Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction

Applying lean thinking in commercial management

Daria Zimina, Christine L. Pasquire,
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64
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Journal of Financial Management of
Property and Construction
Vol. 16 No. 1, 2011
pp. 64-72
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1366-4387
DOI 10.1108/13664381111116098
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1366-4387.htm
Applying lean thinking in
commercial management
Daria Zimina
Civil and Engineering Department, Loughborough University,
Loughborough, UK, and
Christine L. Pasquire
School of Architecture, Design and Built Environment,
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop two hypotheses explaining the role of commercial
management in the lean business model: lean construction is a viable choice of commercial strategy;
and lean commercial management is an integral part of lean construction system subordinate to the
project delivery. This is completed as a part of conceptualisation of the lean commercial management
discipline in construction on the abstract level and followed by deriving its main principles.
Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on the direct observation of the companies
pursuing lean strategy in construction as well as of those following non-lean business models, review of
case studies and literature.
Findings – Traditional commercial arrangements do not comply with the lean construction
requirements and may hamper the exploration of its full potential. Lean commercial management differs
in the way that its primary role is to support the production process thus it is subordinated to it.
Research limitations/implications – This research would benefit from links with the existent field
of social and economic studies where deeper reasoning to substantiate the theory might be found.
Experiments with lean companies in the construction sector are also necessary for theory validation.
Practical implications – The approach offered in this paper vectors the way of dealing with the
commercial decisions within lean enterprise. This potentially can further enhance benefits from lean
construction.
Originality/value – The paper builds upon the related research and papers, further advancing the
topic of lean construction.
Keywords Management strategy, Construction industry
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
After 18 years history, lean thinking in construction is an established field with a firm
conceptual basis and methods for planning (work structuring) and control at
construction site, management of design and supply. These approaches have been tested
by numerous companies belonging to the construction sector. More recently there has
been a rise of interest in developing new contracting and organisational forms and
practices. This signalises a new stage in the lean construction research investigating less
tangible but not less important issue as commercial management.
Commercial management is defined by the institute of commercial management as
“the identification and development of business opportunities and the profitable
management of projects and contracts, from inception to completion.” Although the
terminology differs from country to country, on the functional level commercial
 management relates to business models employed by construction sector companies, Applying lean
their market strategies; to project strategy (procurement, contracting); and operational thinking
level (cost planning, money flow, accounting). In the developing lean construction
industry good intentions are rarely supported by changes in the commercial operations.
Commercial management has a major impact on the construction business being
responsible for making strategic choices and their embodiment in everyday practice.
Starting a lean construction journey is already a commercial decision, but when 65
acceptance of a strategy is not supported by a change in the way the company operates
the probability of success is low. There are many reasons why traditional commercial
arrangements do not comply with lean construction needs. There can be no compromise
between partnering and the search for short-term benefits at the expense of partners; the
company cannot facilitate work flow if it is not able to cope with constraints that moved
down the supply chain; it is impossible to improve project performance by concentrating
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on local efficiencies; trust cannot be created if the supply chain is not paid on time.
In this paper, it is suggested that lean commercial management is an integral part of
lean construction together with lean project delivery. Despite its overall importance,
the position of lean commercial management in relation to lean project delivery is
defined as secondary and subordinate to the latter.
The aim of this paper is to grasp the concept of lean commercial management on the
highest abstract level and outline its main features. Such comprehension is a vital part of
changing the reality by improving the established practice. The research is based on the
analysis of reality through direct observations, interviews and case studies.
The conclusions are relevant to lean design and construction field as well as business
improvement in project management in general.

