Updated by Nazanin Ghodsian, 08/13/2024

 

In the competitive world of construction, companies strive to maximize results while minimizing resource use. Inefficiencies and waste are nevertheless commonplace despite these efforts. Many prosperous construction companies are adopting Lean Construction concepts to address these issues. Lean Construction is a concept that was influenced by Toyota’s Lean methodology, which was created in the 1950s and emphasizes strategic planning and ongoing improvement to increase efficiency.

Lean Construction combines the essential Lean concepts with the particular requirements of the building sector. Businesses can increase overall performance and customer happiness by reducing waste, promoting improved communication, and utilizing specialized strategies. Although lean manufacturing techniques like Kaizen, 5S, Six Sigma, and Just-In-Time production are commonly employed, lean construction provides customized solutions for the building industry.

Because of the inherent instability and disturbances in the construction workflow, implementing Lean Construction can be difficult. Nonetheless, excellent outcomes can be achieved by fusing Lean concepts with conventional methods. Every team member must adopt a lean mentality for adoption to be successful, ensuring that lean construction techniques are successfully implemented throughout the project lifecycle. Examine how Lean Construction can improve the way you build, cut waste, and increase project efficiency.

 

What is Lean Construction?

Lean construction is a project delivery process that uses Lean methods of maximizing stakeholder value while reducing waste by emphasizing collaboration between teams on a project. The goal of Lean construction is to increase productivity, profits, and innovation in the industry.

Lean construction is a project management technique that emphasizes reducing waste and boosting the value stream to provide better results. The lean methodology prioritizes customer needs and establishes standards based on stakeholder values. Furthermore, because the lean construction process is repeatable, success is a foreseeable outcome.

The goal of the lean construction production management system is to increase customer value by removing waste from the whole construction process.

The Toyota Production System served as the method’s inspiration. The technique, which was initially created in Japan’s Toyoda Automatic Loom Works in the 1920s and then applied in Toyota’s auto production plants during World War II, was designed to increase customer happiness while cutting waste and offering workers more fulfilling jobs. Toyota’s tactics proved to be so effective that lean ideas were applied outside of production.

Lean construction has been closely linked in the US to techniques like just-in-time inventory, in which businesses only order what they actually need. Lean construction, as a philosophy, entails much more than efficient inventory management.

Lean construction provides a framework for enhancing every stage of the building process, from conception to completion.

Unfortunately, short time frames, low budgets, and limited resources are common in building projects. To get beyond these limitations, lean construction offers a framework for maximizing production and reducing waste. The tenets of lean construction include:

Continuous Improvement: Companies using lean construction practices are open to new ways of doing things and are always looking for ways to improve.

Waste Removal: Lean construction companies work to reduce physical waste as well as wasted time and potential. This could mean ensuring work is finished correctly the first time, scheduling to avoid downtime, and, of course, using just-in-time inventory management.

Client Satisfaction: In lean construction, every decision and process improvement relates back to the individual client’s goals and priorities.

Respect for People: Companies using lean construction recognize that workers can perform better when they’re encouraged to collaborate, shown respect, and given the freedom they need to solve problems and guide the process.

In order to meet goals, lean construction also focuses heavily on planning and standardization.

 

What are the Benefits of Lean Construction?

Perhaps the most widely used way of managing construction projects today is the lean methodology. Customer value is prioritized in lean construction management to direct workflows, reduce waste, and enhance processes. Processes are streamlined and there are several advantages to lean building operations. Discover the benefits of implementing lean construction principles and how to do it within your company.

 

1. Waste Reduction

The elimination of waste in construction operations is a fundamental principle of the lean approach and its most important advantage. Waste is sometimes thought to consist only of resources that are left unused and unnecessary on a project site. Lean, on the other hand, defines waste as any product, move, or procedure that costs money, is wasteful, takes time, and deprives the consumer of value.

In addition to reducing physical waste, lean approaches also reduce rework, overproduction, wait times, unnecessary staff use, surplus inventory, processing time, and motion waste. All types of waste are considerably reduced when construction companies incorporate lean construction ideas into their project management procedures.

 

2. Minimized Environmental Impact

Construction firms and project owners consistently place a high priority on a project’s environmental impact. By implementing lean concepts and circular economy strategies, builders can lessen their adverse effects on the environment. In construction projects, waste reduction and elimination can result in lower transportation emissions, improved material sourcing, and higher-quality delivery. Environmentally friendly supply chain techniques are in line with the lean principle and reduce the environmental impact.

