Archive for the 'construction' Category

David Long described Sutter's process using Jeffrey Liker's 4P approach.¹ Used the Five Big Ideas as the basis for the philosophical foundation of the lean approach. He claims the Five Big Ideas and the associated emergent outcomes have been the most important thing they have.

Starting with the idea of an elevator speech, Sutter developed a one slide statement of what lean is in a project setting. It finishes with

"The Right people talk about the Right things at the Right level of detail at the Right time."

The process currently includes:

• Target Value Design (TVD)
• Last Planner System® (LPS)
• Integrated Form of Agreement — tri-party agreement between owner, architect, and contractor that other performers join as they are contracted
• Network of Commitments
• Continuous Learning, e.g. Plus-Delta

To those five items David added that it works when people are speaking (and listening) about the right things at the right times. He claims this five item approach allows them to spend all of the budget to deliver the most value to the project while still getting it done on time.

Read the rest of this entry ¶

1. philosophy, process, people and partners, problem-solving, from The Toyota Way [ ⇑ back ]

Dave Pixley opened with a "state of the state" of the shifts that have occurred in the last year of their lean initiative. Some of those highlights:

• Willingness to experiment
• The paradigm of "self protection" is giving way to "all for one and one for all"
• Acknowledgement that the current model of project delivery may be broken
• Other owners are asking for
• Growth of P2SL as an "action learning lab"
• Participation by the state permitting agency in the P2SL
• Grass roots lean coordinators group of competitor companies to share what they've learned about lean construction
• New commercial relationships and contract forms

Learning they've observed

• New kind of leadership — from command and control to facilitation and empowerment
• "Open Kimono" communication — situation of trust and relatedness to say what needs to be said

Road ahead — reduce the waste while increasing the value

• Prototype Hospital Program
• Built-in Quality Plans
• BIM — an emphasis on people and process
• Evolving the Integrated Form of Agreement
• Target Value Design — developing standard work for design
• Deepening the implementation of Last Planner System®

The Congress has begun in San Francisco. I'll blog the presentations, as best as I can. Keep checking back… Slide presentations and recordings will be available at the Lean Construction Institute website.

Mark Graban thinks so. His impassioned editorial at the Lean Blog is a must read. Mark takes on the common sense of management thinking. That common sense threatens all project management. There is nothing I can find to say that Mark hasn't already said better. Read WSJ's Wrong Conclusion on Frederick Taylor.

Construction project management is changing. The Lean Construction Institute (LCI) is behind it. Each year LCI has a conference that features industry people sharing what they have learned on their lean journey. This year it is in San Francisco. It's not too late to join us. But for those who will miss it, I'll be blogging throughout the congress on Wed and Thu. Expect a stream of postings throughout both days.

Magnificent projects are underway throughout the world. China is getting more of my attention these days. The Chinese are showing quite a bit of lean practices in industry along with significant undertakings in the built environment. The photo of the Caiyunba bridge crossing the Yangtze river is the longest tied-arch span incorporating both rail and highway traffic, according to ENR.

Good projects connect people in ways that transcends difference while enabling connectedness

Will this project come in on time and on budget? Who knows. Will it address the community concerns of the people who want to cross the Yangtze river? Who knows. In fact, we can't know before the fact. I don't think on time and on budget are the point.

This bridge is a spectacular undertaking. It shows off a design sensibility that just might be timeless; it represents an ambition for the built environment that others will copy; and it is practical — all good design is practical. I love the Caiyunba bridge, and Boston's Zakim bridge, and who doesn't love the Golden Gate bridge? Why do I love these bridges? For me, they represent the big purpose of doing projects…good projects connect people in ways that transcends difference while enabling connectedness. I am involved in projects for the sake of building bridges.

The manufacturing world is quite familiar with the term "hidden factory"¹. It points to the extra resources — people, material, energy, tooling, etc. — that are required to rework and repair the variances coming from the production process.

