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AEC Technology Glossary

Construction & Field

What is Lean Construction?

Lean construction applies production-system thinking to building: maximize value, minimize waste (waiting, rework, overproduction), and make workflow reliable through practices like the Last Planner System, pull planning, and continuous improvement. It treats unreliable commitments, not just bad luck, as the root of schedule failure.

In practice

Lean shows up as pull planning sessions, percent-plan-complete tracking, and constraint logs. Scheduling software increasingly builds these practices in rather than treating the schedule as one planner's document.

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