 

3. Strengthened Quality Control

Although reducing waste is a very laudable goal, the success of any building project ultimately depends on the quality of your design. Lean building techniques can help enhance quality assurance procedures. Lean emphasizes continuous process improvement, which results in the elimination of unnecessary processes as a result of the caliber of your deliverables and quality control procedures.  Finding the best method to satisfy customers increases the likelihood that your outcome will satisfy stakeholders’ and clients’ needs.

 

4. Improved Customer Satisfaction

Delivering exactly what the customer wants while generating the least amount of waste is the ultimate objective of any lean firm. Lean project delivery is all about streamlining procedures to satisfy customers’ demands for high-quality outcomes delivered quickly and inexpensively. According to research, businesses that use lean construction techniques tend to complete projects more quickly. Lean projects actually have a three times higher chance of finishing on time and a two times higher chance of finishing on budget. Adopting lean construction techniques makes it possible to produce high-quality work on schedule and under budget, which results in satisfied clients.

 

5. Increased Revenue

Waste prevention through effective processes stops monetary losses brought on by the waste of materials, time, and resources. The more waste your organization generates, the more expensive your project will be overall. This is especially true in a sector where managing teams and coordinating materials is difficult and time-consuming. By implementing lean construction concepts in their operations, businesses can enhance productivity and financial rewards by eliminating waste and streamlining workflows.

 

Applying Lean Principles to Construction

Whether a company is in manufacturing or construction, its business objectives and top priorities are always to increase operational effectiveness, minimize inventory problems, improve accuracy, and adhere to schedules. However, consistency is a necessary part of construction owing to a variety of issues, such as changing weather, unreliable vendors, shifting inventory needs, or a lack of labor, all of which have a negative impact on the development of building projects.

Although using lean principles helps to reduce disruptions brought on by internal and external forces, discrepancies are not entirely eliminated. The construction team can find areas for improvement thanks to lean management, and they can take action quickly to see results. Lean construction, when combined with conventional project management methods, enables all parties to comprehend how information, personnel, and resources may be used more effectively to provide desired results on schedule and within the allocated budget.

Progressive construction firms that value ongoing innovation and change are implementing the lean technique to streamline their employees’ roles and responsibilities, increase efficiency and dependability, and cut costs.

 

Comparing Current Construction Practices with Lean Management of Construction

Current Practices: Contractual in nature with specific tasks, construction project management aims to achieve the ideal balance between the goals of many stakeholders. A centralized plan that establishes the order of tasks from conception to completion effectively regulates the crew’s coordination. With this strategy, all expenses, delays, mistakes, and learning occur while the tasks are in progress. Increased productivity leads to cost savings, and projects are completed more quickly by speeding up processes or changing the workflow to accommodate concurrent work. Waste is the additional expense incurred for rework, repairs, or prolonged work that could have been avoided with careful planning.

Lean Construction: Lean construction operates according to a fundamentally distinct concept in which operations are coordinated to provide real value to the client. The project’s timeline and overall budget are seen as components of the production system, where a centralized schedule controls all coordination and communication, and the team members who are working on and accountable for completing the project oversee the workflow.

Lean construction focuses on maximizing throughput, increasing customer value, and reducing waste. Clear communication guarantees consistent workflow and on-time completion, guaranteeing that client needs are satisfied with no delays or anomalies. Constant monitoring enables the crew to make changes and reduce waste.

Lean construction places a strong emphasis on creating value throughout a project’s lifecycle, even as the market fluctuates, equipment and techniques change, and business procedures improve. Unlike traditional construction, where each operation is directed by a central authority and guided by a predetermined schedule, lean construction coordinates all action through pulling and continuous flow.

Lean Construction’s decentralized decision-making approach promotes accountability and openness with the most recent information, enabling all parties to respond appropriately at the appropriate moment. The $78 million Marybelle and Sebastian P. Musco Center in California is a prime example of how lean construction was used to enable the team to remain on schedule, maximize value, and reduce waste.