Projects have plenty of variance. Much of it requires rework. Some work is inevitably scrapped. One source of rework results from work that gets out of sequence. One work step proceeds without the appropriate precedent tasks being completed. When the intended precedent task does complete the other task(s) must be reworked. Or, there's no budget available for rework, so someone on the team decides to make do. Or, there's no time available for rework, so someone decides to make do.

iSixSigma ran a cartoon today, Hidden Factory, that got me thinking about what we can do about the hidden project factory. I've been Unsettled About Variation before. While I ponder in my unsettlement, I want to get you thinking with me.

What do you systematically do on your projects to minimize the wastes associated with poor quality?

Please leave a comment. I'll write more about this throughout November.

1. Armand Feigenbaum introduced the idea that there is the equivalent of an additional factory hidden within a factory to handle the defects of production. Later, Jeffrey G. Miller and Thomas E. Vollmann popularized the idea in their paper for HBR. [ ⇑ back ]

Construction safety needs to be everyone's concern working in the industry. Great strides have been made by many companies. Yet people are being injured in roughly the same numbers as they have been for the last 15 years. OSHA issued these violations¹ in the year ending September 2006:

1. Scaffolding, General Requirements (7895 violations)
2. Duty to Have Fall Protection (5746 violations)
3. Hazard Communication (5586 violations)
4. Respiratory Protection (3410 violations)
5. Lockout/Tagout (3068 violations)
6. Powered Industrial Trucks (2582 violations)
7. Electrical, Wiring Methods, Components, and Equipment for General Use (2396 violations)
8. Machine Guarding, General Requirements (2296 violations)
9. Ladders (2115 violations)
10. Electrical, General Requirements (1791 violations)

Trenching hazards, while not on this list represent an additional big problem for the industry. There is something you can do. Use the Last Planner System®² on your project. Anecdotal evidence suggests safety incidents will fall by 30%.

1. BLR statistics [ ⇑ back ]
2. The Last Planner System is a registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute. [ ⇑ back ]

Productivity Press has a blog…a good one. Lean Insider is written by Ralph Bernstein. His early postings have plenty of data along with some crisp opinions. In Ralph's posting The Real Problem with US Automakers he shares the results of a new study on the profitability advantage Toyota has over its competitors:

"Toyota has a profit-per-vehicle advantage over competitors ranging from $1,570 (over Chrysler) to $2,985 (over GM). The advantage over Ford is $2,165."

Lean Insider is just the fuel we need to create a big lean fire.

He goes on to share how Toyota produced that advantage and the role kaizen plays in the long term success. Ralph finishes with this opinion:

"(U)ntil Detroit’s leaders genuinely become true believers in lean, they’re going to have difficulty…design(ing) exciting cars and earn(ing) back a quality reputation."

Not only does Lean Insider make for good reading, but I suspect you'll be sharing Ralph's work with those on your project teams and with your management. It's just the fuel we need to create a big lean fire.

This is the year of the language action perspective for project management. IGLC researchers have been exploring underlying theory of projects seriously for the last 7 years. The discussion appeared to be reaching a conclusion earlier this year with Glenn Ballard's and Lauri Koskela's paper, "Should project management be based on theories of economics or production?" for Building Research and Information. Greg Howell and I concluded that project management (in general) shouldn't be based on either. We wrote our paper to answer what should it be based on. Then, I invited Fernando Flores to speak to the IGLC. As it turned out, Greg ceded our time for presenting our paper to Fernando so he could speak longer. Our paper was not presented. I'll do my best to present it here.

What Should Project Management Be Based On?

I have to start any discussion off by saying how we understand projects.

Projects are unique undertakings of a group of people convened to fulfill a promise made by one person to a customer.

Construction projects are like software projects and class reunions when understood from the above definition. Those three types of projects are dissimilar, as well. But it is the similarity that guided our look at projects to allow us to reach our conclusions on the theory base for projects. Read the rest of this entry ¶

While on our trip to Toyota Georgetown, Norman Bodek arranged a visit at one of the leading lean education centers in the world, the University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing. David Veech was our host. He toured us through the labs where we saw students (at 6:00 PM) redesigning factory layouts using 5S and redesigning production settings starting with current state value-stream maps. The students were articulate, engaging, and they knew their (lean) stuff.

UK offers a series of programs for students and for industry practitioners. Their programs are geared towards manufacturing. Their attention is on the materiel process. We had the opportunity to interact with their faculty. Good people with big ambition.

