Towards a Flow-Based Disruption Metric: A Case Study

Construction projects are inherently ad-hoc, meaning if disruptions arise, it can be hard to quantify the impact of the “damage” that has been done to the cost or timeline as a result of the disruption, as there isn’t necessarily a nominal steady-state condition to compare it to. In this paper, we present a case study of an infrastructure construction project that was beset by over a hundred documented disruptions due to a politically charged project that had ongoing, active attempts to interfere. Traditional approaches to quantifying the impact of disruptions presume there is a baseline against which the disruptions can be compared, which is not the case in a unstable project. Also, they are inherently “transformation” in their approach, whereas a Lean Construction approach would recognize the importance of taking a more holistic view incorporating elements of Flow and Value. A WIP-based metric of the project outcome, called “WIP-Time” is proposed and assessed in the context of the case study