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When you hear the term ‘Big Room’, what image does that conjure up? Are you thinking a large, open space where a big group of people can congregate? Within the realm of Lean Project Delivery, at the very basic level, you would be correct. The Big Room is a space where the project team can meet to bring the project design to life through Target Value Delivery and create a plan to deliver the project with the Last Planner System®.

However, the purpose of the Big Room goes well beyond that of being a meeting place. It is a place where teams are formed, expected behaviors are defined, and conditions of satisfaction are what drives collaborative decision making. It is a place where commitments are made and trust is built through the delivery of promises.

This Fall marks the 4th year anniversary for the Lean Construction Blog. When we started the blog in 2015, we had one simple vision: “To take many of the wonderful lessons learned that we have experienced while being part of the LC community, attending conferences, reading research papers, etc. and make it more accessible to the rest of the world.” Our understanding is that most people do not have the luxury of attending an international conference. Most people want to understand LC in a simpler way than what is available at conferences and journals.

With this very simple vision, we engaged with industry and academic experts in the field of Lean Construction. In the last 4 years, we received more than 200 guest articles from 75 contributors. Over the course of this time, we received more than 502,000 page views from approximately 200,000 unique visitors worldwide.

Gemba Kaizen, Quality Circles, Kaizen Events, Rapid Process Improvement Workshops and Value Stream Mapping. These are all improvement tactics some organizations use to fix problems at the Gemba and remove waste from their Value Streams. Kaizen is used in many places as a change management system and it can be a great engine for organizational change over time.

Plus/Delta is a great way to improve almost any social process. Also known as Do again / Do better and Plus / Change, it is a very simple formative feedback process that only requires 5-10 minutes, a flip chart and pens.

Change in an organization is inevitable and necessary. This shouldn’t be earth-shattering to anyone. The people, processes, space and technology must constantly evolve. When we are satisfied with being on a plateau inescapably something will disrupt our steady movement and change the course. So how does an organization anticipate what’s next, continuously improve, and bring ready and willing people along? The answer: Lean Thinking and Change Management.

Most of us know Lean, and the emphasis on removing waste to deliver higher value. What’s been largely missing in the translation of Lean from Japan to the US is the idea of respect for people as a foundation for that work. When Lean works best, it reflects the twin pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people.

Professor Yasuhiro Monden, in the 1983 publication “Toyota Production System,” wrote, “At Toyota, respect for humanity is a matter of allying human energy with meaningful, effective operations by abolishing wasteful operations. If a worker feels that his job is important and his work significant, his morale will be high; if he sees that his time is wasted on insignificant jobs, his morale will suffer as well as his work.”

Decision-making in the design process is multi-dimensional, involving various stakeholders with diverse perspectives and interests. This results in the need to undertake multicriteria decision-analysis (MCDA). The process of MCDA fundamentally involves breaking the decision problem into elements, evaluating each element separately, and reintegrating the elements for a holistic perspective.

Choosing by advantages (CBA) is a form of MCDA in which decisions are characteristically based on comparing the advantages of alternatives [1]. CBA, as a lean decision system, creates a participative and transparent environment for collaborative and auditable decision-making. The CBA process involves seven systematic steps (Figure 1).

The International Group For Lean Construction (IGLC) is an international conference started in 1993. The IGLC brings together an international community of researchers and industry practitioners each summer to advance the research and practical applications of Lean Design and Construction. This year’s event in Dublin Ireland had around 300 attendees from 38 different countries who presented 130 papers.

In this blog post, I want to highlight 12 papers from the conference. These papers are intended to give the readers of the Lean Construction Blog a good understanding of the major topics discussed in this year’s IGLC.

In the early 20th century, management theories were devoted to the idea of “one best way” to perform tasks, designed by the manager and implemented by direct reports. Like many things that must change with the passage of time, management styles evolved.

Although manufacturing was one of the first sectors to actively seek out more waste reduction principles, the construction industry of today is being shaped by this same philosophy and continues to be revolutionized by the possibilities that Lean represents. We’ve already seen how this change in approach has impacted construction today, but what does it look like in the future? As we look to the next 10 years, four factors will greatly influence the future of Lean: leadership, marketing in the field, multi-generational workforce and technology.

Why do Clients expectations fall short of design services providers fees and prescribed timeframes? That is, they feel they are not getting the value for services that they contracted for. Clients ask when will I be able to benefit from the work I asked for? How much will it cost me to get there? How and why might a Lean approach assist to add more value to all stakeholders in the design phase? The perceived lack of value by Clients is usually a result of incomplete and uncoordinated construction documents during construction and unrealistic estimation of design schedules and budgets. Where are the disconnects?