Testing the validity of lean as commercial strategy

According to economic theory the goal of each company is profit maximisation.
A different point of view offered by, e.g. Hillebrandt (2000) and others, suggests that
there are at least two possible types of motivation – job satisfaction and financial
motivation. For the individuals motivated to do their job at the highest standards money
serves only as a leverage to achieve their goals. In this case lean is a valid, although not
necessarily pursued, choice of commercial strategy for the companies these individuals
run. Lean can be chosen independently of the external environment (e.g. state of national
and world economy) which nevertheless might trigger change.
For those companies whose primary goal is to make money per se, there is a range of
strategies to follow. They differ in terms of expected profit margins, sustainability,
speed of returns, etc. Normally, the decision depends on internal (specialisations, staff
skills, top-management motivation, etc.) and external factors (availability of resources,
general socio-economic environment, demand, government regulations, substitution
goods, etc.). Among these companies behaviour of adaptation to the external
environment is common and improvement of production system path will not be valid
unless it pushes the companies to follow this path.
It is easy to observe that fluctuations of the external environment are mirrored in the
industry strategic behaviour. Lansley (1987) divides the evolution of the British post-war
construction industry into the three periods. Under the stable environment of the 1960s
there was no need for the companies to be concerned with long-term planning. Large
numbers of orders made growth and flourishing possible by simple focus on one or another
 JFMPC specific area. The turbulence of the 1970s with its energy crises, rise of international
16,1 competition and subsequent transition of the economy to post-industrial stage,
liberalisation, etc. considerably reduced the demand for construction. Flexibility became
a matter of life and death for the construction firms, and a floating strategy was adopted
assuming “scanning the environment and managing the firm’s interface with it” as the
main activity (Betts and Ofori, 1992, p. 521). The trend continued in the 1980s bringing
66 forward the strategy of business restructuring through mergers and acquisitions and
diversification as a way to sustain high profits (Ramsay, 1989; Hillebrandt and Cannon,
1990). In many companies diversification went so far that only a small share of their
business remained actually in contracting (Langford and Male, 2000). Betts and Ofori
(1992) and Hillebrandt (2000) state these three stages were similar across Europe.
Although superficially strategies have altered, they have continued to keep the
source of profit outside the company, separated from the firm’s main activity –
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construction. Langford and Murray (2006) illustrate this with an example of the private
house building sector of the 1970s where spectacular margins were achievable on the
back of the site management procedures and more profit came from intelligent land bank
acquisition rather than “lean” process improvement at production level. It was
impossible for the production system to gain the same importance as commercial deal
making, which naturally shifted the power balance toward the latter.
Under such conditions increasing the effectiveness of project management is a
somewhat second priority. Moreover, in 1989 Winch concludes that profit maximisation
strategy is incompatible with the effective management of projects and the attempts to
improve the overall built environment. Under the current procurement systems
opportunistic behaviour thrives. It is more beneficial for construction professionals to
generate profits by manipulating their relationships with others for their own benefit
that struggle for production perfection. An example of Tarmac company provided by
McKinlay (1987) demonstrates that for construction companies cash flow is seen as a
main asset as it allows to play at the highly profitable financial markets. Owing to this
trade off Winch believes no market forces are capable of making the construction
industry move towards efficiency (Winch, 1989).
The recession of the early 1990s and the shortage of work that followed shifted the
bargaining power to clients. On one hand, it put the clients into a position where they
were capable of influencing tendering prices and drive risks down the supply chain
while on the other hand creating a push for improvement in the quality of service
(Hillebrandt, 2000). The construction industry responded with another attempt to
generate profitability by changing commercial arrangements on projects rather than
improving the construction process itself. Clients can now choose among numerous
procurement routes, however no performance guarantees are offered by the supply side
meaning this choice is turned into an illusion (Langford and Murray, 2006).
Was the response relevant? The decline in construction firms’ profitability
(Flanagan et al., 1998) leads us to say it was not. As the pursuit for profit maximisation
brought low or no profit there must be a contradiction between the goals and the selected
means. Thus, it is suggested that treating the external environment as a source of profit
is no longer a valid strategy. To remain in business companies have to look for internal
improvement. As lean construction seeks profitability internally through redesign
and perfection of business operations it is justified as a viable strategy from a
commercial perspective.
 Revising the concept of commercial management Applying lean
