construction will be the main element in
analyzing the non efficient way of traditional construction implementation. Data
gathered through perception from construction players in their opinion of construction
process either conventional or contemporary.
4.0

Literature review

The construction industry is relatively slow in developing and adopting new

technologies and usually prefers conservative, well-known practices over innovative
construction methods (Rosenfeld, 1994). Historically it is evident that the drive for
innovation in construction often stems from demand pull (Kulatunga et. al., 2006).
Demand for new concept was stimulated by changing lifestyles and urbanisation. For
examples, demand for fast communication gave rise to intelligent buildings (Gann &
Salter, 2000). The construction operations is a complicated activity involving
abstraction of construction activities from the drawings, choosing of suitable plants
and false works, allocation of resources on site, planning of safe working place for
labourers, and the scheduling of activities sequence. The increasing competition

among contractors demands them to adopt innovative construction methods, which

have not been used or tested previously (Li et. al., 2003). The lack of tools for the
construction planner to evaluate and validate the planning can result in incorrect
construction plans, which cause a lot of rework in the construction phase. The
increasing competition among contractors demands them to adopt innovative
construction methods. Significant costs are imposed on the public during construction
including delay and disruption to local businesses. While pressure to expedite
construction increased, the public also reasonably expects high quality output.
Probabilistic techniques have developed in recent years into an effective means of
assessing output during construction projects. It has been shown that the innovative
construction methods being used are the most effective means of construction and are
within the current technical capabilities of the construction industry. Previous
attempts at the construction industry have resulted in insignificant returns in
productivity, safety and quality. The construction industry needs to think out of the
box and seek alternatives to existing fabrication and assembly process.
5.0

Critique on traditional method

Traditionally, the word construction usually refers to construction activities

and only involves construction parties such as contractors, architects, engineers,
quantity surveyors and developers (Ismail, 2005). It is also definitely involving the
client. This superficial understanding of the term insufficient to depict and sometimes
may give rise to misconceptions of the construction industry. Construction activities
are wide and are not confined to building and contract but also the way of
implementation and also the process flow. The construction industry has its own
characteristics and qualities that make it distinct from other industries. Hence, it is
only right that emphasis is given to the construction characteristics that differentiate
this industry from other industries. From that statement, can see the complexity and
the barrier occur in the organisation and definitely the construction flow will be
unstable because of the various parties involve while the project has its own limitation
of time delivery. Construction industries worldwide have become notorious for under
performance in many aspects such as quality, safety, productivity and product delivery
to planned budgets, programmes and client satisfaction (Tan, 2004). Koskela (1993),
also conducted a study to indicate the order of magnitude of non-value adding
activities called waste on various partial studies. From Koskelas data compilation, it
has shown that construction processes are characterised by high content of waste in its
activities leading to productivity as shown in table 1.
Table 1: Waste in construction - Compilation of existing data (Koskela, 1992)

Source: The application of lean construction to reduce wastes in construction process flow (1992)

There are many undesirable characteristics of current construction with

difficulty in defining or measuring values, poor integration, inability to design to set
budget and missed opportunity for adding and capitalizing on value. The traditional
construction method was understood as the common practice inherited from the long
established custom of delivering the construction project. The word 'traditional' is
often associated with the common practices in construction such as procurement,
work process or project organisation. Terms like traditional methods (Chudley and
Greeno, 2006), traditional method of procurement (Harvey and Ashworth, 1993),
traditional project (Ashworth, 1996), traditional contract (Fisk,1992) and
traditional organization of construction (Halpin and Woodhead, 1980) are often
used in the text to describe the normal standard practice in organizing and procuring
the project. Latham (1994) used the term "traditional construction" in his report to
describe the project which involved well established and normal techniques of design
and construction. Until recent times the majority of the building projects were
constructed using single stage selective tendering. Egan (1998) used the term
"conventional construction process" to describe the process which is sequential and
largely separated process of planning, design and construction. Williams (1995)
applied the term 'traditional' to express a similar concept of fragmentation of work
process in construction project when he compared the traditional process with the fast
track design and build process. So, the concept of innovative construction will change
the paradigm of construction industry. Figure 2 show the construction improvement
aspect that being summarized from Latham, Egan and Levene reports. In general, a
very high level of waste or non-value added activities are assume to exist in
construction and it is difficult to measure all waste in construction. Several partial
studies from various countries have confirmed that waste in construction industry
represent a relatively large percentage of production cost. The existences of
significant numbers of wastes in the construction have depleted overall performance
and productivity of the industry and certain serious measures have to be taken to
rectify the current situation.

