This is my story of how we got here. It isn't right or true, but it is how I think of how we got here. What is different about your story?

Previous to the 20th century we had the industrial revolution. With the advent of power driven machines business consolidated work from the cottage to the factory. Machines were built by craftsmen and operated by specialists. These specialists worked to increase the output of their machines. The Industrial Engineer was born.

Scientific Management, a disciplined approach to increasing utilization of resources gained national sponsorship in the US in 1910 during a dispute between a labor union and the US government. Fredrick Taylor saw that management could create a win-win situation with the labor by helping them make improvements and sharing in the profits. He introduced the ideas of analysis of work into specific tasks, specialization, systematization, and measurement.  Scientific Management seemed to justify coming down hard on workers. Improvement was designed as a scientific inquiry and motivation was discussed by psychologists.

Hal Macomber and Greg Howell, co-founders of Lean Project Consulting, Inc. of Louisville, CO, announced Friday, February 12, 2010 the promotion of two of their colleagues to the position of Associate Principal. Roberto Charron, of Sunny Isles, FL, will assume responsibility for corporate transformations to lean management.  Steve Knapp, P.E., of Louisville, CO will assume responsibility for Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Services.

Lean Project Consulting, Inc. was founded in 2000 to bring lean practices to the design and construction industry. The firm is the leading consultant for Integrated Project Delivery contracts, which promote a win-win rather than an adversarial work environment. The company also consults on the project management approach called the Last Planner® System, which dramatically improves reliability and collaboration on construction projects. Last Planner is a registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute.

I was just reading a press release by Marriott International touting how it will greatly expand its green hotel portfolio over the next five years.  Marriott has developed a LEED-certified prototype for its Courtyard brand and expects to do the same for its other brands.  I think this is good news, but Marriott is missing a huge opportunity to reduce wasted resources if it doesn't couple LEED certification with lean design and construction.  Getting knowledgeable builders and trades to be part of the prototype design will reduce rework in the field by resolving constructability conflicts and quality issues during design.  Pursuing multiple design options far into design will allow for the most sustainable system to be constructed for the desired target budget.  The collaboration of trades on the work plan produces predictable workflow which reduces material movement, inventory and manpower capacity.  A work focus on learning rather than task completion will allow for the design and construction team to continue to improve upon the value they are delivering to Marriott on the project.  That learning can be used to further improve the prototype so that the design, building and operation of these facilities can realize green goals that much more effectively.

Sometimes I am reluctant to call my boss because he is going to tell me what he thinks of my work.  Sometimes, he says, “it sucks”.  This is hard to listen to.  I start to question my value to the company, the skills I thought I had, my own self-worth.  It takes a high degree of presence of mind to say, “tell me more about that” or “what do you mean by that?” in a non-defensive tone of voice. 

But here’s the key.  If we keep talking, I find out what I can do about it.  Change this, learn that, pay more attention to something else.  Get a better idea of what is wanted.  Instead of feeling powerless and invalidated, I feel determined and energetic.  I can say, maybe I am not perfect, but I can still learn, I can still change my behavior, I can still become more effective.  Now, I am in a different mood, and I can begin again.

Mike Hoseus, author of Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way and the executive director for the Center for Quality People and Organizations just presented at IndustryWeek.com. The presentation is archived now at the website. 

I'm just finishing the book with 5 friends where we talk about the main ideas and how they are relevant and what we can do - we review one chapter per week. The author has a keen insight in viewing culture and breaks it down, at the lowest level to what we deeply believe in and act on. I characterize Toyota as designing their relationships with the detail that an engineer would bring. The way that Toyota aligns company goals with employee goals for long term mutual prosperity makes the horizontal nature of the organizational structure a reality.

Coming from a career working at Toyota in Kentucky, the author presents the ideas from the boot laces. He claims it starts at values and with servant leadership, putting the president at the bottom of the pyramid and the suppliers - team members - customers at the top. 