Relationship between commercial management and project delivery thinking
While the source of competitive advantage for a company moves towards internal
business improvement and lean is adopted as a leading strategy it causes a profound
functional restructuring and transformation of the roles played by commercial
management. The hypothesis offered here is that lean commercial management should
be seen as internally oriented and subordinate to the production system. The support for 67
this hypothesis can be found in the lean construction theory itself. The theory dictates
that value is created in design and delivered on site. Commercial activities do not create
value but carry a supporting function in project delivery. This is an important point and
failure to see it might well be the reason for the contradiction between the goals and the
means mentioned above.
Recent events in Toyota are another demonstration of the destructive consequences of
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giving the priority to the commercial side of the business. In 2009 and 2010 Toyota had to
recall several millions of vehicles worldwide due to unsatisfying quality. According to BBC
news the estimates of losses from recalls of cars with potentially faulty accelerator pedals
reach £1.23bn in costs and lost sales. This immediately provoked speculations among
academics and lean practitioners concerning the validity of lean theory. The statement
made by the company itself identified that the problem was not in the faultiness of the
Toyota way but in the deviation from it. According to the declaration made by the
president of the company to the media, the management relate their current situation to
improper commercial behaviour. Lately the company was expanding in an exceedingly
rapid way and the process of training of people was not able to keep the same pace.
It is also interesting to notice that lean theory itself has developed exactly in such
succession where production system topics came first and commercial management
related issues rose only several years afterwards. The conceptualisation of the Toyota
model by the Western interpreters until recently was almost entirely concentrated on the
production processes leaving commercial issues beyond the consideration. In the
construction industry application of lean thinking has also started from the production
perspective with the development of such things as the Last Planner Systeme and other
approaches to improve the project delivery.
Owing to the nature of the construction industry the success of a company
nevertheless depends on commercial management much more than in manufacturing.
Construction is an industry where production is spread among separate projects standing
apart from the head office organisational processes. They require the contribution of
multiple actors each of them representing a separate business entity with their own goals
and incentives. A great demand is placed on communication channels due to uncertainty
in work flow (Howell and Ballard, 1996). Companies spend a significant part of revenue
on outside goods and services. This inevitably influences project outcomes and the
profitability of companies over the long-term period.
The differences between the conventional construction business model and the lean one
are shown in Figure 1. The conventional model features were outlined in the previous
section. Commercial management occupies the leading position in it and the objective to
increase company’s profitability rarely correlates with the improvements in the
production system. In the lean construction business model a holistic view of the problem
is assumed. Commercial management and project delivery are the parts of the whole and
the former is subordinate to the latter.
 JFMPC Lean and non-lean
16,1 Can lean project delivery co-exist with conventional commercial management and is the
opposite variant possible? Joining lean commercial management with traditional project
delivery on the theoretical level would be a contradiction as it means creating an
environment for improvement without delivering that improvement. The commercial
part of a business is only a support to the improvements introduced in the production
68 system and thus cannot be a primary target of a change. Changing only one element in
the complex system is likely to cause a moral hazard effect and opportunistic behaviour.
This happens for example with target costing practices. Potentially target costing is a
powerful tool to deliver better value spending less. However, without a proper project
delivery system in place it becomes a cost-cutting procedure which is normally done
through lowering specifications, reducing quality and trimming profit[1].
In practice there have been a lot of attempts to improve commercial process and
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some elements of such improvement can be regarded as lean (e.g. partnering, alliances,
relational contracts, etc.). But these new procurement types are rarely glued by changes
in the production system, culture and fixed in specific processes. This brings to failure
of those partnering, alliance agreements, etc. which in fact are limited only to the new
contract arrangements.
The reverse case of the lean project delivery under conventional commercial terms
is possible to implement but will be reliant on such unsteady matters as chance and
luck. It is clear that even if all parties to the project are motivated to “do lean”, still their
commercial interests may differ. The task of lean commercial management on the
project is then to ally these interests in one common goal – value delivery.
To sum up this short discussion lean commercial management is seen as a logical
extension of the lean project delivery system.