Figure 1.2: Construction improvement aspect

Source: National Audit Office of UK (2001)

6.0

Theoretical background of rapid construction

The performances in construction industry rely on many factors to improve the

construction flow from its complexity. According to Bertelsen (2003), this complexity
aspect must be seen in at least three perspectives. Firstly, the project itself as an
assembly and like process is often complicated, parallel and dynamic thus more
complex than traditional project management envisages. The mistake is the ordered
view of the surrounding world. All supplies are believed to be made in accordance
with the project, unreliable schedule and all resources such as equipment and crew are
supposed to stand by, ready for the projects beck and call. And changes will not
occur. However, this is not the way the world operates. Secondly, almost all
construction projects are divided into parts that are subcontracted to individual
enterprises. The construction industry is thus highly fragmented and its firms
cooperate in ever changing patterns, decided mainly by the lowest bids for the project
in question. They are also interwoven, as every firm at the same time participates in
more than one project, utilizing the same production capacity. Mapping the supply
chain in any project is thus next to impossible. Thirdly, the project and the
construction site is a working place for humans and place for cooperation and social
interaction. This aspect is often hidden by the fact that the staff at the construction site
is not hired and reimbursed by the place where they work. Their loyalty is thus
divided between their own firm and the job at hand, often with the firm as the one
with the highest priority. Traditional project management often overlooks this aspect
and does not perceive the gangs on site as their own employees in the virtual firm,
which is form by the project. According to the application of rapid construction in
construction process flow, it has main basis which is restriction of time constraint. The
situation in construction differs in many ways from the typical situation in
manufacturing. The production in construction is assembly type, where different
material flows are connected to the end product. Considering a simple example, the
typical construction process can be described as figure 4.

Figure 4: Formation of construction duration

Source: Koskela (1995)
The illustrated show that in practice task have different durations and the time
buffers between tasks vary. The first task is usually planning and site preparation (not
usually shown in schedules), the second one often excavation and the next ones
ordinary construction tasks. However, the principles discusses next are valid also in
the more complex and practical situation. The basic principle in rapid construction is
time reduction. Thus, there are three major ways of reducing construction time which
are:

1. Increasing the speed of tasks This can naturally be achieved through

increased labour and more effective machinery. However, after the optimal
rhythm has been reached, the costs will rise. A more interesting alternative is
to eliminate non-value adding sub activities from each task. As it is well
known, error correction, multiple handling and waiting make up a large part of
the working time and provide thus a good potential for improvement;
2. Reducing the buffer between consecutive tasks (increasing the overlapping of
task) The buffers are planned between tasks in order to prevent waiting due
to variability in task speed. Thus, reduction of variability is needed (Kaplinski,
1993). Variability is caused by human factors, environmental impacts and
disturbances flowing from earlier phases of the project. More detailed
planning and monitoring is required. The reduction of disturbances
necessitates long term activities in the construction practice.
3. Reducing the number of tasks The first possibility is the transfer of tasks offsite (off the critical path) to upstream phases of the respective material (or
information) flow. This means increased pre-cutting, pre-assembly and prefabrication. A second possibility is provided by alternative, more constructible
design solutions. Utilization of multi-skilled work gangs also shortened by
reducing the planning time. However, this might lead to a prolongment of the
total construction time.

Figure 5: Theoretical alternatives for construction time reduction

Source: Koskela (1995)

7.0

Analysis and discussion

Survey was done to get the overview among civil engineers, project managers,
project planners, quality system managers, quantity surveyor and construction
researchers. They are construction players because of the involvement and
contribution to construction industry. Although conventional construction have its
own merit and most popular in current practice, contemporary or modernization
should be implement to solve the problem of efficiency in conventional construction.
The industry agreed that using Industrialised Building System (IBS) offer the best
practice to ensure time reduction and minimizing non-value activities. Rapid
construction is a concept to enhance the efficiency of construction process flow and to
ensure the successes of project delivery in a chronicle time of contract by time
reduction. The construction players found the problem faced by our construction
industry related to conventional construction method are because of:

i.
ii.
iii.
iv.

Its nature;
Management process;
Site production efficiency; and
Resource related.

