Archive for the 'construction' Category

Back in the fall 2007, the AIA Practice Management Digest asked Greg Howell, Executive Director of the Lean Construction Institute, to convene a panel of design and construction lean thinkers to write on lean design (for construction). I was one of the invited essayists. I wrote a paper with Greg and John Barberio. Our topic was Target-Value Design.

We proposed that Target-Value Design (TVD) turns the current design practice upside-down.

• Rather than estimate based on a detailed design, design based on a detailed estimate.
• Rather than evaluate the constructibility of a design, design for what is constructible.
• Rather than design alone and then come together for group reviews and decisions, work together to define the issues and produce decisions then design to those decisions.
• Rather than narrow choices to proceed with design, carry solution sets far into the design process.
• Rather than work alone in separate rooms, work in pairs or a larger group face-to-face.

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As 2007 came to a close, lean design and construction got some well-deserved press. The manufacturing community shares their successes and learning about lean through Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and their "Target Magazine". Most lean manufacturers operate in buildings that were neither designed or built lean. That can change. Karen Wilhelm, writing for Target, spent quite some time investigating the lean construction movement. She shares what she learned in a cover story, Collaboration Makes Construction Lean.

"The culture of heroes works against the smooth flow of work."

I won't spoil the article for you by summarizing it. Not only does Karen write well, she shares a vision of what we can be doing in the built environment. I will offer one teaser… Read the rest of this entry ¶

It's that time of year again. I'm attending the Lean Construction Congress in San Francisco. This is the 9th annual event. As usual, the focus is on companies who have adopted lean approaches for delivering AEC projects. The morning presentations have been great. Company presenters are doing a fine job speaking about the benefits they are getting and how the lean approaches and principles cause that to happen.

Becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean.

It's a little early in the two days to be saying this, but what the heck… Herrero Contractors, not yet three years into their lean transformation, is the most advanced lean contractor in the US.¹ Herrero understands that becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean. They seem to be learning everywhere and everyday.

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1. Full disclosure, they used to be our client. A year ago they hired away one of our staff members to be their Director of Learning…not Director of Lean. [ ⇑ back ]

Bad concrete and wrong epoxy are just two of the problems with the Big Dig. ENR ran two stories in the August 5, 2007 issue detailing guilty pleas on criminal charges along with failure to act responsibly with structural design issues. Certainly, the whole project is not bad. But living in Boston, we worry not knowing which parts are bad. While money is always a possible motive, in this case people clearly were not exercising their responsibilities as custodians of public safety. In short, few were speaking up and fewer still were listening.

The Two Great Wastes contribute in significant, yet incalculable ways, to the failings on all projects.

I know first-hand how easy it is to just drive on by safety issues. It's easy to think, "Somebody must be taking care." Last Friday I drove by a police construction detail where a new home was being connected to a sewer line in the center of a state road. There were two police officers along with two flag persons and a 1/2 dozen workers. One man was neck deep in a straight-cut narrow trench shoveling loose gravel. In the situation I describe OSHA requires a trench box anytime a trench is 5 feet or more deep. From my passing view, this worker was just about at that limit. Was a trench box required? I don't know. There was no trench box present. I didn't stop. I should have stopped. But had I stopped, what conversation would I had and with whom? To my knowledge, no one was injured. No incident occurred. But it is really beside the point. I feel terrible for not stopping.

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Construction projects get a bad rep…a very bad rep. And the Boston Globe piles on with today's article The Industry that Time Forgot: Just Another Day at the Office for the Most Wasteful, Least Productive Industry in America

It's tough for me to comment on this article. I live in Boston. We've suffered major delays, overruns, inconveniences, and people lost their lives. It doesn't have to be this way. Companies have learned from the best operators in the world and have avoided these problems. In Massachusetts we have burdensome laws and practices. It's tough to do business with the state government. In my town no major project has finished on time or on budget. However, it can change. It must change. The industry knows what to do to change.

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Sign-up for IGLC-15. The organizers of this year's IGLC have included a second industry day where they are conducting two ½-day workshops. The first workshop will led by Norman Bodek, Godfather of the lean movement. The second will be led by the TWI Institute. This is new for the IGLC community to include workshops with their program. And they're starting off with big guns.

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We've all heard about kaizen. It's a practice for individuals, teams, and across process. People seem to take to it quite well in the factory and process environments. That's not the case in the project setting. At the TWI Summit, I was introduced to the Job Methods (JM) improvement approach. JM teaches how to see waste. JI in combination with JM teaches people the skills of improving.