 

Breaking Down the Principles of Lean Construction

Lean principles can be successfully applied to reduce costs, speed up construction, boost production, and manage projects with effectiveness and efficiency. These principles ought to motivate and direct you as you identify and create the tools and techniques necessary to accomplish the objectives of lean construction and adopt a more comprehensive approach to project delivery.

 

Identifying Value from the Client’s Point of View

Delivering exactly what is outlined in the plans and specs is often not what your client values most in a construction project. It goes beyond simply producing high-quality work or finishing a project on schedule and on budget. This calls for a client-centered strategy, which is best accomplished by cultivating a rapport with the customer. This should apply to all parties involved in lean construction, including the owner, architect, engineers, general contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers.

Establishing client values should start early in a project’s conceptual design stage and continue throughout construction. In order for the project team to manage expectations and provide the client with the greatest advice, it’s important to comprehend not just what your customer wants, but also why they want it. A deep level of trust must be established between all stakeholders in order to successfully implement lean practices.

 

Identifying Processes that Deliver the Value Stream

The client’s values are simply reflected in the value stream. It’s time to decide which procedures are required to produce the value stream once you have determined what value looks like from your client’s perspective. It is important to properly map out each phase of the process to identify the tasks that are involved. Consider the work, knowledge, supplies, and tools required for each operation. Any process stages that don’t benefit your client should be removed.

Eliminating Waste: Eliminating waste is how lean construction works. Because they generate DOWNTIME, the eight main categories of waste in the construction industry are simple to recall.

Defects: This is anything that needs to be redone after being completed incorrectly the first time. Time is wasted since the necessary materials and fixes must be made to fix the work.

Overproduction: This kind of waste happens in construction when a task is finished earlier than anticipated or before the subsequent task in the sequence is prepared to begin.

Waiting: This unproductive time is spent waiting around for supplies to arrive or for earlier work to be finished. Workflow is hampered as a result, and employees are left waiting for assignments.

Not Utilizing Talent: You wouldn’t hire an electrician to fill a construction laborer position. It would be a complete waste of their talents, skills, and knowledge.

Transport: This can be the transportation of equipment, materials, and workers to a jobsite before they are needed or it can refer to the transmission of information with no added value.

Inventory: In lean construction, you want to move toward “just in time” inventory as opposed to “just in case” inventory.

Motion: This is any unnecessary movement that can be eliminated, such as having to make multiple trips across the jobsite to get more tools or materials.

Excess Processing: Excess processing is typically generated when having to deal with too many instances of other waste such as defects or inventory. Double-checking or adding extra processes to try and eliminate other areas of waste will involuntarily lead to more waste from over-processing.

 

Achieving Flow of Work Processes

A reliable and predictable continuous workflow is what lean construction aims to achieve. The various production stages are carried out in order. For instance, you wouldn’t begin putting drywall in a room until all of the plumbing and electrical work was done. All parties must cooperate and communicate in order to avoid disruptions and achieve flow.

Avoid having employees wait for work or vice versa. By dividing a project into several production zones, contractors can make sure they have the resources necessary to complete each task on time. To avoid the situation where workers are waiting for work, it’s critical to communicate if one step of production runs late or ahead of schedule and make necessary adjustments.

 

Using Pull Planning and Scheduling

Pull planning or scheduling releases the work based on downstream demand to produce dependable workflows. because tasks are completed in a sequential manner, freeing up time for the following activity. In order to schedule work when it can be completed, it is necessary to start from a specified milestone or target completion date and move backward from there.

Pull planning is done in lean construction by individuals doing the job, often the subcontractors, through communication and collaboration with one another to establish the task schedule. This is due to the fact that they are most suitable for determining their ability to carry out a specific duty. They can arrange timetables and handoffs with the downstream subcontractor or customer.

 

Perfecting the Processes Through Continuous Improvement

It’s essential to make adjustments continuously to further reduce waste and provide value if you want to enhance your lean construction operations. Not only should changes be made to detect and decrease waste throughout each project, but also bringing what you learn from one project to the next will enable you to continuously invent new ways to increase value and minimize waste.

Lean construction emphasizes making continuous improvements which in turn brings the following benefits:

• Enhanced Safety
• High-Quality Construction
• Improved Productivity
• Reduced Waste
• Better Risk Management
• Fast-Track Project Delivery
• Greater Customer Satisfaction
• Maximum Returns

However, achieving continuous improvement requires deliberate, regular application of lean concepts. Lean principles are based on the idea that businesses can only flourish when they continuously work to learn, develop, and optimize their operations. By empowering the construction team to be more effective and efficient, this comprehensive idea helps to increase the efficiency and profitability of building projects.

