by Mark Anderson

When Greg Howell, co-founder and director of the Lean Construction Institute, wants to encapsulate some of the benefits of employing “lean” construction principles, he points to the construction of an electrical control room within a 250,000-square-foot medical center in Mountain View, California.

At one point during construction of the facility, which opened in 2007, a team consisting of the architect, consulting engineer, specialty contractors and DPR Construction — the project’s general contractor — came together and asked a simple question: Could they save time by changing the way they loaded the floors? After examining the problem, the team realized that the longest lead time on any given floor was the electrical control room.

“Normally, the way the process works is the contractor responsible for placing the metal studs throughout the floor would be brought in, and, in an effort to save money on his work, he would be asked to install the studs for the control room and across the entire floor, all at once,” Howell said. “But in this case, the team asked the contractor to simply do one room and then leave.”

The result was eye-opening for the team and contractors alike. Because the floors in the project were now free of obstructions for a longer period of time, a range of efficiencies across trades and tasks could be realized. For example, the mechanical contractor found the ductwork installation was 30 percent more productive than before, partly because of twice-daily deliveries of equipment that came straight off the truck and into the building without being stacked across the project site before assembly. Also, much of the copper plumbing was prefabricated on-site and hung in place before installation, while control cables for equipment on the floor were zip-tied into place. Both of these steps meant a tradesperson was able to go down a wall and smoothly complete plumbing or electrical tasks without interruption.

“Normally, project managers try and maximize the performance of each one of the pieces of an overall project, which leads to each piece being viewed in isolation,” Howell said. “But there’s a different way of doing things, which includes using planning to make workflow more predictable.”

The result, Howell said, is that a project manager or builder can save time and money by viewing a project as an overall system of commitments and interrelated planning and communication functions, which work together to reduce waste and maximize productivity at the project delivery level.

“I don’t know if I would call it a revolution, but it seems pretty clear lean is here to stay [in the construction industry],”

~ Wayne Crew, Executive Director of the Construction Industry Institute

A different perspective

Known as lean construction, this system of planning, communication, and project-management tools is growing more popular among owners, designers, and contractors.

The lean business process started in the manufacturing field, primarily with Japanese carmaker Toyota, which throughout the 1970s and ’80s perfected a process designed to decrease overproduction and waste while delivering “just-in-time” production. Today, according to the Construction Industry Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, the goal of lean within the construction industry is to “deliver projects per agreement, while maximizing value for all stakeholders while minimizing waste.” Key to this process is continuous improvement and a commitment to planning that is geared toward identifying problems early and making workflow predictable.

More importantly, perhaps, lean requires a different perspective from a scheduling standpoint — the “pulling” of work through the schedule. A particular task is scheduled based on when its completion is required by a successor activity, and not before. This stands in contrast to traditional construction schedules, which “push” work by focusing on required start dates for activities, which can lead to performing work before it is needed, wasting resources on the wrong activities, and creating work to be repeated because of subsequent changes. A commitment to lean principles within a construction project can address all of these challenges.

“I don’t know if I would call it a revolution, but it seems pretty clear lean is here to stay [in the construction industry],” said Wayne Crew, Executive Director of the Construction Industry Institute, which has studied the application of lean construction principles for more than 20 years. “Many companies are embracing it because they feel they need to in order to remain competitive or viable.”

A decentralized process

For its part, Parsons Electric has embraced lean principles in its operations, not out of a need to remain viable, but in an effort to seek continual improvement and ensure the company always delivers maximum value and satisfaction to its customers.

“We were already taking certain steps that came before, during, and after a project had been bid that we found fit very well with the principles used in lean construction,” said Joel Moryn, President of Parsons. “During the past few years, we’ve come to view our processes as an overall ‘project lifecycle,’ which means we ask ourselves what a project looks like from start to finish, and how we can apply best practices at every level.”

For Parsons, embracing lean means viewing project management through the lens of three separate, but related, approaches: pre-planning, project management and field installation. Each represents a set of disciplines within Parsons, and all three come together and pull apart as needed within the lifecycle of any given project.

