Archive for the 'construction' Category

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

utter Health's Dave Pixley kicked off LCI's 7th Congress at the site of their future billion dollar hospital, just part of their $8 billion construction program in the next 7 years. Sutter Health has adopted lean construction as their approach to drive the waste out of their program. In doing so, they are establishing a new agenda for commercial contracting in northern California.

Sutter has embraced the five big ideas as the context for how they are implementing lean construction. All project managers have been challenged to do their projects using the Last Planner System™. Sutter is counting on the contractor and designer community to provide leadership to advance their lean agenda. Dave thinks that lean leadership must emerge broadly in the AEC community.

We must get out of the linear model of design and construction and embrace a collaborative model.

Dave shared their initiatives to make the five big ideas a reality.

• Collaborate, Really Collaborate
• Manage as a Network of Commitments
• Increase the Relatedness of the Project Participants
• Tightly Couple Learning with Action
• Optimize the Project at the Whole

Cost savings-based incentives has historically encouraged the wrong behaviors.

Dave Pixley shared Sutter is now using an integrated form of agreement to support working in lean ways. The owner, architect, and general contractor are all signing the same agreement. This is a significant departure from the AIA standard contracts that are signed between just two parties. Sutter has adopted a mechanism to formalize what everyone already knows: architects and contractors depend on each other.

Sutter has already documented $10 million of real savings on their early projects. "Lean is real and extremely exciting." Dave finished with a quote from coach John Wooden,

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

What Did You Hear?

• Importance of metrics
• Client admits they are still learning
• Client seeing significant results
• The importance of the network of commitments
• Client changing their process through their contract
• Owner really knows what is going on
• They dig the five big ideas
• Sutter's challenge to the AEC industry to rethink how they deliver projects
• Reality-based architectural fees will be key
• CPM for milestones only, please!
• Time is right for change, cost is out of control
• There is a need for information sharing within the industry
• This is not an instant fix, it's a process.

Questions Provoked

• Like to know more of what Sutter is measuring on a project and across projects?
• What are the metrics for project planning?
• How can we strengthen the network of commitments as the foundation?
• Vendors are trained say yes to the clients. What is happening when they say no?
• How are they having fun doing projects?
• What lean concepts have been incorporated in the whole preconstruction?
• How is LPS used to eliminate waste in meetings?
• Embellish on getting early buy-in from
• Is Sutter planning to use building information models?
• Has anyone compared traditional costs to the LPS method?
• Like to see how the theory translate into results?
• How did Sutter decide on lean?
• What is the impact of using the lean principles to the end users of their facilities.

Dave's Follow-on Comments

My challenge is bringing 1000s of others along with me.

The scope of the presentation didn't intend to go into the detail the above questions imply. He intended to share his epiphany that intuitively lean is it. "I understand the potential of lean. Estimating as you go throughout the process rather than at the end of chunks. Making clear requests and negotiating promises struck me like a ton of bricks. I'm looking for ways for increasing my margin of error. Lean construction is the way.

It is amazing to see Herrero, Turner, DPR, and others acting quickly and causing major resources to shift resulting in gains on our projects.

We've got to measure many little things along the way. That will allow us to make course corrections. When I extrapolate the usual little variances across an $8 billion program I can see big problems.

Are you working on a construction project? Who do you look for help? There's a new weblog that is focused exclusively on you situation. It's called The Construction Contractor's Blog. It's written by Matt Stevens of Stevens Construction Institute. You'll find more than 6o articles on your business.

I've been re-thinking the Daily Coordination Meeting. I've been watching daily meetings. Often, the project participants are taking care of basic coordination — doing last-minute planning — rather than managing their commitments. The name of the meeting Daily Coordination is part of the problem, but only part. Coordinating one group with another is a small part of the the daily meeting. The most important part is taking the time to let each other know that you and your group have done what you said you would do for that day. This builds trust and it creates a basis for the performing groups to take the hedging out of their promising. When one group doesn't have confidence in what another group will do for them, then we understandably get hedging. Hedging leads to work areas being ready but no one working. The aim is for the project work to flow unimpeded from one performing group to another.

Even the most reliable performers have to deal with the unexpected.

