Lean enabling human capacity bilding of small and medium contractors in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Lean construction is still at the premature stage of the small and medium contractors (SMCs) in Sri Lanka. Lack of focus on human capacities required to implement lean has hindered its implementation. Thus, human capacity building is a paramount factor for successful lean implementation of SMCs in Sri Lanka. However, there is a lack of empirical investigation on human capacities and strategies to build human capacities for lean implementation in Sri Lankan SMCs. This paper investigates the lean enabling human capacities and strategies, and hence develops a framework to build those human capacities for successful lean implementation in Sri Lankan SMCs. The research adopts interpretivism stance and uses the qualitative survey strategy. The empirical data collection technique adopted is semi-structured interviews with 24 experts who are having experiences both in SMCs and lean implemented projects. The code based content analysis was used as the data collection technique, which was supported by NVivo10 and interactive data visualisation tool, Power Bi was used to present the analysed data. The research identified team working skills, critical thinking, leadership, communication skills, work ethics, knowledge and positive attitudes as lean enabling human capacities in SMCs. Training, learning and using existing capacities were identified as the most significant individual level strategies, where education and training, and financial support for SMCs were recognised as strategies that can be used by external environment entities to build the above capacities. The developed framework further highlighted that use of existing capacities, proper recruitment, proper investments, networking, maintain a lean culture and learning by doing as organisational strategies to build the lean enabling capacities. Industry practitioners can use this framework to develop lean enabling human capacities in order to accelerate the lean implementation in Sri Lankan SMCs.