Any changes to the initial plan have an impact downstream in any construction project since the lifetime is typically longer and the value stream is more intricate. For this reason, changes must be communicated to all stakeholders throughout the different sections of the project.

Lean construction uses a reliable planning and control technique to make sure that improvements are being made steadily as the project moves forward. The tactics for reaching the intended result are included in the loop, along with predetermined success criteria. Control is a common procedure that organizes the actions to make sure they follow the plan, providing an opportunity to spot areas that require re-planning or modifications. The workforce may maintain focus, enhance procedures, and reduce waste throughout the construction process by using a constant loop of planning and control.

Like every industry, construction is more prone to traditional methods and is resistant to change. However, implementing lean principles has numerous advantages, and this is pushing construction companies to accept the challenge, alter their current methods, and improve their equipment. When tasks are completed on schedule, within the allocated budget, and to the entire satisfaction of the client, this can have far-reaching implications that are immediately apparent.

Another real-world example of continuous improvement is the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building in Arizona, which used lean construction and BIM to save costs by $2 million and 16 weeks!

 

7 Tips to Implement Lean Construction in Your Projects Successfully

The compartmentalized approach of conventional construction methods is incompatible with lean construction. It focuses on improving coordination, communication, planning, and scheduling to reduce waste and increase value. To successfully implement lean construction for your projects and get the rewards of lean, use these seven tips.

 

1. Set Clear Definitions in Your Projects

Ensuring all stakeholders are on the same page is the first step in successfully implementing lean in your construction projects. This calls for having precise definitions for terms like the value stream of the project, the point at which work is deemed complete, and project milestones. If a team wants to apply lean principles, setting rules that keep everyone on the same page regarding communication, duties, and goals should be their top concern.

 

2. Prioritize Waste Elimination

In lean construction, “waste” refers to more than just things that end up in the trash. The idea encompasses squandered effort, time, finances, abilities, etc. Lean construction places a strong emphasis on cutting waste on the job site, and effective lean adoption depends on scheduling regular meetings at all stages of a project.

To evaluate the success of their waste elimination initiatives, project managers, general contractors, and their teams should concentrate on finding waste in their site operations and benchmarking those results.

 

3. Establish Strong Relationships with Stakeholders

Collaboration and realizing your project’s vision become a lot simpler when you build relationships with your suppliers, subcontractors, etc. that are founded on trust and communication. Additionally, it facilitates the early involvement of all stakeholders in a project, which is essential to many lean construction techniques like pull planning and the Last Planner® approach.

The success or failure of a lean implementation can depend on whether or not you get everyone involved in the project together from the start to build a master timeline, define value, and find methods to cut waste.

 

4. Build a Sense of Trust Within Your Team

Reinforcing collaboration and communication between every team member and stakeholder is essential for applying lean construction principles to your projects successfully, from design to delivery.

Work on collaboration and team building on your construction sites to improve communication across project teams and create trust between everyone involved.

Lean construction is fundamentally based on the philosophy of continuous improvement, and development cannot occur without a team that has mutual respect and trust.

 

5. Set Benchmarks and Measures of Success

There is a saying that is frequently used in project management: “What gets measured gets managed.” It’s sometimes referred to as “What gets measured gets done”—a crucial maxim in lean building.

Setting benchmarks is the best approach to make sure that everyone important to a construction project is aware of what has to happen for the project to succeed.

Everyone must be aware of the overarching objectives and what they’re trying to achieve, regardless of the benchmarks and success indicators you pick for your projects (keeping waste below a given level, achieving certain dates, etc.

 

6. Continuously Monitor and Adjust

When introducing lean methods in your construction projects, it’s crucial to consider how to maintain them by monitoring your objectives and making sure nothing is veering off course.

Problems will arise when first implementing lean, but facing them head-on will set you up for success. You should collaborate with other stakeholders to instantly address any concerns and quickly resolve them.

This mentality will ensure that all of your lean procedures are effective, stop minor issues from developing into major issues, and lessen the need for redo.