Target Value Delivery (TVD) is “a management practice that drives the design [and construction] to deliver customer values within project constraints” (Ballard, 2009). It is an application of Taiichi Ohno’s practice of self-imposing necessity as a means for continuous improvement (Ballard, 2009). Using TVD, the design and construction is steered towards the target cost. A continuous and pro-active value engineering process is utilized during the design phase to quickly evaluate the cost implications of design options. Cost is a [one of many] constraint rather than an output of the design process.

The International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC), founded in 1993, makes up a network of professionals and researchers in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of AEC have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the challenges ahead. The IGLC is an integrated international network and community of researchers in practice and academia that has collected a specific repository of research from the members of the community and their associates.

Takt planning has come into its own in the last few years. Takt is German word (Taktzeit Cycle) for establishing the “beat” or rhythm of a process. Companies including BMW, Sutter Health, and others have reported very positive results of implementing Takt planning. A Takt helps balance the production rates across an assembly line to ensure continuous and even flow of work. This process minimizes downtime and eliminates unnecessary work in progress (WIP).

The concept of “Big Room”, also known by the Japanese word “Obeya” is linked with the concept of co-location, which in Toyota refers to the practice of locating multidisciplinary teams in the same place to improve communication and creativity in the process of automotive design. In the construction industry, the “Big Room” facilitates the implementation of Last Planner® System (LPS) and Collaborative Planning, as well as the Integrated Project Delivery System (IPD). Under the background of LPS, the Big Room can be defined as the place where collaborative planning meetings are held: milestones plan, Pull Sessions, weekly meetings and daily stand up meetings. In this post we will focus on its benefits in LPS.

Research and experience with the implementation of the Last Planner System (LPS) in the New Zealand (NZ) construction sector are very few. The NZ construction sector has had a very slow uptake on developing a lean culture and utilising lean tools such as the LPS. The main reason could be that the practitioners within industry are not connected together to share their experiences and collaborate within the local community and with Global Lean Practitioners.

Lean Construction requires a dramatic increase in collaboration – defined literally as “co-laboring”, working together. For better or worse, working together happens in meetings. As important as collaboration is to Lean Construction, one of the most common laments is, “There are too many meetings! When am I going to get my work done?!” And therein lies one of the most challenging paradoxes of Lean Construction.

Recent research in Brazil identified that informal packages are executed frequently on construction sites, the exploratory studies estimate that about 30% to 35% of the tasks realized during the week were not planned and this percentage may have been higher if the Last Planner System was not implemented [1,2,3]. In this point, failure in the application of make ready process could be considered the main reason for the emergence of informal packages during the week.

For many lean leaders and coaches a primary concern is obtaining the full engagement of everyone on a project team in lean practices. Despite best efforts at directing people toward lean behaviors universal lean buy-in is hard to achieve. What people are looking for is a way to create enthusiasm for lean. Enthusiasm for lean is no different than enthusiasm for any endeavor, whether it be family, sports, or more broadly, life.

The Last Planner System (LPS) is a process used to develop a collaborative production planning that is based on the team experience in order to achieve efficient and effective design and construction processes. A digitized system and its visualization has shown advantages due its independence of time and location. In case the digital tool receives all automated checks and necessary information in order to support the planning process the LPS evolves into its leanest version.

Set-based Design (SBD) is a design methodology that has many applications in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. It was discovered when researcher studied the engineering and design process at Toyota [1]. Known as the “second Toyota paradox”, the researchers were surprised to find that Toyota considered a broader range of possible decisions, produced more physical models, delayed key decisions longer, and yet they had the fastest and most efficient vehicle development cycle in the industry.

Safety is an important manner in the workplace. Workplace incidents continue to occur in high frequencies. High numbers of fatalities significantly impact both people and the economy negatively, and to a great extent. Lean practices can streamline documentation, improve workplace conditions, enhance performance, and accelerate emergency response times — all of which is expected to improve safety performance.

Design and construction projects are long and complex and require collaboration between many parties. While there are benchmarks in place to help owners achieve efficiencies, the traditional delivery model leaves much to be desired.

• What if we could do better?
• What if we could create buildings that exceeded expectations instead of falling short?
• What if we could create buildings that are beautiful, efficient, useful, cost-effective and sustainable instead of often needing to compromise?
• What if a building operated as a whole instead of multiple, disparate systems housed inside one facility?

