Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction

The International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) is a network of construction
management researchers and practitioners interested in challenging and improving
practice, research and education on the built environment. The goal of IGLC is to
contribute to better meeting customer demands and improving the performance of the
construction industry. The Group has been developing new principles and methods
for the improvement of product development and production management for
architecture, engineering and construction. Such principles and methods are based on
general production theory adapted to the construction sector. The IGLC webpage
(http://www.iglc.net) presents more information about its activities.
Since the first Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction held
in Finland in 1993, the venue has been alternating between, South America, North
America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The 22nd IGLC Conference is the first one held
in Norway, and the third one in the Nordic countries. The selection of Oslo as the
venue was championed by the contracting company Veidekke and the University of
Agder, both associated to IGLC since many years. These two parties have also led the
organizing of the IGLC 22.
One hundred and twenty five papers, from nearly thirty countries are published in
these proceedings, confirming that our community is growing steadily and expanding
around the globe. The papers are organized in three volumes and grouped in fifteen
tracks, totalling 1517 pages. Table 1 presents the number of abstracts and papers
submitted, as well as papers accepted for each theme. As usual, Production Planning
and Control (25 accepted papers) and Design Management (15) are the tracks with
the largest number of papers. Also, the number of accepted papers on People, Culture,
and Change is fairly large (13), which may be a result of widening of the
implementation efforts of Lean Construction.
The IGLC community is a meeting place for practice and research, and like in
IGLC 21 in Fortaleza, the proceedings are made up by traditional research papers and
industry papers. This last type of paper typically does not adopt the traditional
structure of a research paper, such as statement of a research problem, use of
scientific methods to support conclusions, discussion of the limitations of the study,
and attempts to generalize the conclusions for other contexts. However, industry
papers report on practice-based problem solving and knowledge production and can
be sources of new knowledge and ideas. The number of industry papers has grown
from 5 in IGLC 21 to 20 in IGLC 22 (Table 1). This increase confirms the practical
relevance and impact of Lean Construction on industry, and it is in line with the
premise that lean theory and practice are intertwined