A second key aspect of a meeting for managing commitments is to make timely declarations of completion. Read the rest of this entry ¶

Previous in series

The Last Planner System® is routinely delivering projects on time and on budget. Want to know how? That will have to wait for another posting. But for today, I'll introduce you to Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, the creators of the Last Planner System. They authored a 13-page paper for IGLC-11 sharing the current state of the approach and the open issues, An Update on the Last Planner.

• Work structuring: linking scheduling and production control
• Phase scheduling: providing goals for Last Planner
• A list of improvements and recommendations that have emerged from theory and practice.

Emphasize learning (changes in PPC) rather than absolute values of PPC.

Throughout the years the authors and innovators have made numerous distinctions about projects that orient us to a new paradigm of project management. One important set of distinctions is how they view work structuring and project schedules.

"(S)chedules are products of work structuring that specify goals and the handoffs between specialists required to achieve those goals. Production control has the job of achieving those handoffs or initiating replanning should that prove infeasible."

Glenn and Greg are not speaking about structuring projects through the contracting process. They are pointing to answering the question, "How will we do this work with each other?"

The authors made five recommendations:

1. Identify tasks and assignments that are either handoffs to someone else or that
   have implications for coordinating the use of shared resources.
2. Make customer acceptance explicitly the measure of release.
3. Emphasize learning (changes in PPC) rather than absolute values of PPC.
4. Incorporate linguistic action and reliable promising.
5. Measure PPC against planned day (versus week) for release.

LPS addresses the question "How will we do this work with each other?"

And they posed five questions:

1. Should work groups (squads, gangs, crews) meet daily to align assignments,
   identify make ready actions needed within the day, and identify problems
   requiring replanning?
2. How far in advance should commitments be made?
3. Should multiple levels of commitment be recognized?
4. How to better assure that (the) Last Planner (System) is used within a distributed control system?
5. Does application of the Last Planner system reduce the variability in duration of
   construction activities?

I am someone who helps teams adopt the LPS on their projects. So often people want to just use the six-week look-ahead plan and the weekly work plan. They think they are just using a different set of planning forms. The authors use this paper to show how the whole of the project planning and control approach changes. They also do something more important. They invite each of us to join them in research from the field as you use the Last Planner System on your projects. Want to learn from those who are already using the LPS? Join Glenn, Greg, and a group of practitioners in Park City, UT, September 14- 17, for the Sixth Annual Lean Construction Congress.

The Last Planner System™ (LPS) is a trademark of the Lean Construction Institute. The LPS is free for use. Join other users of the LPS at Planner2Planner.

Making Do: The Eighth Category of Waste, by Lauri Koskela.

I've written about the eighth waste in my posting introducing Two Great Wastes™. A number of people want to update Taiichi Ohno's taxonomy of materiel waste. Lauri Koskela is the most recent. Lauri's eighth waste is the most novel. He claims we incur waste when we fail to use the tools, materials, and processes that are called for. He calls this making do.

Lauri calls making do the opposite of buffering. He distinguishes that as the urge to keep the process going in spite of not having everything ready. When buffering materials are waiting on processing. With making do processing continues without all appropriate wherewithal. Lauri claims,

"Making do is usually applied when there is unexpected unavailability of a (standard) input. Making do is another penalty due to variability."

I really like his formulation. Lauri is getting at something that we all know well. Have you used a screwdriver when another tool was called for? I have. Have you improvised steps for accomplishing a task rather than use the standard called for? I have. Have you substituted one material for another rather than stop to get the right material? I have. I imagine at one time or another we have all taken an expedient action. We were making do with some intention to just get the job done.

Blindness is not making do.

While I wasn't present for his presentation and discussion I heard that some people thought he was stretching it. Here's their argument: how can we be making do when we are working with all we have? And if we are, how would that be a waste? We can think of scenarios where we are in the wilderness, or far from a source of material, or in a country without access to the best resources. Lauri is not speaking about any of this. He's speaking about the situation where we have the time to do planning. We have clear direction about what is preferred. And we have access to sources of materials, tools, skilled labor, and process. It is in these usual project situations that making do is so wasteful.

One problem is people think waste is observable. It is not observable only assessable. What do I mean? We can observe someone is using a screwdriver. We have the opinion that a different tool would get better results. That is our assessment. There is not given waste. Further, if people are blind to other possibilities, then how can we call it waste? Do you open a paint can with a screwdriver? I do. Did you know there is a special tool for opening paint cans? Well, I didn't. One cannot claim I am making do when all I know about is the use of screwdrivers for opening paint cans. Blindness is not making do.