Lean Project Delivery and Last Planner System are big buzz phrases in the construction industry. Lean uses a collaborative approach to projects that eliminate waste, focus on adding value, and continuously improve. The two pillars of lean are continual improvement and respect for people. As an industry, and as technical people, we tend to focus on the process and the continual improvement part. But we tend to forget the respect for people part.

As an engineering professional a few years into my career, I’ve focused on building my skills in a way that allows me to contribute positively to my clients, my company, and the construction industry. I quickly realized that becoming a student of Lean would allow me to do just that. Through opportunities at my company, Southland Industries, and my involvement with the Lean Construction Institute’s Lean Leader group, I’ve learned how Lean practices can transform a project, and how important engaging the next generation of professionals is to full industry transformation.

Our company applied Lean techniques to hurricane planning and preparation in advance of the 2017 hurricane season, which turned out to be one of the most active and destructive hurricane seasons of all time. The teams involved followed a Lean process: plan, do, check, adjust. The result was a host of lessons learned that were applied to planning efforts for the 2018 hurricane season.

Lean Construction (LC), a management philosophy, is known in the industry to enable organisations to achieve major improvement in terms of productivity and levels of innovation through more collaborative approaches. However, implementing LC is not an easy task for organisations and often requires fundamental changes at both – the strategic and operational level.

Before I began my Lean journey in 2009, I honestly never thought about my capacity. I paused and reflected on what I had learned about applying Lean. My entry point was “Lean Thinking” by Womack and Jones, but even practicing the principles and some tools wasn’t increasing my management capacity beyond my first-year gains. I was a chronic workaholic and after beginning to practice Lean I was down to a consistent 55-60-hour workweek with only occasional Saturdays. Something was missing, I wasn’t improving. I had reached a plateau. I wasn’t satisfied.

“How do we know if we are doing it right?”

This question by a participant in an LPS workshop during one of my early engagements has stuck with me as I’ve worked with teams and individuals furthering their lean journey.

I still remember my first “aha” moment sitting in Glenn Ballard’s Lean Construction course. As both a PM and Superintendent on the Big Dig, I had struggled to figure out why some actions improved project performance and others made no dent in the chaos. That “aha” moment was my understanding how a lack of reliability impacts any process, and it brought perspective to all my prior successes and failures. All of a sudden, to get better results on any project, I had a lever I could focus on moving.

In an office, organizing the available resources and securing reliable commitments in the daily business is important. Especially in companies with different projects, an easy understandable overview of the resources allocation of the weekly work plan and the lookahead is very important. In our office we had a hard time organizing the team members that work on different projects away from the office. In some cases a team member becomes unavailable at short notice or there are changes in the projects which affect the allocation of staff.

Before I retired from Intel Corporation, I was often asked what data we used to select our contracting methodology or our project delivery approach. Like many large companies, too often we used a poor recent project as a reason to try yet another approach versus having a set of objective data from which to draw upon.

When I first joined the Lean Construction Institute board, I heard that same question asked time and time again with little real hard evidence. There was many good subjective stories and projects that were utilizing lean construction practices, and many had very encouraging results. But again, almost all owners I spent time with needed some hard data to prove to their companies that they were following best practices.

It is often said that, “Once you begin to understand Lean, the world will never look the same!” Is that true for you? Has it happened to you yet?

As a consultant, I have spent many years working on a complex problem: how can we make our organizations more successful, more effective, and better places to spend the huge percentage of our time that constitutes our work life?

Tracey Kidder said, “Building is the quintessential act of civilization.” Think about it. If three people washed up on a deserted island, the first thing they would do is collaboratively build a shelter. Unless, of course, the three people were an architect, owner’s rep, and contractor. Then, they would have to wait for two lawyers to wash up on the beach so that they could proceed with the project.

Around 15% of builders are using Pull Planning (although only 9% are using the full Last Planner® System) on at least some of their projects, according to the AGC and McGraw Hill [1] . The challenge is how to get the most value in the shortest time during a pull planning session.

The authors of this blog have led and coached over 200 pull planning sessions in the last few years, co-authored a book on the subject, and led dozens of training sessions and webinars.

I wanted to start this blog post with the most important message I have for all those who read this – you don’t need to have an IPD project in order to successfully use lean tools during design and preconstruction! As you will see from the real life examples described later, in order to do so, all that’s needed is the right integrated environment.

