Combining Lean Construction with Maturity Models

It has been widely acknowledged that maturity models provide organisations with benefits when implementing a change or improvement strategy. The construction industry has shown particular interest in maturity models as it increasingly seeks to manage organisational change. One type of change some organisations in the construction industry are seeking to manage is the implementation of Lean Construction (LC). The aim of this research is to explore the benefits of bringing together LC and maturity models. Hence data relating to the views on the topic amongst eleven LC practitioners, based in six different countries, was gathered through interviews. The qualitative data collected were analysed using the framework approach. The findings reveal that some of the interviewees already take advantage of maturity models in their practices. Further the findings unearth new potential benefits, applications and possible limitations from the use of maturity models in LC. Overall the data supports the tentative proposition that a focus on investigating a synthesis of the maturity model and LC concepts is a worthy avenue of further research for the academic community in construction management. As a pre-cursor to such investigation the paper introduces a framework of attributes of LC maturity, which is derived from the results of the interviews