I'm still curious about the underlying contributors to making do. It seems to me that resignation, laziness, expediency, habit or custom, blindness, and deliberate action all contribute to the waste. Local economics and market conditions have a great impact on whether we call an action making do or doing good. When I can hire laborers for a few dollars a day am I making do when I choose not to rent equipment at two or three times the cost? Of course not! Economics matter. There is no universal standard for assessing that one is making do.

I have one last comment about the formulation. Lauri presumes cognitive action. Lauri says that it is our response to the unexpected unavailability of wherewithal that is the waste. Sure, but I think he can go further. In the project setting variability is a function of the performance of the planning system and practices. We can engage in a way that minimizes the unexpected unavailability. Doing so would reduce the urge for expediency. That could lead to a significant reduction in this waste.

Lauri offers a new distinction for engaging with the world that allows people to observe and assess waste. Read Making Do: The Eighth Category of Waste. Share the paper with your team. And begin observing and assessing where you are making do.

Check out other IGLC papers and commentaries.

The August 8, 2004, Sunday Edition of the New York Times ran a story Building a Bad Reputation: Sloppy American Construction, Julie V. Iovine. The story appeared in the Arts and Design section. [You'll need to move fast to read the article. The NYT only makes their stories available for about 1 week. If you haven't registered with the site, then you'll have to do that before viewing.]

This story will make its way around the AEC and real estate industries. Ms. Iovine is saying publicly what many architects have been saying about contractors and the subcontractor workforce for years.

"Got a gaping one-inch space between frame and window? Just fill it in with silicone and call it a day. Not perfectly flush or plumb? Who cares!"

But she doesn't stop there. She's also saying what contractors have been saying about architects.

"(T)he architect's reputation for meticulous standards was so daunting that some 50 contractors had refused to bid on the job."

Is our industry broken? Do we have a bad reputation among foreign designers? While it may be an exception, some people in the industry are up for the challenge.

"At first there was this big fear that the kind of quality possible in Japan was impossible here. Some of us took that as a challenge to achieve the equivalent level of craftsmanship."

There is something foreign designers value about the American way.

"The team spirit in the U.S. is exceptional. Once they are in front of a challenge, they rise to it. It was a pure American effort."

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage.

Here's what I make of the situation. In the U.S.A. we do not have a value for and practice of learning and innovating on the jobsite. Too often we buy out the job by awarding pieces to subcontractors on a lowest price basis. Those subcontractors hire other specialist subcontractors each offering their lowest price. We do this in an attempt to optimize the cost of the job. Instead, we get sub-optimization of systems and the project as a whole. Further, we bring strangers together and make no effort to build relationships. Why bother? Labor is labor? We can replace one person with another without negative consequences to the job. And that's where we are wrong.

We can make concrete that has "the airless density of a flourless chocolate cake." We can form that concrete so the finish can be polished. And we even can design, fabricate, and install curtain wall systems to tight tolerances. But we can't do any of that reliably without fundamentally changing what we value from our construction activities. And that goes for the architects too. They must bring construction folk into the earliest stages of design if they want a design that is constructable to their intentions.

I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry.

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage. The story of Toyota's entry to the U.S.A. is instructive. Toyota took GM's worst plant in Freemont, CA, where there were reported to be more worker grievances than in the rest of GM combined. That plant is also where they had low quality and high recalls. Giving up, GM closed the plant. Toyota came in and hired back a large group of the workforce but not the management. Instead, Toyota infused the workforce with the Toyota DNA. Then together management and workers designed the plant operations. The Corollas that come off that line are equally good as those from Japan.

Ms. Iovine interviewed Dana Buntrock, author of "Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process". Ms. Buntrock, just up the road from Toyota, said quality is tied to wealth. But she's changing her mind.

"Now I am beginning to wonder if well-built architecture occurs only at a very fragile economic moment. You need not only affluence, but a group of people who are well paid enough to remain in the crafts and building trades even though they are intelligent, and you need the overall size of an architectural project to remain relatively small."

I'm more optimistic than Ms. Buntrock. Just as the lean approach has made Toyota a powerhouse and competitors their imitators, I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry. And it is well on its way in northern California, just a few miles from Toyota's Freemont facility. Read the August 7, 2004 story appearing in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal Sutter Health Tells It's Builders, "Make It Lean".