A Critical Review of Visual Aid Implementation in Lean Construction Scheduling Process

One of the recent advances in the construction industry is the virtualization/digital representation of information. Building information modeling (BIM), which has been adopted over the past 20 years, enables the integration of data into the design and construction. This technology is deemed capable of facilitating better collaboration between different project stakeholders. One of its functions is to serve as a visual aid for the team members in decision making. However, not all types of BIM are appropriately used in certain practices. This study looks at lean construction scheduling where BIM may be used differently because of the last planner system. The last planner system facilitates short term planning by allowing project team members to elaborate on their tasks in greater detail so that the team can identify potential constraints on project execution. The lack of visual reference, especially one that provides a logic sequence that is important during the planning, might help project stakeholders discover issues. However, the conventional schedule methods with 4D BIM are typically developed based on a CPM schedule where the detailed schedule is determined early by a schedule. Consequently, 4D BIM practices and the last planner scheduling techniques are not yet compatible. This study provides an analysis of current research trends around the topic of visualization in lean construction project scheduling. Findings indicated that existing publications tend to focus on the technology instead of the underlying communication theory between project participants. From the technology side, this study is limited to studying the utilization of emerging technologies such as BIM. Thus, several suggestions were made on how emerging technology can be implemented in certain aspects of a lean project.