How many projects have you been involved with that unfolded as scripted by “The Plan”?  As of yet, I haven’t been.  Yet time and again we make detailed plans with thousands of activities interconnected together in a labyrinth of logical ties.  Usually “The Plan” was prepared by a handful of “experts” that somehow were able to visualize and understand in detail how the project should be prosecuted.   We then cajole, order, beg, plead and scream at our subcontractors with dictums to get “back on schedule” or else.

Projects don’t unfold exactly as we would like because it is humanly impossible to visualize, analyze and take into account every little detail of a complex undertaking.  In other words, stuff happens that wasn’t foreseen.   Just as adding decimal places to a computation, which is easy to do on today’s calculators and computers, does not make the answer  any more accurate,  using all of the “whiz bang” functionality of today’s scheduling software does not inherently mean that we have represented the real world more accurately than before.

Here we can learn from a profession that undertakes “projects” that are extremely risky, dangerous and very uncertain.  From the Army’s Field Manual on Operations:

My father is 93 and has taken a couple of falls that resulted in cuts and bruises.  For his birthday, I sent him shopping with my brother to buy some rubber-soled shoes, so he would be less likely to slip doing things around the house, summer and winter.  He took a look at the shoes and declared he would not wear them.  He said, “they are for young people, not for me”. 

 A teenager of my acquaintance rides his bike to get around the city.  I offered him my  extra construction-worker-style reflective vest, but he said he would never wear it and rode off in his black t-shirt with his black backpack and no helmet. 

 Meanwhile, I am buying blinking lights for night-riding on my bicycle and sewing reflective strips on my backpacks.  Maybe it is because I am hanging out with safety-conscious clients.  When I ride my bicycle, I think it is more important to be seen, even if I look like a space alien, than to be hit because someone doesn’t see me. 

 Why isn’t safety cool?

Recently, I found myself in a conversation with a mentor and coach of mine who I most highly respect. He was negotiating with me to get me to do something that I felt that would be over committing for me. We were going around and around in the conversation and I was out taking a walk at the time (already multitasking). This wise mentor asked to take a coaching moment, and proceeded to say, "What the *^#@!" I literally and mentally stopped in my tracks. I looked at my phone and laughed. What a fabulous coaching moment - what a great tool. He shocked me and in doing so, I had to say, "yeah, what the *^#@ so how can we work this out?" This shock factor, while unorthodox had a profound effect on the conversation. I was, as so many people are when being coached, unable to move from a perspective. I just could not see how to meet what he was asking while taking care of my other requests and taking care of me personally. But by stopping me dead in my tracks and getting me to laugh, he shifted me out of the resistance I was in. Our conversation was able to shift and ideas emerged. It worked. Now I am not recommending using this tool on a regular basis, and course, there are people who would not be shocked. But I am all for using the shock treatment to turn a person when needed.

Weird question. Like, what did the first mass-produced car compete with? Like lean, the first mass produced car competed with the way of life people had without it. We get strangely comfortable with fighting for our concerns, dealing with people who don't listen, working long hours, being beat up on the job, unsafe conditions, etc. We know what to expect. And its worked so far.

So, what happens when someone introduces a 'new' way of life? There are the people who say the idea is old and has already been tried. These people don't really see lean for what it is don't learn about it. (they can be converted through practice).

I came upon this article from a link in AGC's SmartBrief and immediately thought of LPC principal Greg Howell's story of the "A-Ha" moment that led him down the path towards developing what is now termed lean construction.  He and his colleague Glenn Ballard were returning from Venezuela almost 30 years ago (sorry for dating you Greg & Glenn) discussing their observations from their latest project when they came to the realization that construction management had devolved into managing the contract rather than coordinating the work.

The linked article states that 40% of construction projects overrun the contractual duration.  It proposes that the solution is accepting that delays are inherent and better allocating risk among the parties involved in the project.  How is this a solution? This is more managing by contract and does not foster the collaboration that is needed to reduce the risk of delay. Allocating the risk just increases the risk premium that designers and builders include in their price and fosters a CYA attitude that can actually promote delays.

Hey owners, if you want an on-time, on-budget project treat the designers and builders with respect, utilize their expertise to negotiate a project budget and schedule, and make your success their success by dumping the typical penalizing transactional contract for an incentivizing relational contract.