People commit to Lean because it promises results; organizations sustain that commitment. There is no Lean without Lean results: reduced waste; focused value, and streamlined flow. For those designing and constructing capital projects – there is no Lean without Project Delivery results: increased profit, increased client satisfaction, and increased speed.

The roots of the Last Planner® System reach back before the word “Lean” was coined by the International Motor Vehicle Program and made famous by the book The Machine that Changed the World. Events that in some way influenced the thinking behind the Last Planner include the collaborative leadership style of a military officer in southeast Asia, the priorities of a chicken rancher, and the influence of the Total Quality Management movement.

This post is the 2nd of a 3 part series looking at Integrated Project Delivery. The first post focuses on IPD agreements (contracts), this post focuses on IPD as a Lean Operating System, and the final post focuses on culture.

To maximize the value of the contract structure, teams require a new work philosophy focused on efficiency and reliability. A Lean Operating System delivers customer value, through streamlined processes practicing continuous improvement.

"Integrate or disintegrate" was a statement I made while facilitating a multi-day kickoff meeting for a mission critical project. My point to the folks was that only as an integrated team could we achieve the aggressive objectives set for this project. I used the example of the 2004 USA Olympic basketball team for what could happen if we didn't integrate.

At the heart of most lean processes is the drive to reduce waste and increase reliability. The Last Planner System is no different. Over the last few years, construction teams have been able to utilize the The Last Planner System to reduce waste in terms of scheduling, production, and quality control, with a relatively high level of success.

In many parts of the World, contracting can seem like the modern-day equivalent of a Roman gladiatorial battle, where a single project cost blow-out can end a promising political career or bankrupt a once profitable company.

This June I will be speaking at the Canadian Lean Conference in Winnipeg Canada. My subject will be “Lean is Simple.” It is centered on how I built a Lean culture with my team at FastCap and how thousands of other organizations around the world have done the same. However, if Lean is so “simple” why do so many people struggle to make it happen and make it sustainable?

Properly executing the look ahead planning portion of The Last Planner System can ensure your project team is set up for success. This exercise typically occurs during weekly team meetings where teams evaluate what “can” be done over the next 6 to 8 weeks. The goal is for the team to identify constraints, assign responsibility, and commit to resolving them prior to the constraint impacting the activity. This article will offer helpful tips to get the most out of your look ahead planning sessions.

The 5 Whys is a management concept that has been popularized by Toyota [1]. The concept is simple - when you encounter a problem, ask why at least 5 times until you understand the root cause. Only by addressing the root cause can you truly resolve the issue and ensure that it will never occur again. In today’s fast paced and dynamic business environment, constantly asking why is a good business practice that can lead to a more innovative and better problem-solving culture.

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is gaining popularity among owners, contractors, and design teams as a means to unlock creativity, drive reliability, and successfully deliver complex capital projects.

With all of the recent hype about the success of IPD and many large owners looking to pilot their first IPD projects, what exactly is Integrated Project Delivery? This series will explore Integrated Project Delivery as a contract form, a lean operating system and as a transformational culture.

Lean project delivery has entered the mainstream of construction, yet Lean adoption lags among design professionals. Architects and engineers who transformed the industry by first pioneering sustainable design and later the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) remain spectators while trade partners, construction managers, and some owners embrace Lean. As more owners expect and demand Lean, the hearts and minds of design professionals will soon follow. Change is difficult. Going “Lean” means abandoning the prevalent, “Robust” culture underlying design, operations and project delivery.

I always start the training of new Lean Practitioners with a general warning. They risk to be constantly frustrated after being trained as Lean Practitioners. If they do not think they can handle it they should leave the training immediately. This is partly a gimmick to get their attention but it is also true that if you are working as a Lean Practitioners you risk being constantly frustrated. To clarify this I divide the personal development as a new lean practitioner into four general development phases: 1) Scepticism, 2) Excitement, 3) Frustration and 4) Optimism.

Maintenance is defined as a combination of technical, administrative, and management activities throughout the product life cycle [1]. This is done to ensure that the product keeps functioning smoothly and achieves its full life cycle. Corrective maintenance happens after a breakdown or failure while preventive maintenance (also known as regular maintenance) is designed to be proactive.

In simplistic terms, Lean Maintenance is doing the maintenance in the most effective and efficient manner which creates the greatest value for the end asset user.