If you are doing projects, specifically construction projects, I suggest you call on the work of the Lean Construction Institute and the International Group for Lean Construction. However, if the basic nature of your work is production or fabrication, then the people at UK can really help.

I've been on two Toyota plant tours and visited another 20, or so, plants in Japan. The Georgetown, KY tour was great. The conversation with Gary Convis, President TMMC, was outstanding. Norman Bodek has been on hundreds of plant tours looking at lean. In his words, "I've never learned more on a tour than the one hour we spent with Gary." At the end of the Toyota tour I asked the executives and project coaches to share the lessons they were bringing back to the construction project setting. I went around the room giving each person the opportunity to offer a lesson. We did this two times. Here are their lessons in the order offered:

1. The use of visual management was far more than expected. Will attempt to over communicate project key performance indicators and goals.
2. Stopping to fix the problem — jidoka — could lead to far fewer quality problems.
3. Executives have a role to play in project kaizen activities. Gary Convis, President of Georgetown operations, got involved in kaizens in a coaching capacity.
4. Staff project roles with people with the appropriate skills and interests. Develop the basic skills for the work in construction.
5. Use five whys at the time variances (problems) are identified.
6. Encourage trade labor to change roles throughout the day. This avoids repetitive motion injuries, reduces boredom, and builds an appreciation for the conditions of completion for work.
7. Clean as we go throughout the day. Assign accountability for workplace orderliness. Use indicators — andon — to signal that the work teams recognize that they are keeping their workspaces in a condition for others (and themselves) to proceed with work.
8. Thinking that we already know — that we are the best — is the enemy of learning and becoming lean. We must overcome that.
9. Celebrate success as it occurs. Celebrate the work of teams.
10. A lean approach requires a different culture (from the usual AEC project).
11. Don't hesitate to display banners, mottos, and team improvement projects across the project work site.
12. Keep everyone informed everyday (throughout the day) of the key performance indicators for the project.
13. See that the whole project organization — owner, architect, contractor, sub-consultants, and sub-contractors — are all using the same language of improvement.
14. Training can begin at the earliest encounters with prospective employees. It can help us select the best people for our projects.
15. Have the client involved at appropriate times throughout the project.
16. Pay attention to the details. It can lead to higher quality and customer satisfaction.
17. Evolve a lean approach on projects and throughout the organization. Start with a focus on quality. Follow that with improving production throughput. Finish by reducing costs.
18. Use color charts, displays, and signaling to draw attention to anomalies and to what is important.
19. Organize people into small teams — five people — with a working leader who can fill in for everyone else. Use multi-skilling to develop a response capability.
20. The person performing the next operation is your customer. Make sure people know who will be working next in the workstream, especially when they work for another organization or company.
21. We observed a simplicity in the language at Toyota. Find ways to communicate what is requested, standards of performance, and details so that they will be understood.
22. Have a 15 minute stand-up meeting every morning with all the supervision to review progress and to pursue an improvement agenda. Finish the day with a similar meeting to provide the opportunity for supervision (last planners) to declare complete on the promised work for the day.
23. Establish standard work — the currently understood best way — for key project operations.

I didn't have the opportunity to share my impressions with the group. Here are three key lessons:

• Work to a pace that both allows the team to meet the project goals and doesn't overburden them. Pacing reduces one source of variability while simplifying planning.
• Use improvement activities — project kaizen — as the principal means of engaging project team members in meaningful work that advances their careers.
• As leaders, involve yourself to ease the work of the project team members rather than operating in the illusion that you can control.

Norman Bodek made numerous comments. Here are three of the more memorable ones:

• As managers, adopt the approach of ask questions, don't tell.
• Small, very small improvements that don't require management approval will accelerate project performance. Norman calls it Quick and Easy kaizen. Using that approach Toyota got 40 20 million adopted improvements in 20 40 years. That is more than 100 adopted improvements/person/year.
• Teams are far more creative than individuals. Organize recurring team activities for sharing and improving upon individual creativity.

We'll do a Toyota Georgetown visit again. But before that I am taking another 18 lean construction leaders to NUMMI. That is where Gary Convis started out. I can't wait to listen to the lessons from that tour. I'll share them with you.