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It's that time of year again. The International Group for Lean Construction is holding its conference. This time it's in the US. East Lansing, MI. It won't be held in the states again for another 4 or 5 years. It's quite a full program. Check it out at 2007 Lean Construction Summit.

The program is in three parts:

• Lean Construction Workshop (July 16-17, 2007)
  In addition to an intro to lean construction, the TWI Institute will present the approach Toyota uses to train their employees. That will be followed by Norman Bodek, the godfather of lean, conducting a workshop on Quick 'n Easy kaizen.
• IGLC-15 (July 18-20, 2007)
  Authors will present their peer-reviewed papers on research and advanced practice of lean construction.
• Lean Construction Postgraduate Conference (July 21-22, 2007)
  This session is a big bonus. The grey beards will stay around to work with students.

I'll be there to spend time with some of the best thinkers in the industry. Please join me.

Our everyday speaking gets in the way of better planning. This weekend I was listening to Tim Russert interview Presidential Spokesman Tony Snow on Meet the Press. Tim asked Tony about the plan for winning the war in Iraq. The question inferred that something went terribly wrong. Tony replied,

"I'm not sure anything went wrong. Battle plans don't live beyond the first encounter with the enemy."

Tony went on to say that like most of life we can't anticipate the future…no amount of planning can change that. Tony is right about that. The future is uncertain and unknowable. Grasping that fact is a key to better planning. Read the rest of this entry ¶

Some people think that construction safety is a matter of establishing safety as a value. If people value safety, those people argue, then workers will work safely. While that might be true, we don't have time for that. It can take years to establish a value for anything. The task of producing the value for safety becomes more difficult with new people always being introduced to the construction environment. We need to improve safety immediately. And we can.

While most planning approaches define what should be done that is insufficient to assure work will be done.

In the previous post in this series I said we need to follow the rule to only do work that is in a condition to be started and finished. But how do we do that without impacting productivity? Working to the safety rule is supported by a process for making work ready.

Making work ready — including all aspects for working safely — is an aspect of the planning system. While most planning approaches define what should be done that is insufficient to assure work will be done. Read the rest of this entry ¶

Previous in series

Construction safety has to improve. Fast. But it hasn't. Not in over 15 years. About 1,200 people have been dying on construction sites each of those 15 years in the United States. An average of 4 deaths each workday. One thing that has changed in those 15 years is that now Latinos make up a disproportionate number of those deaths. And many more are injured every day.

All it takes is a planning process for making work ready.

The basic approach to safety has only changed slightly. At OSHA's instigation, safety promotion — usually practiced as sloganeering coupled with rewards and punishment — has been supplemented with an increased attention on education. Some companies have benefited from it. However, even the relatively safe firms have a way to go. I won't write a long essay on this. I just want to share one action we can immediately adopt that will make construction sites far safer. And there is data to support it.

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Next in series

Lean construction is alive and well in the UK…it's even flourishing. Alan Mossman shared what has been going on in UK. He started this way:

• Badge engineering — renaming those things people are already doing so they don't have to change
• Lean and Mean — the iconic view of cost-cutting typified by Chainsaw Al
• Bidding is waste — the process of bringing together low-priced bids to build a team
• Collaborative procurement to produce a steady pipeline of work — this is the shining star of the UK conventional wisdom
• Procurement on quality and price criteria…sometimes on quality criteria alone — leading thinking on delivering client value

The UK government buys about 40% of all construction services and has been behind the drive for changes in the industry leading to the establishment of Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment.

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Turner Construction is doing $100s millions of healthcare construction for Sutter Health and others. They have some early projects where they developed their capability using the Last Planner System® (LPS). Here's their report:

What We've Learned

"LPS is a scheduler's dream come true!"

• It is better for individuals doing the work to help make the plan
• Takes persistence to get subs to use the system
• Project team has a better understanding of end-users' needs
• Reverse phase scheduling produces better results (than plans produce by specialists)
• 6 week look-ahead schedule sets priorities
• You must get buy-in and commitments from all parties
• LPS is a scheduler's dream come true! The role of a senior scheduler has changed. I'm now a planning facilitator. The people who will do the work become planners.
• The project needs a single information coordinator/gatekeeper
• The beautiful thing about LPS is it encourages participation at all levels.
• Look-ahead planning identifies key requirements for success
• Become proactive with problem-solving
• See potential issues early enough to take preventive action
• LPS reduces the impacts of delays
• Meetings are collaborative and interactive
• Facilitates coordination — everyone really is on the same page

What's in it for me?

