Lean Principles an Innovative Approach for Achieving Sustainability in the Egyptian Construction Industry 3 From 11

According to a study conducted by the U.S. Energy Information

Administration (EIA)in 2011, the building sector consumes nearly half (48.7%) of all energy produced in the United States.

Globally, these percentages are estimated to be even greater (Architecture2030, 2011).

Furthermore, the (CI) is responsible for generating most of the CO2 emission worldwide.

The increasing concerns towards saving the environment, minimizing waste and using natural resources efficiently called for the (CI) to be more sustainable.

Great improvements have been observed in manufacturing, especially lean automobile industry which uses about 50% of manufacturing space, human effort in factories, product

development time and investments in tools (Koskela, 2004).

These improvements were the result of the development and implementation of a new production philosophy called “Lean Production”.

This philosophy aims to avoid waste of time, money, equipment, effort and improving value through employing and combining existing

approaches such as Just in Time (JIT), Total Quality Management (TQM), time based competition and concurrent engineering (Melles and Wamelink, 1993).

Adopting the “Lean Production” philosophy is expected to bring a revolutionary change to the way of work in every industry.

In construction, lean production has been adopted relatively quickly by contracting companies which are keen to reduce waste in their construction projects.

Even if only a small fraction of the gains observed in manufacturing were realized in construction, the incentive to apply these concepts would be tremendous (Emmitt et al., 2004). Hence, this paper aims to investigate the role of (LPs) as an innovative approach for achieving sustainability in the (ECI).