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Egypt's construction sector faces enormous challenges related to the construction phase, the most important of which is a considerable waste of effort, time, and money that may result in increasing the risk of losing projects. Indeed, eliminating such a waste will certainly improve the project performance, thereby enhancing the value of the project stakeholders. The researcher assumes that adopting lean construction (LC) approach is necessary to reduce waste, improve performance, and enhance the performance of the Egyptian construction sector at large. The research relies on a simplified methodology that has several positive outcomes: (1) saving time and cost; (2) boosting quality and safety; and (3) improving management process control, resource management, and relationships between project team members. Therefore, the main objective of the current paper is to examine and analyse the ability of wasteless construction principles to reduce waste in the construction process through an applied case study of a large construction project in Egypt. The study employs lean construction (LC) methodology and utilizes its technologies and tools to reduce waste in construction, particularly at the finishing stage, measuring their effectiveness in achieving the desired goals. The study assumes to have two major contributions: (i) determining the main causes of waste in the Egyptian construction industry; and (ii) applying LC methodology to prevent and eliminate the causes of waste inherent in the construction process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term of sustainability goes beyond applying green architecture strategies. Sustainability refers to techniques which conserve resources, preserve the natural environment, protect local population, and support the principle of justice and equity. Therefore, the achievement of sustainability in the field of construction requires great and multi faces effort to solve the social, economic, and environmental problems. At the local level (Egypt), although there are serious steps toward more sustainable construction industry, many research studies confirmed that the already used system currently in Egypt to rate the sustainable buildings (Green Pyramid Rating system, GPRS) needs to be developed in order to be more effective and usable. There is a great need for developing a rating system for sustainable hotels which can classify hotels in Egypt in terms of sustainability in a comprehensive way starting from early design stages and continue to evaluate the building during and after the construction stage. Therefore, it is necessary to benefit from the systems which are used globally for rating sustainable buildings in order to create a local system by modification of the already existed criteria and to add new criteria in order to achieve a system which meets the local requirements. This research paper suggests a sustainability rating system which classifies hotels in the southern region of Upper Egypt based on improving the local system (GPRS) to be used for classifying hotels particularly because hotels are considered from the most energy consuming buildings and they generate a huge amount of wastes in addition to the increasing awareness of users who consider the sustainable and environment friendly hotels as preferred destinations. The suggested rating system which is Green Pyramid Rating System for hotels, (GPRS-H) is based on using the criteria of the German system (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen, DGNB( by modifying them to be more suitable for the local environment in Egypt in addition to excluding certain criteria which are not consistent to the local context. Additionally, the principle of participation has been applied here to help in determining logic relative weights for the criteria and indicators of the suggested system through conducting a questionnaire for the experts in the field of sustainable buildings. The suggested rating system includes six categories of criteria. The environmental quality occupies the first rank in terms of relative weight, then the economic quality, social and cultural quality, technical quality, planning and construction quality, and site quality. Each category includes some criteria which can be evaluated by using certain indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]