The pros of using the Last Planner® System [1] in Projects is a well referred topic [2, 3, 4]. However, especially in a design phase with several participants who are located far away from each other, analog systems can be uneconomical. This was the biggest challenge during the implementation of a Lean Project Delivery System for the design phase of a residential home with about 800 apartments. The design team consisted of four organizations, two located in Germany, one in Austria, and another in Poland. Due to a tight budget, co-location was not an option.

Takt time planning is a great tool for aligning crews and creating flow on site. However, it’s still just a plan and it will inevitably fail at some point. One of the reasons for using takt time is not only to create flow, but also help pinpoint where the bottleneck is on site. In the long run that’s a good thing; don’t ignore your problems, they’ll just grow.

Aside from adding more crews, here are a few countermeasures to consider when executing a Takt time plan that’s gone off-beat.

There's a revolution happening. It’s called learning while doing. Great projects are Lean — yet the majority of Lean initiatives fail. Lean is generally misunderstood to be about the tools we use rather than the people at the place where they work. Many Lean initiatives fail not because of the accessibility to Lean tools, but because leadership is unavailable when it is needed most. The leadership required to bring about and maintain such a tectonic shift seems scarce and difficult to develop.

This post follows on from my previous post about the “5 Levels of the Last Planner® System1 (LPS)” which provides a very brief overview of the LPS². By using the following tips, a team is more likely to efficiently and effectively use the 5 levels of the LPS. Slipping back to old behaviours and routines regularly happens.

Have you ever thought about adding to your perspective on Lean and your Lean practices in design and construction? Most of what we understand about Lean is based on observations made by people with an engineering and scientific perspective on work. This way of looking at work has been extremely valuable, and still there is a sense that Lean may be missing something if it is to become more fully practiced. A recent workshop exploring the arts perspective of Lean was a first step in expanding our understanding of Lean and how to best help others see the value in the Lean approach to work.

Many people are interested in the Japanese state of Lean Construction because Lean Construction has been born out from the Toyota Production System (TPS). Although I have been studying and introducing Lean Construction for some years, even now people who know the term "Lean Construction" seem to be less than 50 in number inside Japan. Outside Japan there is not so much information about the Japanese state of Lean Construction, which this contribution is aimed at presenting.

In the first post of this series I argued that when stakeholders do not agree on the problem, they probably will not agree on the solution. The “problem” for which advances in Lean Construction are “solutions”, is the failure of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry to realize similar productivity gains achieved by other industries. Three root causes of this problem were suggested: a “Knowing” vs a “Learning Culture”, Lack of Strategic Leadership, and Inertia. In this second post suggestions to address the three root causes are offered.

As a trainer and consultant of Lean Construction, I have always been passionate about the human side of Lean. I have been observing the behaviour of people in a lot of companies regarding the cultural changes that comes with implementing Lean. Based on my own experiences, I have compiled 5 key ideas that make companies be more successful in implementing Lean.

This post takes a brief look at each of the five levels within the Last Planner® System¹ (LPS). The system was designed and developed through action research by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell in the early 1990s². The purpose of LPS is to produce predictable workflow and rapid learning through social conversations, clear communication, better coordination and commitment based planning.

In my role as an “Integrated Lean Project Delivery (ILPD) Coach”, I struggle everyday to understand and address resistance to positive change in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry. Many reasons for this resistance have been suggested in various articles and posts. In this first of a two-part blog post, I will share some insights about what I believe are three root causes of resistance.

A common concept in the construction industry is that there are three legs to a project: Schedule, Cost, and Quality. An owner is advised to pick any two, and thereby sacrifice the third (i.e., you can have cost and schedule, but not the quality you want. Or vice versa, you may get the quality and schedule that you want, but not within your budget.)

A3 problem solving has been popularized by the Toyota Production System [1]. At its core an A3 is simply a standard sheet of paper that is 11” X 17”. Despite its simplicity, an A3 is a powerful tool for problem-solving and communicating complex ideas in a simple manner. In this blog post we will describe the benefits of applying A3s and how technology can enhance this tried and true method.

As an entrepreneur, manufacturer, author, speaker, and consultant I love questions? When people ask questions I know what they're thinking. And if I know what they're thinking, I have the best opportunity to help them whether it be on the shop floor in my manufacturing plant or consulting with companies around the world.

Two central tenets of Lean are “Respect for People” and “Removal of Waste“ wherever [1]. By not investing in learning about how each individual works on a project, we give up the opportunity for the project to go from ordinary to extraordinary and are overlooking major waste — the waste of human resources that can cost the project as much as schedule or material delays.

