TY  - CONF
TI  - Where Is the Evidence of Performance Improvement in the Lean Construction Literature?
AU  - Asmone, Ashan Senel
AU  - Pal, Aritra
AU  - Murguia, Danny
AU  - Rathnayake, Asitha
AU  - Middleton, Campbell
AD  - Research Associate, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK, asa79@cam.ac.uk, orcid.org/0000-0002-2173-3890
AD  - Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, aritrapal@civil.iitm.ac.in, orcid.org/0000-0002-1644-7400
AD  - Senior Research Associate, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK, dem52@cam.ac.uk,   orcid.org/0000-0003-1009-4058
AD  - Research Associate, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK, agbrr2@cam.ac.uk, orcid.org/0000-0002-1389-7801
AD  - Professor, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK, prof@construction.cam.ac.uk,  orcid.org/0000-0002-9672-0680
ED  - Seppänen, Olli
ED  - Koskela, Lauri
ED  - Murata, Koichi
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/02
T2  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
C3  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
CY  - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
SP  - 1
EP  - 12
DO  - 10.24928/2025/0128
SN  - 2789-0015 (ISSN)
AB  - This paper critically evaluates the evidence of performance improvement within the lean construction literature. Through a systematic review of 1,351 papers presented at the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) conferences between 2013 and 2024, we identify a significant gap in evidence-based studies explicitly addressing performance improvement, with only 52 papers (3.8%) focus on this critical issue. Our findings highlight a predominant focus on building projects, while infrastructure and industrial sectors remain largely overlooked. Additionally, we classify the various performance metrics used in the literature, revealing a lack of standardisation in measuring project outcomes, which complicates benchmarking efforts. We advocate for the adoption of a consistent performance measurement framework to enable meaningful comparisons across similar projects, facilitating the identification of performance improvement and waste reduction. We argue that a structured, industry-wide approach to benchmarking and performance evaluation is essential for the sustained adoption of lean construction and the realisation of its full benefits.
KW  - Lean construction
KW  - performance improvement
KW  - productivity
KW  - measurement
KW  - standardisation.
L1  - https://www.iglc.net/papers/details/2324/pdf
UR  - https://www.iglc.net/papers/details/2324
DB  - IGLC.net
LA  - English
N1  - Export date: 04 October 2026
ER  -