Agile construction is an integrated system of principles and methods, and a philosophy of doing business adapted to jobsites and overall project delivery in the construction industry. It is born from

agile manufacturing Agile may refer to: * Agile, an entity that possesses agility Project management * Agile software development, a development method * Agile construction, iterative and incremental construction method * Agile learning, the application of increme ...

and

project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...

, which is mostly used in manufacturing production, automotive and software developing teams. It is the application of the

Toyota Production System The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile m ...

to the construction industry, with two parallel paths: Measuring ( ASTM E2691) and improving

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

,as well as segregating and externalizing work through prefabrication and supply chain management. Like the Toyota Production System, agile construction principles form a system that relies on input from the source of the work information, both up front for planning the project, as well as throughout the life of a project for real-time feedback. The real-time input produces real-time measurements of productivity and allows for improved responsiveness to changes on the jobsite.

Iterative Iteration is the repetition of a process in order to generate a (possibly unbounded) sequence of outcomes. Each repetition of the process is a single iteration, and the outcome of each iteration is then the starting point of the next iteration. ...

and incremental agile construction methods help manage the design and build of efficient, low-risk processes and activities. This means that each time a process is repeated some changes are made to improve the process. Changes for the better are kept and for the worse are discarded. The eight agile construction principles are: * Agile construction

* Agile construction labor productivity measurement and labor productivity improvement * Agile construction job scheduling and planning * Agile construction

procurement Procurement is the method of discovering and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. When a government agency buys goods or serv ...

and material management * Agile construction externalizing work, through prefabrication (components or parts pre-assembled off-site by suppliers or in a prefab shop, to reduce time, risk, and complexity) * Agile construction labor management and labor composite rate reduction (the average cost of a job crew member to the company per unit of time) * Agile construction estimation accuracy and improvement * Agile construction project

financial management Financial management is the business function concerned with profitability, expenses, cash and credit, so that the "organization may have the means to carry out its objective as satisfactorily as possible;" the latter often defined as maximizin ...

Agile construction principles help contractor's to make processes visible, measurable and manageable to improve the ability to rapidly adapt to job site changes, by minimizing the time between when a risk is detected and when it gets corrected. This requires a better mechanism to predict and capture these changes accompanied with a better infrastructure for addressing them. Agile Construction project management can also make gains in pre-design and design phases of construction projects. Accompanied with a well-trained and highly motivated workforce, companies using agile construction operations are able to increase responsiveness and productivity, to reduce cost and to deliver a better customer value.

References

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Additional References

Daneshgari, Perry, and Heather Moore
Prefabrication Handbook for the Construction Industry: Agile Construction Application through Externalizing Work
, 2019. Construction management Project management

See also

References

Additional References