ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Construction Management
Improving Construction Efficiency Through Lean Techniques & Digital Tools: Case of a Real-time Implementation in an Institutional Building Construction
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Civil Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
- 2Department of Construction Technology and Management, School of Built and Natural Environment, Cape Coast Technical University, Cape Coast, Ghana
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This study investigates how lean construction tools and digital technologies can be combined to induce interventions to improve productivity, efficiency, and project coordination. The construction activities of an institutional building project were categorized into value-adding, non-value-adding, and necessary non-value-adding using Value Stream Mapping (VSM). A dynamic Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based 4D/5D visualization was integrated with Power BI dashboards and Power Automate workflows to generate automated approval notifications and real-time alerts. The integrated methodology was applied and validated as a full-scale construction case study where the overall project duration was reduced by 2.06% as a result of the application of the lean-digital technology integration. Improvement in stakeholder communication and decision-making speed were observed as a result of automatic notifications to the stakeholders. This integrated framework has the potential to be widely adopted for data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement. Considering the substantial benefits reduction in overall project time, and a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to project management, the study's practical implications demonstrate that construction firms can implement this integrated lean-digital framework to achieve quantifiable benefits.
Keywords: construction management, Lean construction, Lean-BIM Integration, Power BI, value stream mapping
Received: 05 Dec 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Kumar, Tomy, V, Ramani and Akomah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Prasanna Venkatesan Ramani
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