Lean construction emphasizes both people and communication for jobsite productivity. Constraints and inefficiencies directly impact your team members, so empowering them to optimize workflows and participate in planning can reduce resource waste. But to successfully improve jobsite productivity, your team needs to stay in sync and jobsite details must be transparent. Too often, Lean implementations fail due to communication breakdowns and information silos. Digital Lean creates opportunities to solve these challenges and build trust, empowerment and responsibility amongst team members.

Developed by Robert Bosch Power Tools GmbH, a division of the Robert Bosch Group, RefinemySite provides a streamlined solution for digital Lean. This easy-to-use, digital construction site tool allows teams to plan, communicate and document jobsite changes in real-time.

Using Lean management principles as a guide, the cloud-based software improves work visibility, communication and collaboration to increase jobsite productivity. Your firm can more-effectively implement the Lean Construction Institute’s (LCI) Last Planner System® (LPS) by digitizing and documenting workflow components:

• Process Analysis: clarify the logic behind plans and structures with input from all participating team members
• Milestone Planning: define and clarify goals every week for each phase of the project
• 6-Week Look-Ahead: makes tasks ready with constraint indicators visible to all team members
• Daily Huddles and Weekly Planning: prepare, review and coordinate work between trades through day cards that add greater clarity of workflow
• Continuous Improvement: review task planning reliability, clearly identifying areas of improvement that will support project success

Figure 1: RefinemySite Project Road Map View

With RefinemySite, you can empower individual team members to optimize processes and eliminate inefficiencies, while also collaborating with the entire jobsite.

The project information traditionally captured on sticky notes and whiteboards becomes easily accessible via the cloud platform on computers and smart devices to all team members in real-time from any location.

After a one-time registration, your site managers and trade contractors will have an intuitive and user-friendly tool for real-time updates and collaboration. Structured similarly to popular social media platforms, RefinemySite empowers those who perform the work to share in the planning of the work.

The software also enhances your ability to make your jobsites more attractive to trade contractors by giving them clear information to help reduce common pain points like trade stacking, unavailable equipment, unreliable material deliveries and incorrect time estimates. Designed for teams committed to LPS, the Lean Collaboration Platform encourages everyone onsite to contribute to a project’s outlined goals and keeps meetings concise and action-oriented.

Figure 2: RefinemySite Task Page

The Utility Connect Project recently simulated the use of the platform on a Clayco construction project. The result? With RefinemySite to improve real-time collaboration and communication, the project could have saved $300,000 to $500,000 in labor and direct costs. These findings align with the results construction firms across the United States and Europe have realized by implementing RefinemySite.

“The impetus behind developing RefinemySite was to create a digital complement to traditional Lean practices that improves communication, accountability and insight across every phase of a project,” explains Rafael Franca, head of business RefinemySite North America, Robert Bosch Tool Corporation. “It’s what we’ve learned today’s leaders are looking for. RefinemySite is already in use with customers such as Bycor General Contractors, Clayco, Fluor, Gilbane, Okland Construction and Whiting-Turner, and many others in North America and Europe, are already seeing results. Over the past 12 months, 300 projects have tested and approved RefinemySite by Bosch.”



For firms interested in the platform, Bosch is offering RefinemySite services free of charge through 2020 to support the construction industry as it faces challenges due to the pandemic. To learn more about RefinemySite by Bosch or sign up for a free trial, visit bosch-refinemysite.us or the official RefinemySite LinkedIn page.