I have a small construction project going on for our business. We are establishing our company's presence in Louisville, CO. The space is not large, a little over 900 square feet. It is being modeled as oobeya — one big room — as a way of understanding what it is like to plan, learn, innovate, and collaborate in a Toyota-like environment.

We're having our challenges getting the space built out. We hired an outstanding interior designer, Renee Sherman, Oglesby Sherman Design, to guide us through the process. The developer offered us a bare bones space. Renee helped us anticipate our different uses and how we could shape the space to support those uses. Of course, that meant starting over with the build out and taking the delays while we researched sources of materials and specialty contractors who could do the installations. We're now looking at a mid-to-late February move in.

I've learned (again) a number of lessons: Read the rest of this entry ¶

The tide has turned in contracting. No longer is low price the only basis for selecting contractors. An approach known as best-value is being widely adopted in the private and public sectors. The approach uses predefined assessment criteria. Price is often weighted heavily in the determination of best-value.

Pennsylvania is one of the recent states to legalize best-value as the basis for selecting contractors for state work. ENR reports in the October 24, 2005 issue that the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) has sued the state to overturn the new law. ABC contends,

"…the process is secretive, invites favoritism, and is a poor substitute for hiring contractors based only on competitive bids."

The ABC goes on to claim the contract awards are "secretive and subjective," according to Hank Butler, ABC Director of Government Affairs.

What a way to spend ABC member dues! One reader¹ agrees writing a letter to the editor in this week's issue,

"If ABC spent more time and money trying to make their members better contractors, then maybe they wouldn't feel so threatened when their only bastion of safety — the low bid — is challenged by owners who want more value for their construction dollar."

Not only is the ABC behind the times, but they show a distinct indifference to the needs of their prospective clients. I predict ABC will lose this lawsuit along with the goodwill they already squandered.

By the way Hank, of course best-value has subjectivity in the process. Value is an assessment. Value is whatever the person says it is. Those contractors who take the time to listen to their prospects' concerns will be positioned to make best-value proposals. Maybe that is the real issue of the lawsuit: perhaps the ABC knows that its membership doesn't listen. If that is the case, then the only avenue is to sue your prospects.

1. Steven B. Chesley, Executive Manager, Quad Cities Chapter, National Electrical Contractors Assoc., Davenport, Iowa. [ ⇑ back ]

Skanska Unleashes Work Crews using tablet PCs and Blackberries. Information Week, Sept 19, 2005, reports that Skanska is rolling out a "walking office", a construction site wireless network so construction supervision and project management can get anytime-anywhere access to electronic documentation and communication. This contrasts with the usual practice of needing to visit a jobsite office or trailer to refer to paper documentation, use fax machines, or request information from off site. Skanska is reporting a 20% productivity improvement. Skanska has adopted Constructware as their platform for a project management and collaboration environment.

[Notes from LCI's 7th Annual Lean Construction Congress]

Assessing the Impacts of Implementing Lean Construction, Luis Alarcon

The Catholic University of Chile is at the center of spreading lean construction throughout Chile. Luis Alarcon shared how they are doing that and what results they are getting.

Companies have come together under Alarcon's tutelage to learn lean construction. The companies are responsible for implementing the new methodologies and for sharing the practices within the companies. In the last 2 - 3 years 77 projects have been done on a lean basis. PPC on companies' first projects has been rising over these three years. The largest cause of PPC failure on projects where PPC was greater than 65% was "subcontractor delays". As project teams get better at managing their own resources they reduce the impact of outside influences.

The effort was started when the construction council made a request for the university to benchmark lean performance among seven companies. It took persuasion to get the companies to share.

Report on LCI Design Forum, David Mar, Tipping Mar

David Mar has been involved with LCI's Design Forum for about 1 year. In that time he has stepped up to provide leadership to the initiative and great examples of what his firm Tipping Mar is learning as the incorporate lean principles and practices in the design work. David briefed us on what the Design Forum actions and findings along with what Tipping Mar has been learning. The following are the audience comments and questions to his presentation.

"In the iterative process you continue down a single path until you get screwed."

