Towards Identifying Making-Do as Lead Waste in Refurbishment Projects

Refurbishment projects have shown declining productivity in the last decades. At the same time, refurbishment activity is increasing rapidly worldwide to achieve a more sustainable built environment. Thus, understanding reasons for the low productivity is a key aspect to reach environmental as well as economical sustainability. The aim of this research has been to identify Making-Do in refurbishment projects and the reasons behind it. A case study research approach has been used to collect data by actively participating in weekly Last Planner System meetings, observing work in progress on-site on three projects and conducting work sampling studies on six trades. The research showed that Making-Do is highly likely to be both the prevailing and lead waste form in all of the three cases, and that insufficient management of production was the main cause. This was found by firstly identifying an overlap between known impacts of Making-Do from literature and the most occurring negative impacts observed in the cases. Secondly, finding that talking generally contained the biggest potential for being reduced and that this potential had an apparent correlation with Making-Do. This research is an important step towards understanding Making-Do in refurbishment projects and how to detect and reduce lead waste in refurbishment, and to improve construction productivity.