In today’s construction industry, over 90% of global infrastructure projects are either over budget or over schedule [1]. As present-day construction productivity metrics continue to sputter, stakeholders are feeling the pressure to find better tools and solutions to minimize project overruns and their impacts.
Topics: construction productivity
Construction risk can come in many forms including logistical, technical, managerial, and financial [1]. Through the adoption of Lean based principles, offsite manufacturers, contractors and owners alike have been successful in keeping common industry-related risks to a minimum.
Practicing lean established methods can maximize company efficiency, improve productivity, minimize waste, and reduce many construction risk factors for all participants and stakeholders.
Change is inevitable and critically necessary to influence competitive progress. Execution models need to change. It's real...and it’s referred to as a “nuclear” resource issue for the construction industry. With bidding wars for talent, construction projects at ten year highs, job creation growing 2x faster than labor pool availability, and 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day (which is most of our labor talent population today), we face a resource challenge to say the least.
JIT Delivery, or just in time in construction, is an inventory management approach designed to eliminate waste by "receiving goods only as they [are needed] for production processes." [1] While JIT delivery is most often correlated with combating the issue of inventory waste, it is also perfectly applicable to the elimination of D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E and all of the 8 wastes of lean construction.
In construction processes, inventory waste is generally the result of unnecessary stockpiling of materials due to over-estimating and over-ordering. But it can also include and lead to the unnecessary use of said materials, thus translating to a whole host of wasted effort, time, and material.
A common risk (and constraint) to construction project schedules is the availability of project materials. Project materials can include anything from building materials, to office supplies, to tools, equipment needs, and even personnel.
Often times construction firms must procure materials and services from various suppliers who do not work in unison, but rather have multiple commitments of their own to complete and varying deadlines to complete them under.
All of these puzzle pieces must be carefully planned and aligned to keep construction deliverables flowing, schedules intact, and project costs in check.
Topics: construction productivity, lean construction, construction planning
Over the last 50 years many businesses in the manufacturing industry have dramatically improved their production protocols. Those businesses have achieved strong results by adapting methods from the Toyota Production System (TPS). The core tenet of TPS is to eliminate waste and improve efficiency, thereby earning the system the general name of 'lean' manufacturing.
Now, more and more industries are finding useful applications of 'lean' within their own productivity agendas.
Topics: value stream mapping, construction productivity, lean construction
The Last Planner System (LPS) is a workflow method developed by the Lean Construction Institute to increase worker productivity and accountability through tight scheduling and detailed group planning.
Last Planner is seen as a managerial approach on how to efficiently run a construction project. The guiding principle of the system is to ensure that each contractor and subcontractor on a construction site can manage their workload, while holding them responsible for the work they promised to complete.
In Part 1 of this series, we laid the groundwork for why KPI's can be an indispensable tool within the construction industry and we examined a handful of general KPI types.
Here we will provide a simple example of some construction KPI's in action.
Topics: construction productivity
When it comes to project management, the construction industry is perhaps one of the most logistically complex and unique industries there is.
Within a single construction project there can be multiple timelines, budgets, interests and vendors - and there's often a multitude of different contractors working on any number of punch-list items in any given area. While this hustle and bustle may seem efficient and productive on the surface, it can also be the source of miscommunication, confusion and lost assets.
Topics: construction productivity