Every year, more and more people join the lean construction movement. And given the overabundance of resources, information, and new words to learn; it can be very overwhelming for the beginner to know where to start and how to get value.

In this blog post, I will share my guide for beginners. I will focus exclusively on what a beginner needs to focus on during the first 6 months of their lean journey. From here, I have more advanced lean topics but I want to first help people understand and receive value from their early lean investment before reinvesting those gains for more advanced topics.

Fundamental concepts

The very fundamental concepts that you should learn include: 1) the lean philosophy, 2) waste versus value, 3) visual management, 4) 5S, and 5) the Last Planner System.

Here are the blogs posts on these topics.

Lean Philosophy
1. What is the Lean Construction Pyramid?
2. The Art and Philosophy of Lean Construction

Waste Versus Value
1. The Concept of Waste as Understood in Lean Construction
2. Waste and Value in Lean
3. Understanding the 10 Forms of Wastes
4. Waste Walk : How to Identify Waste

Visual Management
1. Benefits of Visual Management
2. The Big Room as a Visual Management concept in Last Planner® System
3. The Power of Lean Visual Management in Construction

5S
1. Preparing The Team to Implement 5S
2. Introduction to the 5S System
3. Sort–the First “S”
4. Straighten–the Second “S”
5. Sweep or Shine–the Third “S”
6. Standardize–the Fourth “S”
7. Sustain–the Hardest “S” of All

The Last Planner System
1. Why Use the Last Planner System
2. An Abridged History of the Last Planner System®
3. What is the Last Planner System 101
4. Daily Huddle 101
5. What is the Last Planner System
6. Implementing the Last Planner System® - How do you do that?
7. 5 Levels of the Last Planner® System “Should, Can, Will, Did and Learn”
8. Rising Terrain Daily Huddle Guide
9. Last Planner System – An Incremental Approach to Radical Change in Your Workflow
10. Rewards Of Visual Production Planning
11. Creating Flow in Pull Planning for Design

Many of these articles have audio so you can listen to the lesson during your commute. I recommend that you involve your team in the learning. You can assign one blog post per week for people to listen to. You can have a lunch and learn once a week where the ideas are discussed.

As you are learning lean design and construction, be aware that the current state of the art is still evolving. In order to keep up with the latest ideas, I recommend that you attend our free monthly webinar series.

https://leanconstructionblog.com/webinars.html

In March, we host a Last Planner System virtual conference and in September we host a lean construction in the field conference.

The combination of the 500 blog posts, monthly webinars, and twice a year virtual conferences should give you more than enough information on how to start and sustain your lean journey.

I recommend that you start with the fundamental concepts first and then build up your lean capabilities over time. I would not start with the more advanced topics such as Takt, Target Value Delivery, Choosing by Advantages, or Integrated Project Delivery until you have a firm grasp of the fundamental. In the footer, we have all the blog posts organized by topics. After you have completed the beginner blog posts, you can explore the topics and ideas based on your own interest and current problems.

I hope that this guide allows you to be more productive in your lean journey. The goal of the Lean Construction Blog is to make lean more accessible and easier to apply. We hope to continue growing the movement and ensure that the design and construction industry has accurate and high quality content to fuel its continual growth.