Business Process Management: Construction Case Study Analysis Report

This report critically analyzes a case study of a construction company's Business Process Management (BPM) journey, focusing on continuous process improvement. It identifies challenges in process modeling and implementation, such as the dynamic nature of construction projects and resource constraints. The report highlights critical success factors, including senior management support, effective teamwork, and the identification of improvement opportunities. Lessons learned emphasize the importance of understanding the organization's culture, building on existing values, and ensuring employee involvement. The conclusion underscores the value of BPM in enhancing safety, employee dedication, and customer satisfaction. The case study illustrates that process modeling and continuous improvement add value, but require dedicated leadership and a supportive team. The report references several scholarly sources to support its analysis and findings, offering a comprehensive understanding of BPM in the construction industry.

Part 4: Continuous Process Improvement – BPM for a construction case study
Student’s name
Institution Affiliation(s)

Introduction
An organization’s success is dependent on the ability to improve quality, outputs, and
profit while a business needs a superior performance in all the three areas. The objective of all
the organizations is to give its customers the highest quality supplies and services at prices,
which are fair and to make a high profit. It is necessary to design a continuous improvement
process in an organization with the intention of achieving goals. There are levels of improvement
that are associated with attaining continuous improvement (Kovach and Fredendall, 2013).
Problems in the process modeling and improvement activities
The case study has presented the main challenges or difficulties in designing and
implementing a business process model and continuous process improvement (Dave, 2017). They
include:
a) The constant change in the operations of the business which makes it difficult to capture
the process and thus it becomes an ongoing task to capture process information.
b) Due to the nature of the project, a continuous process improvement project requires
location of a significant amount of resources especially considering employee time within
the organization which proves to be a difficult task because of the busy schedule of
construction employees.
c) The impact resulting from business process modeling and continuous process
improvement initiatives are not always possible to quantify in the short-term. In some
areas, it may take up to five years before the change results are realized (Indrawati and
Ridwansyah, 2015). In cases or industries where immediate results are expected it is
difficult to manage this expectation.

Critical success factors
From the case study, the following were identified as the main critical success factors for
business process modeling and continuous improvement activities (Dave, 2017):
a) The support from the senior management throughout the project.
b) Good relations between the process improvement team during the project.
c) The identification of opportunities for improvement and core value chains within the
construction business.
d) The knowledge of the construction process possessed by the process modeler.
e) The identification of the most appropriate methods for modeling and business analysis.
f) Finally, the prevalence needed by the process analyst. Projects of this nature require
support and a significant amount of data collection from the employees who are busy in
their work and may not readily provide the time to help in the project (Zarbo, 2012)
Lessons learnt
The Initial process of the improvement effort should be an introduction assessment and
understanding of how the process will work in the organization’s current culture. Initiated
aspects should not undermine the values of the employees involved. It is preferable to build new
values in the framework of the current culture than to impose a dramatic change. If change is
necessary for the upgrading of the organization, the continuous improvement process will
produce the changes. If time is a luxury, which cannot be afforded, management should initiate
the basic changes, allow time for adjustment, and then embark on an improvement process with
the revised organization (Yarmohammadian et al., 2014).
The initial assessment reviews aspects that the senior management intends to achieve and
methods in which productivity, quality, and profit improvement will become the critical parts of

the triumph strategy. Failure to meet these requirements can lead to the effort being doomed to
be a short-term program, most likely focused on dropping manufacturing expenditures. Those
guiding the improvement process need to know existing cultural problems. For example, if sales
are forbidden areas and not the subject to improvement review, the order entry will never reach
the required standards (Baporikar, 2016).
Additionally, from the cultural perspective the important factors to consider, are the
extent of importance the organization attaches to the function and the goals of the organization in
terms of quality of working life. For the success of the improvement effort, the organization
should have a strong orientation towards the people sides of the system they promote (Stojanović
et al., 2017).
It is necessary to evaluate all parts of the process, especially the people factor. When part
of the cost is related to people, for instance, the primary objective must be to keep the
organization principal without risking its potential. Additionally, the amount of work must be
managed so that redundancies, inappropriateness, obsolesce, and other personally debilitating
factors do not enter the picture. The workload has to be kept as prime as the number of
employees otherwise the organization will not optimize its performance. When performance is
optimized and benefits derived, it is recommended that a part of these benefits be shared among
the people who contributed to the achievements (Lodgaard et al., 2016).
Conclusion
An organization, which has successfully implemented the continuous improvement
process, ensures high safety awareness. Such an organization has to ensure that its employees are
comfortable and its employees are dedicated to making continual improvement through the
generation of ideas, are accountable for their work, and actively participate on corrective action

teams. Moreover, it should ensure that actions are centered on continually improving the quality
products, processes, and system. Employees should have the required skills, information and are
proactive in demonstrating the skills to customers. Furthermore, they should have positive
attitudes and the commitment to improve. The organization should also ensure that employees
have an ingrained feeling that customers should be well informed thus striving to transmit all the
information necessary to sustain a superior relationship. Moreover, the demonstration of quality
that is believable and exudes integrity, and trustworthiness by the employees is very vital. The
service performance meets the customer requirements as verified by periodic survey checks.
The case study for the construction company reveals that process modeling and
continuous process improvement adds value and can provide improvement to the organization.
However, the case study has also pointed out that such an undertaking is not easy to sustain
especially without a dedicated champion and a supporting team. Throughout the organization,
employees should contribute concepts and ideas on how to finish the continuous improvement
process and can proceed to higher levels of improvements. The leadership ought to be active
throughout the organizations. The organizations can extend what has been leant outside it
without fear for failure.

References
Baporikar, N., 2016. Business Process Management: International Journal of Productivity
Management and Assessment Technologies 4, 49–62.
https://doi.org/10.4018/IJPMAT.2016070104
Dave, B 2017, ‘Business process management–a construction case study’, Construction
Innovation, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 50-67.
Indrawati, S., Ridwansyah, M., 2015. Manufacturing Continuous Improvement Using Lean Six
Sigma: An Iron Ores Industry Case Application. Procedia Manufacturing, Industrial
Engineering and Service Science 2015, IESS 2015 4, 528–534.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2015.11.072
Kovach, J.V., Fredendall, L.D., 2013. The Influence of Continuous Improvement Practices on
Learning: An Empirical Study. Quality Management Journal 20, 6–20.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10686967.2013.11918361
Lodgaard, E., Ingvaldsen, J.A., Aschehoug, S., Gamme, I., 2016. Barriers to Continuous
Improvement: Perceptions of Top Managers, Middle Managers and Workers. Procedia CIRP,
Research and Innovation in Manufacturing: Key Enabling Technologies for the Factories of the
Future - Proceedings of the 48th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems 41, 1119–1124.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2016.01.012
Stojanović, D., Tomašević, I., Slović, D., Gošnik, D., Suklan, J., Kavčič, K., 2017. B.P.M. in
transition economies: joint empirical experience of Slovenia and Serbia. Economic Research-
Ekonomska Istraživanja 30, 1237–1256. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2017.1355256
Yarmohammadian, M.H., Ebrahimipour, H., Doosty, F., 2014. Improvement of hospital
processes through business process management in Qaem Teaching Hospital: A work in
progress. J Educ Health Promot 3. https://doi.org/10.4103/2277-9531.145902
Zarbo, R.J., 2012. Creating and Sustaining a Lean Culture of Continuous Process Improvement.
Am J Clin Pathol 138, 321–326. https://doi.org/10.1309/AJCP2QY1XGKTSNQF