“What we do is take a construction process and decide early on what strategies we are going to implement within those areas,” said Tim Sample, Pre-Construction Manager at Parsons. “We have a database of strategies we can apply to each of these broad areas, and after the project is finished, we get feedback from people throughout the organization to find out how successful these strategies have been.”

One key strategy, overseen by Sample and his team, is successful preplanning. As an electrical contractor, Parsons is often active in a project from beginning to end, allowing it the perspective and planning opportunities other contractors may not share. As a result, as documents and plans change throughout the project’s lifecycle, Parsons is able to incorporate each change into a master document that is geared toward installation efficiencies. “At the same time, we do a detailed coordination of the different disciplines so we’re not out in the field [scrambling],” Sample said. “We speed up installation by taking information from 10 different drawings — architectural, mechanical, electrical, modular furniture, whatever — and put it all onto one drawing. This can cut as much as 95 percent of installation and field coordination problems out of the process before they arise.

In keeping with the lean principle of “last planner,” or decentralizing decision-making out to the field for maximum flexibility, Parsons works to ensure that decisions are made as close to installation time as possible. This places great emphasis on the need to make sure the flow of information to the field runs as smoothly as possible so that those in the field, or the last planner, can make the best decisions possible.

“I think this gets to the core of lean,” Moryn said. “Whenever possible, decisions are made at the very last possible time, so that they are less susceptible to change. As projects evolve, we don’t want to have to make decisions too early.” Customers have come to appreciate such flexibility. “You can do upfront planning, but at the end of the day, it has to be done just in time, especially to be able to incorporate all the changes that arise” he said.

Measurable improvements

For construction companies embracing lean, the benefits are often clear. In an August 2007 study, “Lean Implementation at the Project Level,” the Construction Industry Institute examined how lean principles can be applied to construction and identified a series of metrics by which general contractors, specialty contractors, and others measured success. The study noted that “correctly applied, lean principles result in immediate improvements in project delivery including cost, schedule, quality, and safety performance.” While many lean tools and techniques can be applied at the project level, the study noted that the transformation to lean is sustained only by adopting lean principles across an organization.

Nevertheless, the results can be impressive. For example, Detroit-based general contractor Walbridge Aldinger reported that it saved $9 million over three years by using a mix of lean construction techniques. Appleton, Wisconsin-based Boldt completed an athletic facility in 2007 for St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, 10 months faster and for 65 percent the square-foot-cost of a similar facility built in the same area by such lean principles as “last planner.” And for its part, Messer Construction of Cincinnati, Ohio, said its projects became more predictable, subcontractors took more responsibility, and there was less chaos on its projects.

A strong declaration

Despite its benefits, implementing lean within an organization often means upending the existing culture of a company and replacing it with a new way of operating — and thinking.

Todd Brink, Director of Continuous Improvement for Boldt and head of the company’s lean efforts, said that in order to achieve the benefits lean offers, an organization needs to make a commitment across all level of management and staff.

“If you’re really going to start changing your cul-ture, you have to have a guardian to make that culture change,” he said. “Where a lot of companies fail is that they try to put their lean implementation on, say, their production managers or human resources person. In fact, lean is really a 24-hour job and requires dedicated people.”

Howell said he has seen a number of companies that have embraced lean struggle with fitting it into their business. “[Implementing lean] is a very serious challenge,” he said. “Well-meaning, honorable people have a very difficult time [implementing lean]. It requires a significant amount of education, and it requires shifting a lot of behaviors.” Howell said he thinks the most successful examples are companies where senior managers make a strong declaration about what their company’s future is going to be regarding lean.

The next step

But for a number of companies within the construction industry, the choice may not be whether they should embrace lean, but when. “We understand that our deadlines and efficiency expectations are only going to become more aggressive,” says Rich Ross, a Senior Project Manager at Parsons. “The lean concept is a paradigm shift that needs to be embraced to remain competitive and we’re glad to see some of our customers taking the initial steps to implement these processes. For many, this is all too new but most likely represents the next logical step.

“Lean is around, and it’s around to stay,” Crew said. “More and more companies are looking at lean construction principles and trying to figure out how to use them. But again, you don’t just apply a couple of principles to a project and all of a sudden you’re a lean company. It’s really an entirely new way of doing business.”