Azza Abou-Zeid’s scientific contributions

Mass production manufacturing concept is commonly used in real estate developments by constructing multiple phases or buildings concurrently to save time and cost. As a result, real estate developers usually sell a large percentage of the project before construction in order to secure funding to finance the mass construction work. However, it has been noticed that this strategy leads to time delays, cost overrun, and profit loss especially during periods of economic instability. This phenomena has been witnessed in the Egyptian real estate market when the economy was suffering from severe fluctuations. Projects had large work in progress (WIP) requiring more funds to finance construction costs at higher prices than planned, and suffered from delays. Accordingly, this research evaluates the effectiveness of adopting the lean concept “one-piece-flow (OPF)” in delivering real estate projects that consist of multiple repetitive units resembling the manufacturing of multiple identical units. As opposed to mass production, OPF relies on the lean concept of small batch production to reduce WIP and maintain continuous flow of units to reduce production cycle time. Adopting this concept in construction would help avoid over-allocation of resources for mass construction, and allow incorporating the end user feedback in the batches that have not started work yet and detecting defective work early to avoid rework. Moreover, it would help developers increase revenues by adjusting selling prices for inflation when selling later batches. Therefore, this research proposes OPF-based delivery of construction projects rather than the common method of mass construction. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a real construction project of a residential complex that consists of six identical buildings constructed simultaneously has been used as a case study. A comparative analysis has been conducted between the actual case and the proposed OPF-based case of delivering two buildings at a time in terms of time, cost, and economic feasibility. The results showed that the OPF-based delivery achieved project completion in more time and cost in comparison with mass construction, yet with almost 50% more profitability. Accordingly, this research proves OPF’s potential in delivering real estate construction projects that consists of multiple units.