Sundt’s Apollo Project
November 8th, 2006 by HalFred Friedl, Sundt senior project manager, shared their experience with their pilot implementation of the Last Planner System® (LPS). The project is for the Apollo Group, parent company of the University of Phoenix. It's the first project Apollo has constructed in Phoenix. All their other projects are leases. The project is on 40 acres. Three buildings cover 9 acres.
Sundt measures subcontractor performance and publishes that for everyone to see.
The beauty of LPS is you don't need all the subs on board in every session…just the ones who are doing work to complete that milestone. They've done 7 pull phase plans for the work to date.
The Sundt team uses SureTrack to manage their look-ahead plans and the constraints removal process. The team does well, but they noticed they were in a rut. They began doing Plus-Delta reviews. Those reviews have led to changes in how they've adopted LPS and how they conduct themselves during planning sessions.
Sundt's pilot implementation is a good by-the-book example of what can be accomplished with LPS. Their early reliability (PPC) was erratic. Once they understood they needed to place their attention on the coming week — free of constraints — PPC began to rise. Later their performance dipped again. They found that prerequisite work not being completed was the most frequent cause of others missing their work. They measure subcontractor performance and publish that for everyone to see.
Lessons Learned
- They can review no more than 8 WWPs in a half hour.
- Get everyone's WWPs by 2:00 PM on the day before the
- Continually conduct Plus-Delta reviews
- Sundt's past practice of dictating schedules led to followers rather than planners
- More proactive
- LPS makes people better planners
- Identifying and removing constraints makes project work ready
Subcontractor owners have welcomed the Last Planner System. It produces great quality, friendly peer pressure to produce, a high profile in the contractor community, and everyone is having fun. "(Our biggest project ever) is going like clockwork thanks to LPS"
It's now Sundt's policy that all new projects will use LPS. They have a required course for all project staff to see that they can succeed.
Key Points
- Helping subs become better planners
- Clarity of connection between WWP and CPM
- Keep the meetings brief
- Plus Delta Reviews
- Actually able to get buy-in from the subs
Questions
- What have you experienced coordinating WWP and look-ahead plans?
- How has executive sponsorship helped or hurt your efforts?
- When the WWP doesn't match the pull-down schedule how do you document that?
- Where is engineering/design in the six week process?
- How was the design team's coordination managed for this project?
- How do you treat your own self-perform concrete group?
Presenter Responses
- As a project manager you have to get subcontractors excited about participating in LPS. The subs like telling you what needs to be done.
- Activities in the WWP marry with the look-ahead plan. There's just more detail.
- The LPS and Lean Construction was not incorporated during design. The architect participates in our look-ahead sessions every week. The architect responds to the constraints management process.
- It took repeated requests from the Sundt CEO to get anyone to try it. Later, the president did his own exploration. They called for a change.
- The Sundt concrete team is treated just like another sub. They are measured publicly just like everyone else.
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