Flow of Activities: Utilizing Parade of Trade to Develop Visual Management Tool Tailored for Infrastructure Projects

Abstract

Parade of Trade (PoT) is a game used in Lean Construction to demonstrate the impact of variability on a production system and to promote the value of constraint management in an environment of dependent events. Infrastructure projects usually have a sequence of construction works to an extend matching with the PoT model. Different trades and activities distributed over a large-scale area combined with its arising particular issues, creates a challenging efficiency paradox. Therefore, there is a need to adapt a new tool that identifies pace maker of the production flow, shows the interactions between different construction stages and trades, and explains the impact of trade progress on one another. The PoT idea used to develop new Visual Management (VM) tool, tailored to bridge the gap in the current model of infrastructure construction management traditional tools, supports the effectiveness of resources utilization and optimizes the project as a whole. Starting from maximizing client's values and passing through selection methodology; this paper records the journey of developing and utilizing sustainable VM tool; tailored for infrastructure construction projects. It supports decision-making regarding resources allocation; adapting construction batch size; assist in determining takt time and takt zones. Furthermore, it opens the way for further studies from Lean researchers and practitioners to develop new Lean Construction tools tailored to serve infrastructure construction projects.