 

7. Commit to Your Overall Lean Goals

It might be difficult and daunting to begin applying lean principles; but, you must be dedicated to the overarching objectives—increasing value, reducing waste, and unleashing efficiency.

Even if your first lean project doesn’t go precisely as you had hoped, keep those objectives in mind. Determine what works and incorporate it into upcoming projects; determine what doesn’t work and work to make it better.

You will eventually be able to successfully apply the lean concepts to every project, benefiting you, your team, and your clients if you remain dedicated.

 

Criticism of Lean Construction

It’s time to examine some of the critiques that have been directed at lean construction now that we have a better understanding of what it is, where it came from, how it functions, and how it might be implemented in the workplace.

Likely, the lean mentality is all too familiar to you if you’re reading this in the early years of the twenty-first century. The concept of “doing more with less” has taken over our age, guiding everything from hospital management to international economic strategies. Additionally, as we’ve seen in recent years, the outcomes aren’t always favorable.

To be clear, the logic of efficiency that underlies “lean” and “do more with less” thinking has, as its proponents said, resulted in greater production. The main issue, however, is that workers are now directly responsible for paying the price for this sustained gain in productivity.

According to detractors, the lean mindset pushes business leaders to make compromises and concentrate their quest for waste in areas where people would unavoidably suffer. Even when the business is making record profits, cost-cutting measures like flattened wages, layoffs, and no overtime compensation are justifiable.

To extract even more output from a workforce that is already overworked, longer workdays, shorter breaks, and the elimination of paid sick leave are implemented. While this is going on, strict work quotas and employee tracking tools are being used to make sure that no time is spent while working.

Are these illustrations of careful garbage removal? or mistreatment of workers? Your approach to the problem will have a significant impact on the solution and the value you assign to it. Regardless of your position, concerns about the human cost and the inherent conflict between management and employees have been a feature of the lean construction debate from the start.

Despite recent improvements, Japan’s efficiency-obsessed work culture has become so extreme that it has given rise to two new terms for work-related stress: karoshi and karojisatsu, which mean, respectively, “death by overwork” and “suicide by overwork.”

When critical thinking is abandoned in favor of an exaggerated type of lean thinking that eclipses all other factors, these kinds of results are to be expected. On the other hand, this might be the result of improperly implementing lean concepts, as many businesses throughout the years have done by concentrating only on the tool side of the TPS and ignoring the “people” side of the system.

 

The Future of Lean Construction

” Construction companies that have successfully applied lean methods have reduced construction time by up to 30% and reduced costs by up to 15%”

Construction will alter as a result of rising levels of digitization, automation, and autonomy. Additionally, this will unavoidably alter the character of lean construction. Lean Construction will ultimately produce the most productive construction site. Even if we don’t yet know what it is, we are aware of its importance. Based on five Lean Eras, The Future of Lean Construction outlines the route to the ultra-efficient construction site. For the periods to come, a new disruptive technological revolution is necessary. The following parts go over each of the five Lean Eras.

 

The Digital Era is Digitizing the Lean Approach

Increased efforts have been made to digitize and challenge analog approaches based on sticky notes. The coronavirus epidemic and its resulting constraints acted as a global development accelerator. Lean methodologies’ digitization makes it possible to gather real-time project data, such as productivity rates, minutes from meetings, process sequences and durations, and more.

Although there is potential, communication and in-the-moment collaboration are currently the main priorities. In other words, solutions that digitize the Last Planner system make an effort to practically and digitally capture the feeling of the Lean room. For takt time planning, spreadsheets have traditionally been used, but for the Last Planner system, a digital concept had to be developed.

Nevertheless, software programs that streamline and automate the production of takt schedules are becoming more and more available for takt time planning itself. As a result, the review process at daily, weekly, and monthly Lean meetings takes a hybrid approach: a digital tool for data collection, with a face-to-face meeting taking place in front of a local display.

 

The Smart Era Interconnections Humans, Machines, and Material

A lot of data! Every day, construction projects all around the world create tens of billions of terabytes of data. For the construction sector, the systematic gathering and analysis of this data is a significant problem. The connectivity of people, machines, and materials lies at the heart of the Smart Era.

While data was generated and gathered during the digital Lean Era by entering it into the system, the goal of smart lean construction is to passively generate and network data. The linking of tradespeople’s tools and supplies with the takt schedule in the building information model is one potential Smart Lean Construction scenario. This would make it possible to monitor developments in real-time.