The role of leadership

Leadership is the third component in the business model although it is not included
in Figure 1. Capacity as well as capability of the construction firms is determined
by their leaders and the quality of its management, which are the most valuable
and at the same time scarcest resource (Hillebrandt, 2000; Hillebrandt and Cannon,
1990). All strategic decisions are made by management and based on their
thinking and motivation. Normally, it forms a pattern of behavior and can be called

Commercial
management

Production
Commercial system
management Production
system
Figure 1.
The difference between
conventional and lean
construction system
Note: Two contradicting “effectivenesses” are substituted by one common goal
 a “corporate ideology” (Ive, 1990). The corporate ideology in its turn guides generation Applying lean
and expression of the company strategy. thinking
For the company top management commitment to lean thinking is an obligatory
success factor capable of launching lean in both the production and commercial parts.
The same engine is required on the separate projects. Leadership can come from any
firm with enough influence on the project, despite the widespread opinion that it is
invariably the client’s initiative. According to Hillebrandt (2000), only 25 percent of the 69
market is client-lead (mainly large-scale projects) while on the remaining projects the
supply chain has a stronger influence on the course of events.

Lean commercial management – outlining the discipline

On the organisational level commercial management deals with the company goals and
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ways to achieve them. To be lean it requires an objective analysis of the current situation,
being clear about where the company is moving in the short and long term. Individual
construction projects seen as a discrete activity have to be put in the context of the continual
strategy of the company. All levels have to comply with lean thinking. Here, we derive
seven principles that can be attributed to lean commercial management. The concept
“principle” implies universality and thus can be applicable to all commercial operations in
companies pursuing business improvement across the construction sector. The form lean
commercial management methods assume will differ from company to another.

1. Long-term orientation
Lean transformation is a long and complicated process. That is why orientation on the
long-term in planning for the future is inevitable. Long-term system thinking changes
the perception of cost and value. What is seen as expenditure in the short-term converts
in the long term to an investment that will eventually bring significant financial and
non-financial returns to the company, for example training of the staff and building a
stable relationship with the supply chain.
Herrero Contractors, a contractor from San Francisco area on its lean journey since
2004, admits that consistency is crucial for the lean strategy. The company does not
compete on the lowest cost basis, even if it means losing a tender, but offers value,
showing to the client that each dollar to be spent will be spent for the client’s benefits.
Herrero’s policy is long-term cooperation with its subcontractors and suppliers, based on
best value selection. It invests vastly in lean education of its own staff as well as partners.

2. System thinking
Recognising businesses and projects as a system of mutually dependent factors dictates
the structure in each of these elements that must be aligned or in balance. In other words
optimization of the whole is absolutely necessary to achieve the improvement goals.
In all other cases the outcomes are likely to be less than optimal and stable, create local
efficiencies and result in loss of resources rather than gains. For example, the target
value design (TVD) cost management practice used at the Cathedral Hill project in
California pursues optimization of the whole project cost (Ballard, 2008). This is a drastic
change from a typical traditional cost management approach, where design costs
are separated from the construction. TVD approach means designing to target cost,
where cost is managed from early stages by cross-functional teams, involving client and
designers as well as contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. Specific commercial
 JFMPC arrangements (Integrated Form of Agreement) allow free circulation of money on the
16,1 project without being withheld by the individual organisations. As a result funds are
invested to the parts that are the most needed to optimise the cost of the whole project.

3. Ethics
Ethics is a set of self-imposed principles that guide the life of an individual or company’s
70 behaviour. A code of ethics based on the lean philosophy relies on commitment to
colleagues, partners, clients as well as consideration of the wider audience – all those
influenced by the company activity. Ethical behaviour has economic justification as it
helps to build trust and reduce transactional cost between business partners or
collaborating parties on the project, individuals working in team and ease reaching
company’s business goals through reputation building.
Toyota is known for its careful redundancy policy: in times of crisis, for example,
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the company refuses to cut costs by discharging people, deliberately accepting

decrease in profits, as it believes it is important not to break the commitment. This also
complies with long-term thinking as it seems to be more rational to accept deterioration
of financial indicators in short term rather than having to train new people to high
Toyota standards after market recovers.

