Lean Construction
What is Lean Construction?
The goal of Lean Construction is to produce the most value for the customer while reducing waste on a project.
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One of the main aspects of Lean is respect for people and their ideas. People and their contributions are the reason that projects are successful. Recognizing this and keeping it in mind throughout the execution of a project is key to implementing any other Lean principles or tools.
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When working to be Lean, a team should be constantly looking at their projects to determine if their efforts are generating value for the customer. To do this, the Owner's goals should be made available to everyone on the project team. Anything that does not align with these goals, can be considered waste.
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"Lean thinking" encourages team members to look for and remove waste. Waste is anything that does not provide value. Waste can include time spent looking for a tool, walking extra due to a poorly designed work area, waiting for information such as RFIs, or rework due to damaged materials, etc.
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Continuous improvement is another aspect of Lean. Teams should be encouraged to try new things and experiment to see if they can improve the way they work.
Why Lean Construction?
According to the book "Transforming Design and Construction: A Framework for Change", construction industry studies have shown 50% or more of the effort required to deliver a project is non-value added effort, or waste in the eyes of the customer. The effectiveness of a construction labor hour has not improved in the last 50 years, while other industries have seen significant advancements.
How do we implement Lean?
Lean is not about the tools, but some tools can help make implementing Lean thinking easier. Some tools to help you are listed below, click on any of them to be taken to a section with more detail:
Continuous Improvement
What is Continuous Improvement?
Continuous Improvement seeks to improve every process in the company by focusing on enhancing the activities that generate the most value for your customer while removing as many waste activities as possible.
There are seven major types of waste in Lean: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, and Defects. Removing ALL waste is nearly impossible, but focusing on minimizing their negative effects on your work is what continuous improvement is all about.
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PDCA is the continuous improvement cycle, this can help you plan and work toward continuous improvement on your project. The PDCA cycle phases include:
Plan
Do
Check
Act
Plan
Identify the area for improvement and analyze it so that you understand why this is a problem or a need. Then make a plan for improvement by identifying all of the possible solutions or countermeasures to the problem.
Do
Implement the solution you decided upon on a small scale.
Check
Review your improvements, analyze the results, and identify what you learned.
Act
Take action based on what you learned. If the change did not work ,you can go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned on a wider scale.
Granger Continuous Improvement
At Granger, we want everyone to start seeing problems as opportunities to improve processes and the product we are building for our customers. We want to empower everyone to bring up items that are wasteful. These can be company-wide, on specific jobsites, or personal.
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No improvement is too small.
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No idea for change is stupid.
We want to give everyone the basic tools they need to get started with improvements. If you have any process improvement ideas, the process map attached will help you get started working through any improvements you see.​
Last Planner System®
can
will
Should
learn
did
Set Milestones
Determine Flow
Specify Handoffs
Make Work Ready
Make Promises
Daily Huddles
Retrospectives
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative, commitment-based planning system. The goal of the Last Planner System is to produce a predictable, uninterrupted workflow by creating a set of commitments that connects the work to the promises that were made to the Owner.
Who is a "Last Planner"?
The Last Planner is the person or people responsible for making the final assignment of work to the team members in the field. They ensure that the people performing the work have the materials, equipment, and information available to complete their assignments without interruption. They are also responsible for handing off work that is complete to the next responsible trade.
Milestone Planning
Milestone Planning is done before a project begins and is exactly as it sounds: you plan out all of the milestones for the project. These milestones are then used in Pull Planning.
Phase/Flow Planning
Phase and flow planning tie the milestone schedule with the logistics plan and produces a guide for how the project will flow. Phase planning is a visual way to show the flow of work for the overall project. Flow planning is a visual way to show the flow of work for specific trades.
Pull Planning
Pull planning is a technique used as part of the Last Planner System to develop a collaborative plan. Working together, the team starts with a milestone and works backwards, task by task, to plan the work for the project. This allows the Trade Supervisors (Last Planners) to plan their own work, with specific durations and manpower. Pull Planning adds transparency and builds trust within the team.
Make-Ready/Look-Ahead Planning
The goal of Make Ready Planning is to identify and remove obstacles or constraints in advance of the scheduled work. Good Make Ready Planning allows for Weekly Work Planning and Daily Huddles to proceed with much less effort.
Weekly Work Planning
Weekly Work Planning is the process by which the plan for next week is established. Weekly Work Planning is when we get commitments from the Trades for the work that is planned in the upcoming week.
Daily Huddles
Daily Huddles are a brief (15 minute) stand up meeting that occurs in the field, close to the work. All trades whose work affects one another are involved in the Daily Huddle. Each person takes a turn to share what commitments they have completed and what commitments they need help with or cannot deliver.
Retrospectives
A Retrospective is a lessons learned meeting that reflects on a team's experience. These meetings can be conducted at anytime, but it is recommended that they occur at the completion of every milestone. Use the time to reflect on what worked well, what did not, and what was not expected.
A3 Problem Solving
What is A3 Problem Solving?
A3 is a problem solving tool developed by Toyota to foster learning, collaboration, and personal growth in employees. Going through the A3 process allows teams to collaborate on the purpose, goals, and countermeasures of a problem, and encourages in-depth problem solving.
"A3" is derived from the size of paper used throughout the A3 process (11x17)
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How do you do an A3?
A blank A3 template is linked on the side of the page. Follow the steps below to think through your problem.
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1. Identify the background of the issue. What are we trying to fix?
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2. Identify the current conditions. What is happening today?
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3. Come up with goals. What specifically are we trying to accomplish with this change?
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4. Analyze the problem. What is the cause of the problem? What is the gap between where we are today and where we want to be?
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5. Come up with countermeasures or solutions. What are all of the possible solutions you can think of? What are the barriers to successful implementation of each solution?
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6. Build a plan for improvement. What will the new process look like?
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7. Follow-up. Has the process improved from the implemented solution? If not, readjust your plan.
Kanban
What is a Kanban?
A Kanban helps organize tasks into a workflow and provides a framework for teams to visualize their work.
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A Kanban board has different columns for different parts of the workflow. A simple Kanban can include the following three columns: "To-Do", "Doing", and "Done". Tasks are moved from one list to the next as they are worked on and completed. Adding a "Blocked" column to the Kanban board can show the whole team what items are not being completed and why. You can create a Kanban board with whatever columns fit your team and the work you are doing. The goal is just to make work as transparent as possible.
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Sharing a Kanban between a project team is a great way to make everyone's to-do lists and workloads visible. Reviewing the Kanban in your team's Daily Huddles helps to see what is on everyone's plate for the day.
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Trello and Microsoft Planner are the two Kanban systems you can utilize right now.
5-Why
What is a 5 Why?
A 5-Why is a tool used to get to the root cause of a problem. Doing a 5-why will help make sure mistakes do not become a recurring part of your process. The link on the side of the page will take you to a short video by the Lean Enterprise Institute that gives a good overview of a 5-Why.
How do I get started with a 5-Why?
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Gather a team of people who are familiar with the problem and the processes it is affecting.
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Define the problem or the scope. This will help you stay on task during the 5-Why exercise.
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Have one person facilitate. They should be comfortable asking "Why?" as many times as needed until the root cause of the problem is discovered.
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Focus on finding the root cause and not on complaints or unreasonable suggestions.
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Sometimes there can be more than one root cause.
What do I do after completing a 5-Why?
After completing the 5-Why and figuring out the root cause, discuss solutions to the problem. Make someone on the team accountable for making sure the solution gets applied. Remember to use the PDCA Continuous Improvement Cycle to Check and make sure if your solution is working, if not, make some changes and apply them. ​