Summary

Lean thinking has challenged the traditional theories of work such as the exis-tence of "economies of scale", that there is always a trade-off between time, cost and quality, that the least cost approach to procurement will always deliver the lowest total cost, that maximizing utilization maximizes income generation, that specialization increases productivity etc. Much of the business decision making in these areas is undertaken by commercial managers who recommend actions using such traditional business theory - the question is "are they making the right decisions?"

Being a project-based construction is an industry where production is spread among separate projects standing apart from the head office organisational processes. Thus commercial management acquires even greater weight as it is responsible for bringing together fragmented parts of organisational system. 20 years of research in Lean Construction has certainly delivered many improvements in the industry, however these have largely been delivered in an ad hoc way project to project with little impact of the overall commercial management of the business.

Commercial management plays an important role representing a link between market needs and business response. Traditional approach to the discipline causes divide with little or no connection between projects and no feedback into the business processes. This prevents significant change and improvement projects and thus fails to support lean project delivery.

Aims and objectives

The principle aim of this project is to establish a new research field within con-struction procurement and economics. Several tasks are expected to be solved after the project completion:

• Identify in what way the traditional commercial management processes fail to support Lean thinking within the business;
• Define "state of the art" of innovative practices in the commercial man-agement in construction as well as other industries;
• Identify opportunities for developing Lean approaches in commercial management practices.