"Projects are safer."

• Work is a lot more enjoyable
• Subs and peers had a more positive outlook
• There's less fire-fighting
• Safer projects
• Happier clients

Messer Construction started their journey six years ago with dissatisfactions with their own variable performance on their jobs. They wanted to move from wishful thinking to reliable completions. They had a lack of consistency within regions, not just across the 8 offices in 4 states. In addition, they decided that long term success depended on operational excellence and close relationships with their clients. Finally, they needed to grow their own leaders. They pursued lean construction to address all four issues.

They started the lean initiative with the voice of the customer. They followed that by implementing LPS on every project. There were no exceptions. They expanded LPS to include all subs and suppliers. Eventually, they piloted advanced lean tools including standardized work, 1st run studies, visual workplace (5S), daily huddles, system improvement events (kaizen workshops) and visual notifications.

One of the most exciting aspects of Messer's lean transformation is how they did it. They started with their executives then worked their way through the organization. Six years later, project managers and superintendents confidently run their projects on a lean basis using LPS.

Herrero Contractors is on a full-fledged company-wide lean journey. Mark Herrero, CEO, kicked off the presentation describing what lean is at Herrero. Their approach starts with the Last Planner System® (LPS) and includes Project kaizen and 5S. Mark spoke enthusiastically about lean, particularly his intention to run all projects as networks of commitments. He then handed the presentation to one of his superintendents, Tom Guardino.

Tom is the general superintendent for the CPMC Davies Medical Center capital program. It's over $100 million of renovations and new construction…over 20 projects curing in a 24/7 functioning hospital. His team includes 4 superintendents, 4 Herrero project managers, 6 architects from 2 firms, and 4 client project managers.

Tom is an evangelist for lean construction. He spoke candidly, "Implementing LPS was really tough for me. I didn't know what I was signing up for." Tom went on to elaborate on what they are doing and the results they are getting. Reliability has trended upwards for 15 months with current PPC at over 80%.

One of the most telling signs of the commitment of Herrero is they changed their company logo. Above the capital letter "H" is the phrase "Lean Works™". I can't capture the enthusiasm and expertise Tom conveyed. Listen to the MP3 on the Lean Construction website.

Thursday morning continued with more reports from lean construction efforts around the world with the first report on Brazil. The Last Planner System® (LPS) is a common approach on large projects in Brazil. Projects have high reliability (PPC) with the median at 77% for over 150 projects tracked by the universities. Carlos Formosa has been the leading researcher in the world connecting safety to lean practices.

Glenn Ballard reported on the safety experience of adopting LPS at MT Hojgaard, Denmark's largest construction company, the have extended lean construction throughout the firm. Early projects were 70% safer than other like projects in the company. As LPS was adopted throughout the firm, other business units had a similar experience. As a firm, safety incidents have fallen by 70%.

One of the founding organizations of LCI DK was the trade union.

Greg Howell shared some of the possible explanations for the improvement in safety. LPS makes work ready. When doing ready work there are fewer trips up and down ladders, in and out of trenches, and general exposure to risks. He added that lean projects have material on site when needed, not before it is needed. Consequently, material is not moved around as much. Moving material is a significant source of injuries.

Next up was a report on Denmark's Lean Construction activities. The Danes have their own Lean Construction DK, originally started as a branch of LCI and now a fully functioning body with its own board of directors. Membership has been growing. The members have been very active both locally and internationally. One of the founding organizations of LCI DK was the trade union.

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Peru, like many Central and South American countries is doing lean construction. COINSA is a real estate developer building for its own account and for 3rd parties. They've become a leader in their market and the Developer of the Year in 2005. The historical market was based on price. Projects were over schedule. Construction was viewed as a commodity. Firms routinely went bankrupt. COINSA decided to do lean construction to distinguish themselves from their competitors. After almost 5 years of doing lean construction they can tell others about it. They see three phases:

1. Early applications
2. Stabilizing workflow, applying Last Planner System®
3. Culture Change: Lean as a company way of work

Their first attempts focussed on workflow and constructibility. They introduced the idea of a "work train" (production line) for repetitive work.

Eventually the "old school" has converted to the "new school".

In their 2nd phase they started by making a strategic decision to adopt lean construction. They used their project office and a lean champion to launch the effort. On their first project they