4. Flexibility and straightforwardness

Flexibility is necessary for survival in the uncertain and dynamic environment. On the
organisational level flexibility can be presented as an ability to respond to the changing
market. It should however be distinguished from an obsequious behavior or a chaotic
inconstancy which designates absence of the clear vision. A project level example is initial
flexibility in budgets and goals that are formulated in the client’s brief. Rigid orders at the
early stage of the project definition might prevent achievement of best value as only limited
amount of information is available. At the Sutter Medical Office Building the client only set
flexible objectives at the initial stage and invited the integrated cross-functional project team
to participate in the business planning. The set of solutions emerged through discussions
and the best option was chosen later down the road when more information was available.
Multiple invoicing and complicated procedures do not satisfy the supportive requirement
for the commercial management. One of the participants at Sutter Medical Centre Health
project is Ghafari Consultancy that was hired to develop a simple system of process
improvement efforts to streamline overall project cost reporting, and develop standard
procedures. Cost reports were reduced to an one page replacing 100 page report and have
aim at providing quick up-to-date cost information necessary to manage the project.

5. Rational decision making

This implies first of all an acceptance of the facts of reality and an understanding of what
is being managed before actions are taken. A research is often required to achieve such
understanding. Before a decision is taken it is desirable to check all the alternatives
and think through possible consequences of each of them. A process of analysing the
decision a posteriori allows learning and constant improvement. Lean offers several
techniques to assist rational decision making such as value stream mapping,
A3s, Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. These can be applied to any level of commercial
management. Nevertheless, purely rational decision-making is in many ways bounded
by uncertainty and imperfect information.
 6. Front loading of the systems Applying lean
Years of experiments with integrated project delivery and TVD challenged the rigid one thinking
way client-to-team communication. Involvement of the team to business planning and more
focused design stage results in better understanding of the project and opens opportunities
for identifying client’s value and finding ways to deliver it. From the commercial perspective
it means earlier commencement of spending and accelerated project cash flow. The fees paid
to the team must be treated as an investment which is done on that project stage when the 71
ability to influence the final outcome in terms of cost is the highest. Eventually it is
compensated as the project is more likely to be delivered cheaper, faster and in better quality.

7. Active control and decentralisation

Bureaucratic central planning model of management has failed to demonstrate positive
results in the complex systems operating in the uncertain environment. The latter
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requires alternative model where cost information is delivered to people who need it the
most and exactly when they need it. It demands managers to adopt more active
hands-on approach to the work they do.

Conclusion
This paper has addressed the verification on the abstract level of the following
hypotheses:
H1. Lean construction is a viable choice of commercial strategy.
H2. Lean commercial management is an integral part of lean construction system
subordinate to the project delivery.
It also outlined seven principles that lean commercial management relies on.
In the authors, view the intellectual justification given here is enough to consider these to
be confirmed. However, despite the fact that the hypotheses appeared from the observation
of reality, we clearly understand that a few practical examples provided in the paper are not
enough. The theory formation requires practical evidence to support these statements in the
form of analysis of project failure cases as well as of successful practices. Apart from that,
more work is needed in the development of the conceptual structures of the lean commercial
management theory. This is partly attempted in the chapters deducing the consequences of
the business system revision for the commercial management discipline.
This paper has presented the findings so far of a research project currently under
way. Its overall aim is to form the theory of lean commercial management that would
be able to feed good practice of the everyday construction industry.

Note
1. For more information see works of Ballard (2004, 2008) and Nicolini et al. (2000).

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Further reading
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designing to target cost”, 12th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean
Construction, pp. 234-49.
Liker, J.K. (2004), The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest
Manufacturer, McGraw-Hill Professional, New York, NY.

About the authors

Daria Zimina is a Research Associate in Civil and Engineering Department at Loughborough
University Loughborough, UK. Daria Zimina is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: d.zimina@lboro.ac.uk
Christine L. Pasquire is a Professor of Lean Project Management in the School of
Architecture, Design and Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University, UK.

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