These ten ideas will dramatically improve your projects. Are these ten rules the top ten? You decide. But don't take too long. Share these rules with your team. Your team members are sure to help you carry them out!

Houston Neal offers a high-level feature comparison checklist for beginning a software evaluation.

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:

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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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.

Chauncey Bell writes,
Why Is Construction so Backward? Is it just construction? Or, are projects backward?

Ask Fluor. They did that by cutting their injury rate from 100 to 9 in one year. Let's not settle for less.

Glen Alleman took me to task for yesterday's posting Misunderstanding Project Planning as Anticipation. He wrote a rather comprehensive rebuttal to my claim that the general understanding of planning is as anticipating a future. Glen makes a good case that best practice — at least in DoD projects — doesn't misunderstand planning. Since I've only worked at one defense contractor, I won't contradict him. I will say that my experience of the everyday practice of planning is as I described. Project managers/planners usually take an approach that limits alternatives concluding with "the plan". The plan is then represented as a CPM schedule. I don't argue with Glen that this is inadequate, nor am I saying that some people know better AND do something different. I am saying that the usual practice is to have a smart experienced person create a plan that is then represented as a schedule for others to follow. That is a practice that must change if we want better project performance. ¶ Continue reading this post…

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. ¶ Continue reading this post…

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. ¶ Continue reading this post…

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 produced 550 apartment units in one year at significant cost reductions. Their next project was bigger. People were able to move into apartments while others were still under construction. Their own crews achieved 100% PPC on their tasks. Subs had lower PPC with an overall average of about 85%.

The culture change phase started with company-wide training. They encountered "old school" thinking. They provided incentives and opportunities to those people who had the best performance with lean construction. ¶ Continue reading this post…

Using standardized building system and standardized components NCC is creating customized apartments for the Sweden market. Their intent is to reduce the time to build, reduce the cost, and improve the quality of the finished product. NCC recognized that construction was costing more each year, while engineered products were falling in prices. Their delivery method takes advantage of the engineering approach. They currently have a production capacity of 1,000 apartments/year with 60 workers in their plant.

The industrial housing market draws on lean thinking, pre-assembly, direct purchase of raw materials, and short production cycles. They are also able to address ergonomic conditions for the workers. Construction time is reduced by 75%. Total labor is reduced by 50%.

NCC has been at this industrial leap for 4 years. Along the way they've encountered challenges:

• Suppliers and customers have a project mindset.
• Definition of building systems must be set before design.
• The range of variation impacts the ability to deliver standard components.
• Material supply is critical, otherwise it shuts down the factory.
• Close tolerances are required — millimeters not centimeters — are required for good finishes.

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Fred 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.

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