Key Points

• Client vs. Customer: the client will take possession of the capital asset. The customer is the person on the project who is counting on you for your timely completion of your work.
• Early and accurate cost estimates can guide the work of the designers to produce high value for the client.
• Detailers need to be at the kick-off meetings along with estimators to understand the value of the project to the client and help shape the direction of the designers' work.
• Batch estimating doesn't work well. Designers continue adding to work that may be determined unaffordable.
• Carefully picking who you share your fate with is self-interest
• Hard to get a good estimate when you pay for it; to think you can get it for free is ridiculous.

Audience Questions

• Why can't design be scheduled the way commitments are made?
• What are the more important lean issues in design?
• Elaborate on the job launch meeting.
• Wondering how can we make sure we get the right people to the table with the right expertise early on?
• If you had know about the budget issues earlier could you have brought it in at the target cost?
• What metrics are you using in the design process to know you are on track?
• How do you determine when it's time for someone to get uninvolved?

David's Closing Comments

We should use cost modeling as a design tool rather than just as an outcome. The premise that design is uncontrollable is wrong. Designers will benefit from project targets. Designers need more of the information that the developer has will help the designers deliver the program.

Perpetual innovation presupposes that teams can get together and learn. We can take the idea of working together will help. Measuring help us learn.

When doing design charrettes I'd like to have specialists available to those in the big room.

Design Assist at Sutter Camino Medical Center

Sutter Health is building a medical office building in Camino, CA. Holly Peterson Snyder is the architect. DPR is the general contractor. Sutter asked DPR to manage a design collaboration (design assist to the architects and engineers) with the MEP subcontractors. The results exceeded expectations. Glenn Ballard, Research Director, LCI, interviewed key members of the team in a panel conversation.

John Holm, Sutter Health: This is the strongest team I've ever worked with. It's a better team. The cost is within 2% of the original guesstimate.

Glenn: Big Question
Bryan , Capitol Engineering: On the mechanical side we shared our construction spec with the contractors before we designed. We adjusted our spec to conform to the construction expertise available.
Tracy , DPR: We got the MEP trades on very early. We did a team evaluation to select the subcontractors. One of the keys was is everyone is modeling in 3D. We probably saved $3-4 million in coordination that hasn't hit a coordination log. We still have contingency available.
George , DPR: The test is ongoing as are the results. We could get contractor commitments to schedule and pricing with a 50% set of documents. When a stakeholder gives you costs they stay focussed on controlling the costs.
John H: We've had only 6 RFIs on this project. We expect to have a small number on the balance of the project.

Glenn: How did you participate as subcontractors on this project?
Jeremy: We were able to save the project a bunch of money by working early with PG&E.
Mark: Our early environment allowed us to help the designer adjust the design before he was finished.

Glenn: How were you able to provide fast costing during design?
John: We produced phased design. The DPR estimating team would update the cost based on what happened at that day's meeting. This allowed us to move money from one bucket to another.
George: One key was the relationships that developed between the designers. Having the engineer present for the programming helped the team control the costs.
Bryan: It comes down to trust. I don't have to work through the formal contractual relationships to get a costing estimate. I can go to the right person and say I'm thinking about something and I get rapid feedback and questions for me to consider. When it came to consider alternatives we were able to present real cost data and get quick answers from the owner.

Glenn: What do you want to improve on going forward?
John: The relationships between the design assist subcontractors and the design sub consultants has been tremendous. We can do an even better job going forward. People are learning why each other does what they do.
Kevin , HPS: We bring on design assist folk early on and trust the designers can do some of their job before turning it over to the DAs.
George: We may have brought DA people on too early. This has been a real pull process. We're moving really fast.
Jeremy: Sometime being there early meant
Tracy: We might have overwhelmed the structural engineer. We kept changing things that made their work challenging. Overall they reacted very well.
Bryan: It's a good project. It's going well. However, maybe one thing that makes this work is we celebrate our own tension. Sometimes it can bring tension anywhere. The design team has goals that we are trying to preserve. Contractors have their goals. Taken together it creates tension.
Kevin: Architecture is subjective. Communicating that to the customer can be challenging.