The Last Planner System (LPS) is a production planning and control system designed to produce predictable workflow and rapid learning in programming, design, construction and commissioning of projects. LPS has five main elements: (1) Master Scheduling, (2) Phase "Pull" Planning - what should get done, (3) Make Work Ready Planning - what can get done, (4) Weekly Work Planning - what will get done, and (5) Learning - what was done (did) [1]. The collaborative process of LPS promotes participation of those who do the work to plan the work.

As real estate and capital investments drive the construction industry, and owners/investors are constantly looking for the right balance of programming, quality, safety and cost. They are forced to choose between “low price” or “best value,” two confusing terms whose actual implications are not understood. Many owners, especially those bound by legal requirements, buy “lowest first price.” The truth is that this may not translate into the “lowest final cost” or best value.

In my previous post (The Matter of Metrics) I postulated that having sufficient data is not enough to launch a transformational change. So what does trigger change? Some say a burning platform is needed. Where corporate viability is at stake this may be true. However, I suspect in a majority of cases organization leaders are blissfully unaware of a need to adopt Lean or do not view a change to a Lean approach as a priority.

As the first half of the year ends, it’s a great time for a quick retrospective on your New Year’s Resolutions. If you are like me, you set some ambitious goals for the year, and your business probably did the same.

Often, those resolutions are stated as goals (lag) vs. targets (lead). So what if we set some quantifiable improvement targets for our capital projects, like 10% faster and/or for 10% less without compromising safety, program or quality? Imagine the impact this could have on your business.

It’s full name is the Last Planner® System of Production Control. Production control is necessary on projects to support working toward planned accomplishments, doing what can be done to move along a planned path, and when that becomes impossible, determine alternative paths that accomplish desired goals.

“How teams work matters more than who is on them. There’s a myth we all carry inside our heads, we think we need superstars. Our research showed you can take a team of average performers and if you teach them to interact the right way they'll do things no superstar could ever accomplish.” Laszlo Boch, SVP People Operations, Google [7].

My Lean thinking has gradually evolved since beginning my journey in 2000. You'd think I’d have figured it all out by now, right?... Not a chance. I was recently asked a very good question: What would you do differently if you had all the Lean knowledge and experience you have today? Below are 10 thoughts to this question.

A highly revered ex-Toyota consultant stated that most manufacturers seem focused on achieving a 35 to 40 percent productivity gain over three to five years as a measure of success in their current Lean efforts. He went on to say that manufacturers should actually be focused on a 400 percent improvement in productivity over 10 years to achieve the path to becoming Lean.

When I was a kid, I used to want to win at all costs. This is what my father taught me. They don’t keep score for nothing was the mentality. As I grew up, I have grown to accept it’s not as much about the end result as it is about the journey to get there and my daughter has reinforced this more than anything.

Integrated Projected Delivery can be extremely powerful with the right agreement in place. The key to unlocking to the potential of an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) undertaking lies in the use of the consensus agreement. My experience as lead architect on projects such as the Johnson Center for Science and Community Life at North Park University has shown that such agreements are essential for IPD projects.

I recently joined a large international project as a Lean Manager. To join the project team I moved to another country and left the most of my professional network behind. I was a bit nervous when I started my new job. How would they perceive lean? Where do I find support and inspiration? In the last +10 years I have implemented lean on various projects and learned that a strong network is necessary for success.

Have you been on a project where workers are standing around with nothing to do or areas on your project ready to go with nobody around and all you hear are crickets chirping? This is caused by variation in production which simply means you have inconsistent processes, and you will always end up with inconsistent results.

We have all been tasked at some point in our life to teach someone else about something we know, and there are certainly some subjects that are more exciting to students than others. When a subject, like implementation of lean tools, is not easily understood because it is new or different from what is already known, it requires the teacher to use different approaches. The first step for the teacher is understanding his or her audience, and deciding which approach will work best: coach, facilitator or trainer.

Almost five years ago, our formal Lean journey began when a client asked us to facilitate a Lean transformation on a large, ongoing construction project. It was considered the largest Lean implementation of its kind. Our team, more than 200 of our salaried staff, a similar number of client management and roughly 1,200 craft personnel, began our Lean journey together at the midpoint of this project. The results were dramatic and the metrics generated exceeded all prior metrics from equivalent projects for that client.

A recently completed research report studies ten projects that all used multiparty agreements and Lean practices. The conclusion? Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) motivates teams to collaborate and Lean provides the means to achieve it. IPD is sometimes seen as onerous and complex because it demands that owners and project teams negotiate contract terms such as the shared risk/reward pool and terms of fiscal transparency.

