Reforming Project Management » construction

Lean Project Implementation Is Not Adoption

Hal — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:18:11 +0000

I was speaking today with the COO of a large construction firm that has been on a journey to deliver their projects on a lean basis for the last 8 years. We were speaking about the usual comments senior people make about lean. He said, "Don't paper the projects; you need to change your practices to deliver a lean project." In other words, going through the motions won't make the project lean. But what will make it lean?

You need to change your practices to deliver a lean project.Doing a project lean is not an implementation issue. Rather, it is about adopting a different set of behaviors. Behaviors are an individual issue. Each person has to decide that they will approach their work differently. This is the bad news. It's also the good news. Why? There's really nothing to implement. My colleagues (and clients) might disagree. So be it. The fundamental issue is for people to approach their work with a new attitude and a new commitment.

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Construction Safety – Good News or Bad

Hal — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:49:23 +0000

Beware of headlines. ENR reports: Fatalities Fell in 2007, Labor Dept. Reports. The story leads by telling us construction deaths were down 5% in 2007. Shall we celebrate? I think not. Have a look:

Fatalities	Construction*	Other Industry
2007	1,178 (p)	3,778 (p)
2006	1,239	4,081
2005	1,192	4,022
2004	1,234	3,995
2003	1,131	3,912
p: Preliminary Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, * as reported by ENR

You don't have to be a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt to see that the latest results are consistent with the expected results. The mean for the five years is 1,195 deaths and the standard deviation is 44. The latest year is within 1 standard deviation of the mean. A more accurate headline might read
No Change in Construction Fatalities. But the situation is worse than the headline suggests.

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OSHA Fines Concrete Contractor $870,000

Hal — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:44:32 +0000

Pay attention: OSHA has fined Broadway Concrete for 15 willful violations involving fall protection and unprotected rebar on a 50-story NYC building. Let's not let it happen again.

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AIA “Hot Topic”: Target Value Design

Hal — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:34:29 +0000

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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Be Lean…Build Lean

Hal — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:07:22 +0000

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…(...)
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Surprise! It’s a Lean Herrero at the 9th Lean Construction Congress

Hal — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:39:16 +0000

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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Construction Project Silence Puts Safety at Risk

Hal — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:57:28 +0000

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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Boston Globe Slams Construction Industry

Hal — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:30:59 +0000

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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Meet the Godfather of Lean at IGLC-15

Hal — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:32:43 +0000

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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JM: Improving Work Systematically

Hal — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:54:13 +0000

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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2007 Lean Construction Summit

Hal — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:29:04 +0000

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.

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Misunderstanding Project Planning as Anticipation

Hal — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:26:17 +0000

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. (...)
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