Lean Construction as an Innovative Approach for Minimizing Risks

The past two decades have witnessed a rapid increase in construction projects within developing countries in the Middle Eastern Gulf region. This coincides with the governments' announcements regarding substantially increased spending on the improvement of infrastructure. Despite this increase construction companies still face many challenges including completing projects on time and within budgets thus promoting a negative image of the industry in that region. The negative impact of the aforementioned challenges has been confirmed through (1) data collected from documents concerning completed construction projects in which the researcher has been professionally involved; (2) the researcher's experience in the field of construction project management in the Middle East and risk management in particular; and (3) extensive study of the literature in this domain. This has identified a set of the most common problems associated with construction projects in one of the Gulf Area countries - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) - and has led to them being categorized into three individual risk types namely Construction Waste; Delayed Schedule; and Project Over Budget.