Table 1-4 describe the problem faced by the conventional construction process
regarding the main cluster of nature, management, site production and resources.
Table 1: The nature of conventional construction process
No.
1
2
3
4
5
*

Criteria
Higher reliance of workers rather than technology
Difficult to control in term of time overrun
Difficulties in changing adversarial culture of conventional
construction process
Fragmentation of design and construction creates problem in
communication

RW
1.00
0.98

Mean
4.06
4.00

0.98

3.97

0.93

3.78

Difficulties in overlapping activities

RI = Relative Weight

0.92

3.78

Table 2: The management of conventional construction process

No.
1
2
3
4
*

Criteria
Communication between administrative and site personnel always
an issue
Problems always occur in controlling workers
Difficulties in transferring information
Coordination of workers creates management tension
RI = Relative Weight

RW

Mean

1.00
0.98
0.91
0.89

4.07
3.97
3.70
3.63

Table 3: The site production of conventional construction process

No.
1
2
3
4
5
*

Criteria
Design errors and changes of drawings always occur
Checking and testing for in-situ methods creates complexity in
construction process
Hard in securing construction time delivery time
Safety issue hard to be implemented
Issue of buildability always occur in conventional construction
RI = Relative Weight

RW
1.00

Mean
3.97

0.96
0.94
0.93
0.90

3.78
3.75
3.63
3.53

Table 4: The resources of conventional construction process

No.
1
2
3
4
5
*

Criteria
Traditional construction process needs experience personnel to
manage the activities
Materials supply chain really important
Materials inventory on site contribute to site congestion
Materials always procure in large quantities
Quantity of plant and machineries always an issue in traditional
construction process
RI = Relative Weight

RW

Mean

1.00
0.99
0.91
0.89

4.29
4.26
3.90
3.81

0.86

3.68

Because of these problem faced by conventional construction, rapid

construction concept should be practiced as a modernizing construction in the
industry. To achieve a rapid construction, understanding and managing the
construction process as a flow have been a key issue. A fundamental issue in
construction physic is to understand the underlying causes of time and flow variability

mainly caused by non-transformation stages of production (e.g. waiting, moving and

inspection) and to characterize the effects of this variability in the overall production
process. The idea for the work on rapid construction is similar to the production of
project, focusing not only at the main flow of the process of the product, but also
verifying the statement that there might be more than one flow of determining the
performance of the process. When discussing about rapid construction, all variations
and customizations are foreseen and included in the project for real improvisation in
the process features at the most limited time constrain. This is because any
constructions work package has conditions to be fulfilled without any delay, which is
an important issue. In Malaysia, this issue being an urgent need for improving
construction industry. Figure 6 show the perception of construction players on the
need of rapid construction concept in modernizing construction industry. As a result,
100% respondent agreed that this method is an innovative way for modernizing
construction in Malaysia, 94% of respondent think that rapid construction can reduce
overall project time, 65% agreed that this method can increased quality of work and
majority decline on term of cost. So, it is very significant to implement rapid
construction in Malaysia as view by construction players.

Figure 6: Respond from construction players regarding rapid construction

method as a modernizing construction in Malaysia.
Schedule simulation was done to show the eligible implementation of rapid
construction. This simulation of schedule show that by using the IBS system, duration
decrease tremendously. Without considering the period of supply chain like
production and transport, the duration decrease as 45% comparing to normal
conventional method as figure 7. But if the supply chain time included, it is probably
take around 10% of construction time if the construction manager didnt well manage
and forget about just in time (JIT) concept. But in this implementation of IBS system,
it is still reduce the construction time as figure 8. The situation in construction differs
in many ways from the typical situation in manufacturing. Thus, by implementing IBS
system, it can reduce the construction time by increasing the speed tasks, reducing the
buffer between consecutive tasks and reducing the number of tasks.

Figure 7: Gantt Chart for IBS construction method in Malaysia

Figure 8: Rapid construction physical progress

8.0

Conclusion

Rapid construction provides a significant opportunity to reduce the congestion

associated with the construction phase. This method will lessen project durations
while retaining the necessary quality. Opportunities for innovative methods are
numerous. For example the using of pre-cast/ modularization. The construction
players in Malaysia agreed that this concept as a modernizing application in

construction. The major studies have highlighted the inefficiencies of traditional

methods of construction and managing projects. The conceptual of rapid construction
have a significance implementation of modernizing construction in Malaysia. Rapid
construction introduces a few interchangeable ways to carry through some parts of the
process. Have to notice that the traditional flow represents only cases where the
divisions of labour and organisational relations between the parties are alike. While in
the traditional design process the detailed solution is a result of straightforward design
that, stage by stage, become more accurate, the other process concentrates initially on
defining the clear functional requirements, pet ideas of designer and unambiguous
selection criteria for the comparison of tender solutions. Thus, the activities differ so
much that it is practicable to use separate concepts to refer to them in order to be able
to describe the used practice best. However, the solution is not that clear. In the case
of similar kinds of processes, the different order of activities is likely to cause some
differences in those similar activities. On the other hand, also the activities of
extremely different processes should have many common components since the aim
to build a building is the same. Rapid construction provides for several interesting
research themes. From strictly research point of view, the effects of time reduction is
the main element of successful project improvement.

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