Many future leaders of the construction industry are currently being trained in university construction management, engineering, and architecture programs across the country. This presents an exceptional opportunity to expose these future leaders to lean principles alongside the traditional topics being taught in the standard curriculum.

My wife and I enjoy the occasional TV police drama. One day last week one of the characters in a show we frequent stated that “perfect is the enemy of good”. That phrase stuck with me. That led me to thinking about the quest for perfection in a lean context.

The Lean Movement is gaining popularity in the construction world, and with good reason–it's about cutting out waste and increasing value-added activities. Who wouldn't want that? Among a myriad of other benefits, removing waste from the process drives greater profits, reduces risk, improves safety, shortens schedules, and improves relationships.

When company leaders are confronted with the prospect of changing to a Lean Project Delivery approach they will undoubtedly say, “Show me the data.” The implication is that if the data is there to support the implementation of Lean then they will get behind the change. However, this is rarely the case as I will address later, so hold that thought to the end of this installment. Until then let’s assume that your senior executives DO get the Lean/IPD value proposition. Big assumption, but humor me for now.

The big buzz phrase in the construction industry is Integrated Project Delivery or IPD. Disney has a concept called ILPD or Integrated Lean Project Delivery. This uses not only a collaborative approach to projects, but also uses the Last Planner System and Lean concepts to eliminate waste, focus on adding value, and continuously improving. Everyone on the project signs an integrated form of agreement that commits to shared risk and reward and cooperation throughout the project.

Advocate Health Care, one of the largest health systems in Illinois treats more pediatric, heart and cancer patients than any other hospital, operates more than 400 sites of care, 12 acute-care hospitals, a children’s hospital with two campuses, and the state’s largest integrated children’s network – all serving 3.4 million patients. Given its extensive real estate and capital investments, Advocate is constantly seeking the most efficient and innovative project delivery methods possible.

I try to apply “lean thinking” into all aspects of life, not just to work and certainly not just to construction projects (if you ever meet me in person, ask me to tell you how I manage my family’s weekly grocery list). When trying to inspire lean thinking in others, I encourage them to pick something that bugs them – it doesn’t matter what it is – and work their way backwards from there. The goal is to make life easier by reducing waste and/or add value; finding ways to simplify the process by speeding up or eliminating steps and handoffs wherever possible.

The aim of this post is to describe, from experience in Argentina, the impact the Last Planner System (LPS) had on a group of responsible people involved in a project. Implementing the LPS raises different types of technical and human factor challenges. Regarding technical matters, LPS improves productivity, fulfills the terms of agreements between last planners, and reduces variability. Above all and most importantly, production is planned focusing on flow and value. In this post, we will approach the human factor challenges highlighting how correctly implementing the five elements of LPS - i.e. should; can; will; did; and learn - transforms a group of people in a work team.

A popularly quoted and important concept is that "Lean Transformation is a journey, not a destination". At the 2016 International Congress on Lean Construction, people at all stages of the journey were on display: beginners, in-progress implementers, advanced practitioners, etc. How can an Owner distinguish between the levels of Lean and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) experience when selecting AEC team members for a project? As an "ILPD" Coach, here are 5 questions that I recommend my clients to ask when selecting their Lean service providers.

Brazil’s public and private infrastructure sector is investing in processes improvement and kaizen implementation. Included in this investment is a study of the of ratio of value added vs. non-value added activities on site. The main goal of this initial diagnostic step is to understand the processes involved to provide a basis for future improvements.

Lean Construction is an approach to improving quality, economy, and compliance with project schedules in the construction sector. Lean In the Public Sector (LIPS) is a conference about Lean in public construction projects. LIPS focuses on practical applications and has traditionally been focused on results and the path to getting them.

Virtual construction is becoming an essential part of any construction projects. Even in low-level BIM maturity projects building developers are demanding BIM in the design and construction phase. Lean tools have been developed and applied successfully in the construction industry around the world. Such tools can generate benefits as they improve the company’s organization, its development, and competitiveness ¹.

In my previous post about LBMS, I mentioned that cascading delays can cause project duration increases of 10% or more. This blog article digs a bit deeper and explains what cascading delays are, why they happen in construction projects and how LBMS controlling can help to prevent them.

