27-28 April 2009 | Vught, the Netherlands

The ENCORD Lean Construction Management Workshop was held on 27-28 April 2009 in Vught, The Netherlands and was organised by Richard Bufferfield of Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Services and Ger Maas of Royal BAM Group. 34 participants from Balfour Beatty, Ballast Nedam Infra, CCC, Ferrovial, Hochtief, Royal BAM Group, Vinci/Vinci Construction, YIT Corporation and Züblin/ENCORD as well as from Arpa Bouw and University of Technology of Eindhoven attended the workshop.
The first ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management in 2007 (Copenhagen) offered an introduction. The second ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management in 2008 (London) focussed on the value creation. This third ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management provided a guide to an approach of Lean Construction Management by sharing examples from implemented construction projects, putting a focus on the operational side of the topic. This also seemed even more essential with the backdrop of the current European (and global) economic crisis, in which “Lean Construction Management” as a toolbox of various approaches and methods is a possible way of improving efficiency to meet constrained budgets – ‘getting the same for less’.

21-22 April 2009 | Copenhagen, Denmark

The 18th ENCORD Virtual Construction Platform (VCP) meeting was held at NCC’s head office in Copenhagen, Denmark 21-22 April 2009. Prior to the ENCORD VCP meeting an ENCORD 5D Initiative meeting was held on Monday the 20th of April.
The ingredients of the meeting of the ENCORD VCP were:
- A presentation by NCC about their BIM implementation and the influence of the Danish government on BIM in construction;
- A presentation by Eurostep on an “Open Information Platform” to collaborate and exchange information from BIM and Document Management Systems between partners in the construction process. Eurostep is the replacement for Oracle in the InPro project;
- A presentation by the General Secretary of ENCORD (Jens-Peter Grunau) on ENCORD and the current eight focus topics and the ENCORD strategy;
- A presentation by Ballast Nedam on the implementation and use of IBM Maximo at Ballast Nedam’s Operations & Maintenance company;
- A series of “Bad Practices” and “What’s new” presentations by all present ENCORD VCP members. We chose to have the members present a “Bad Practice” presentation instead of “Best Practice” presentations, to inform each other about things that go wrong in our Virtual Construction projects, and about the actions taken to prevent this in the future.

17 April 2009 | Condor House, London

ENCORD members as well as participants from Skanska met in London on April 16th 2009 for a Construction Co2 workshop. A draft of a Construction industry CO2 measurement protocol and the list of carbon emissions monitoring and reporting drivers for construction were introduced and discussed at the meeting. Revised versions including input from the participants were created following the meeting.