Many businesses in the construction sector will soon be able to gather project data systematically while carrying out ongoing site operations. However, only those who can analyze the data rapidly and make adjustments will be able to compete.

The Autonomous Era Increases Focus on Machines: The construction industry will have undergone a complete disruption in the era of autonomous lean construction. The majority of the work on the construction site is now done by machines, construction robotics, and/or 3D printing robots; there are scarcely any blue-collar workers left. The supply side of the project is more important than the execution side.

This has an Impact on How Things Operate: Lean Production and Lean Construction become quite similar. While there is an increase in customer cycle (takt time), machine, and supplier interface optimization, there is a drop in optimization at the level of the human being, trade chains, and contractors. It’s even possible that autonomous lean building briefly switches back to analog in this period.

Shopfloor cascades in the construction site with a target development process on the strategic level integrated into the corporate unit will no longer be unimaginable. There will no longer be an interaction between the Lean Project and the Lean Enterprise.

 

The Ultra-Efficient Construction Site

Every Lean manufacturing aspires to transform into a synchronous factory. This is likely the direction that the ultra-efficient construction site will take, leading to a synchronous building site with no errors and processes that are digitalized, intelligent, and autonomous.

Project complexity will only continue to rise, that much is certain. Despite all the advancements in technology, construction will not become any easier due to demands for sustainability, rising cost pressure, and a need for ever-shorter project cycles. The problems that need to be tackled by engineers and technicians will get more complicated as well as more challenging.

Essentially, managing projects throughout the full planning framework will require utilizing all forms of technology. Lean will go to a new level and perhaps become even more disruptive as a result of the requirement for comprehensive process systems that can preserve and enhance this synchronicity systematically during deployment.

Autonomously generated project and production plans will result from the display and analysis of project-related data streams as well as from intelligent connections between dependencies and influencing factors. The project will continuously learn thanks to artificial intelligence and real-time data. The project might then act as the platform that runs everything independently. We are unsure. But we ought to set ourselves up now to be ready to adapt in the future.

 

Conclusion

Lean construction stresses the management and design of construction processes rather than merely the finished result. It is a relationship-oriented, production management-based method for delivering construction projects. Its fundamental objectives are to maximize stakeholder value and reduce waste, all the while placing a strong emphasis on inter-team communication.

Working lean in practice entails being able to reliably transfer work from one stage of construction to another. Imagine being able to hand over the building to whoever is next in line to complete their task and having complete confidence that everything will go as planned.

The epiphany people experience when they understand reliability is compared by the authors of Foundations of Lean Construction to the moment when they first learn to ride a bike. They experience a sudden sense of liberation and have a new appreciation for speed and range.

When someone understands the concept of construction dependability, they begin to feel empowered by the knowledge that they can alter design, supply, assembly, and control to achieve better results while being confident that it will work.

Lean construction transforms nearly every stage of the construction process, requiring teams to work together more closely and build innovation into every project. For a good reason, lean construction has become more well-known. This idea, when intelligently used, enables construction teams to accomplish work more successfully and efficiently, all the while pleasing clients and employees.

 

FAQs 

What is Lean Construction?

• Answer: The Lean Construction methodology is derived from the ideas of Lean Manufacturing. Its main goals are to minimize waste and maximize value during the building process. Lean Construction strives to deliver projects more effectively and efficiently by streamlining process, cutting down on delays, and fostering cooperation.

What are the Main Benefits of Implementing Lean Construction?

• Answer: Reduced project costs, better project schedules, improved quality, and more customer satisfaction are the key advantages of lean construction. Projects are finished more quickly, with fewer delays and better results when resource efficiency and waste reduction are prioritized.
  

How can a Construction Company Start Implementing Lean Construction Principles?

• Answer: Prioritizing the training of key staff members in Lean principles and techniques is the first step towards implementing Lean Construction within an organization. Next, evaluate existing procedures to find areas that could want improvement. Introduce lean tools and approaches gradually, beginning with pilot projects to hone the strategy before going full-scale.

 

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Resources:

Procore | Esub | Letsbuild | Constructionblog | Constructconnect | Buildots | Constructiondive | Industryeurope | Leanconstructionblog | Onekeyresources

For the pictures: Freepik | Pixabay