The construction industry remains one of the most hazardous industries in the United States in terms of the number of occupational fatal and non-fatal injuries. In 2014, 874 fatal work-related injuries were reported in the U.S. construction industry¹. Even though construction workers historically account for only about 5% of the overall U.S. workforce, the construction industry accounts for approximately 20% of the total occupational fatal and non-fatal injuries².

On November 20th 2012, we carried out one of the largest lean gamification in the world. In total we had 630 attendees and 35 support staff. The game helped us deeply understand the concepts of Lean Construction and enabled us to grow in our experience, thinking, and behaviour with respect to the Lean philosophy.

Recent research on BIM and Lean Construction (LC) shows that there is a significant synergy between the two. The many positive interactions includes: reduction in process variation and cycle-times, increased visualisation of products and processes, automation of some non-value adding activities, increased collaborative working, advanced prefabrication options, and better value capturing and rapid generation of alternatives through the use of BIM come to fore.

I find myself going through similar motions in the beginning stages of project planning. Our team has submitted CPM schedules per owner’s requirements and have moved on to selecting contractors. This is starting off as the typical construction process so far. To break the cycle, our team has committed to implementing the Last Planner System on this project.

The rise in information technology, changing market and working conditions has meant the workplace environment for some design and construction workers has evolved significantly. More companies are moving away from the traditional workplace settings where they have daily face-to-face contact with their manager and team. It is now more common to work remotely, outsource to other organisations, or work online and from home.

It is hard to believe that I am on my fifth book "Miracle in Kazakhstan." In January 2015, I accepted an invitation to come to Kazakhstan’s largest construction company - BI Group - to speak about “2 Second Lean”. My job was simple; build a lean culture in a company through interpreters, in a language that is as foreign to me as painting a Van Gough would be.

The main goal of implementing Lean Construction is to generate value and to minimize waste. This value can be maximized by implementing BIM alongside with Lean Construction. Lean provides the framework for understanding waste, while BIM enables the project team from different disciplines to work together in order to achieve the lean ideal of removing it.

Exchange of Dies, refers to a method in the Lean Production System that is used for quick, simplified and efficient production set-up and changeover from one product/process to another, which often constitute the major causes of production downtime (non-productive time/stoppages). It is one of the foundational blocks of a continuous, improved production flow.

The 24th Annual International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) Conference and Research Summer School took place between July 18 and 24 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It was a very busy week of learning (and some social activities!) which was attended by over 250 academics and practitioners. This blog (Part 1) will cherry pick some of my key takeaways and highlights from the first two days of the week long industry and research programme.

Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell developed the Last Planner System of Production Control throughout the 90s¹. At the same time, Lauri Koskela was working on developing a theory of production which provided the theoretical framework for the LPS². The LPS has been successfully implemented and is becoming an important part construction management³. However, the transition from theory to practice has not been easy.

This blog post is a continuation of our series on the application of Lean Construction methods in a small HVAC Company. The goal of this post is to show how a small company applied Kanban to manage their work processes. We will look at Kanban from three perspectives: 1) managing inventory, 2) managing customer inquiries, and 3) managing RFIs.

Implementing the Lean Production philosophy in the construction industry has been discussed since the early 1990s. With an increasing attention to the subject, a growing body of research and many successful implementations by the industry, “Lean” construction has stood the test of time and avoided becoming another management fad.

As our construction industry becomes more open to adopting collaborative and lean practices, we are going to see more requests for knowledge and training on the subjects of target value delivery, last planner system, choosing by advantage, A3 thinking etc.

In Germany, there is a tendency that construction companies are the first stakeholders of the whole project process who apply lean principles or at least - lean tools. Working as an owner, I often ask myself, how much leaner can a project/construction site become if the lean principles are only executed inside the processes of the contractor.

Now you have the chance to help promote Lean Construction and win a ticket to this year’s International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC) Annual Conference in Boston. By writing for the blog, you will be automatically entered into the contest. You can share your Lean case studies, best practices, and other insights from your implementation of Lean.

Lean Project Delivery System (LPDS) is an organized implementation of the Lean Principles and Tools, combined to allow a team to operate in unison. The LPDS was developed as a philosophy, a set of interdependent functions, rules for decision making, procedures for execution of functions, and as implementation aids and tools, including software when appropriate; the domain for the LPDS is defined by the intersection of projects and production systems.

According to Tommelein et al.¹, workflow can be characterized in several different ways. In manufacturing, it is defined by stationary machines with partially completed products being transported from one to the next. In construction, the products being built tend to be stationary, whereas crews of various trades move from location to location and complete work that is prerequisite to starting work by the following crew.