Exploring the Role of Lean Construction in Decarbonizing the Building Industry: Insights From Industry Experts

The building and construction industry continues to be one of the major contributors to carbon emissions, representing 37% of the global share.Across the approaches being used to decarbonize this sector, the reduction of waste is a shared aim with lean construction.While previous studies have reviewed the associated factors of lean to decarbonization, the actual impact and applicability in real-world practice still require feedback from industry practitioners.This paper aims to address that gap with a mixed-methods approach that includes a literature review to identify lean enablers of decarbonization, and input from industry members to evaluate their effectiveness.According to the assessment, the main factors are the optimization of design, the enhancement of processes on-site and off-site, the improvement of transportation, and avoiding rework.Waste reduction is already included in these factors since they reduce different types of waste, including materials, time, and energy.The industry practitioners qualified optimization of design as the most impactful factor, while optimization of transportation was the least impactful and showed significant variance across responses.The participants highlighted that lean construction contributes to reducing carbon emissions while also decreasing the project cost and duration, which is a significant difference from other decarbonization strategies.