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.

Last week Cascadia hosted the Principal Planner for the city of Portland, Oregon. Apparently, we are working within a comprehensive plan that was created in the year that Mt. St. Helen's erupted. Time to re-plan.

The system is nearly unbearably confusing and the proposed changes are immense. 22 public organizations are involved. The redesigned system holds 9 action areas which break away from traditional functional boundaries of existing departments.

It seems similar to a new construction project! How are they going to manage such a complex project? Like a construction project, they've got an innovative vision, but are missing opportunities partnering with private companies because they don't know how to reach out. With input, it seems the Principal Planner is writing the script. I wonder just how much support he really has from the stakeholders…

Hello,

I am doing a 2 minute survey on surveymonkey.com to understand better what your questions are. I've been making offers to come to your office for an hour to present and discuss Lean. With your help I would like to better focus and prepare. Please take a minute in the survey HERE (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5VFTGWX) to tell me who you are and what questions you have. I'll publish the results here on my blog. All is anonymous. 

Thanks,
Matt

Construction, like healthcare, is learning from another industry. I was just watching David Fillingham, Chief Executive, Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Trust give his speech on Managing the Lean Hospital: what it takes to engage the whole hospital for the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit 2009. In this he has four points on how to convert the skeptics that I thought fit very nicely to our industry (construction):

• Rigorous use of lean methods
• Convincing data
• Hands on experience
• Reinforce through changed management system and leadership style.

So, in my own words this means that we need to:

• Adopt some tools and not to deviate from them. Make a concerted effort to use the Last Planner® System, A3 Learning, and a Visual Management System like Toyota's Safety-Quality-Deliverable-Cost-Morale work cell management boards.
• Find success stories and share them. Celebrate and publish all the wins. Go to www.leanconstruction.org and share a new presentation with your team once per week. 
• Get into action early and reflect on the learning. Experiment! When is it the right time to change anyway?
• And finally, change at the top. Leadership needs to be fully engaged. The Project Executive needs to be very well versed in Standard Work and all the tools that are being adopted so that they can coach the practice.

It is challenging to learn from other industries. Construction is not the first industry to adopt lean; there are great examples in the healthcare industry. I just read A3 Problem Solving for Healthcare: A Practical Method for Eliminating Waste to learn more about the A3 process and came away with some very helpful tips:

• State the issue through the eyes of the customer (always maintain focus on customer).
• The value of drawing with pencil and eraser the current condition can't be over stated.
• Leader/managers can use A3s to coach versus educate in a classroom.

Pick up the book at Amazon or your local reseller. There are examples and even a tip on creating maps electronically. 

Projects are made up with people thrown together. Establishing the role of a relationship designer in a project based company has many practical purposes. Let's call that person the Social Architect (SA). The Project Managment Body of Knowledge ( PMBOK) does not go into enough detail about the social aspects of project management, yet we assign this role as part of the Project Manager's job description. A better fit would be somewhere above the project level; a support person who provides guidance and training to the staff PMs and superintendents. This person would be someone with knowledge of organizational behavior and culture, as well as team dynamics. They should also be a Lean thinker.

Just as a building architect must account for both the structural limitations and aesthetics of a building, a Social Architect must account for both the technical and interpersonal makeup of the project team. A major root cause of such poor performance on construction projects is our industry's inability to effectively collaborate. Poor collaboration typically leads to the suppression of ideas, decisions being made away from where the work is being done in a top-down fashion, and overall poor trust and one way communication by project participants. A root causes of poor collaboration in our industry is the "boss man" mentality that is embedded in the organizational culture of many construction firms. Eliminating this root cause (the "boss man" mentality) is critical to resolving poor performance on construction projects. Here are some capabilities of the Social Architect do what is needed on modern projects.

Capabilities of the Social Architect

• The Social Architect is a natural facilitator. But one step beyond that is required. Not only adept at creating an enviroment that is conducive to learning and making sure the right people are in the room when needed, the SA must be able to identify when the group needs to come together.
• Just like facilitating, training is a big part of the SA's job. Their audience would typically be other managers. The Social Architect helps managers act in a way that aligns with an empowerment culture. They can coach other facilitators for effective meetings and help managers get accountability and commitments from people rather than demanded responsibility.
• They don't have to be the charasmatic leader, but they need to guide the leader with what the team needs to hear. For example, they need to be the ones that ask why they are focusing on a certian element rather than just going deeper into it. As the cliche goes, they need to be able to see the forest through the trees.
• The workplace of the 21st centuary needs to be a place where people want to come to work at. The Social Architect promotes consensus and demonstrates to managers how to achieve a level of participation with staff that allows them to feel like their voice matters. In addition, they could perform audits of human-related factors to ensure that project team members have a high-quality project experience.
• As a cabinet level position, the SA would track human-related metrics from project to project (stakeholder satisfaction surveys, absenteeism, turnover rate, etc). Company wide, the SA could facilitate an Idea Development System for soliciting and implementing team member ideas. At the start of the projects, the SA would help balance the project manager in selecting the team for a balanced technical and interpersonal compatibility levels.

I have not been doing lean consulting long enough to have a career's depth of war stories. When faced with some regular questions, I have to pull from the underlying philosophy rather than a real world example. Even in the Lean Construction history, there is not a lot of examples. Peter Block defends this approach in his 2003 book, The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters. 

He says that the typical How questions are a defense against action and change. When we ask how much time is it going to take, we avoid asking about our level of commitment. When we ask how much it is going to cost we avoid asking what the price is we are willing to pay. 

The book is about the meaningful questions that we should be analyzing. Questions about our desire to create a future together. Questions about personal risk, freedom and responsibility. As I see it, progress won't happen if you study how others did it. Get your philosophy straight first and act on that.

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.

There is a training principle adhered to by most distance runners that states that each workout needs to have a purpose or objective.  Are you going to work on endurance, speed, hills, etc?  Just going out and running without a purpose is known as running "junk" miles, which does nothing to make you a better runner and could lead to injury.

So, on your LPS project, are you "running junk miles"?  Are you going through the motions of the LPS without really having a purpose?  After you are proficient with the mechanics of the LPS, you should focus on an improvement objective each week.  According to Geoff Colvin in his book Talent Is Overrated, high performance is a result of "deliberate practice" and not a result of just plain hard work or innate talent.  The special kind of hard work that Colvin describes is focused on an objective and is repeated with discipline until you get it right or obtain the improvement that you were seeking.  It is not fun and usually "hurts."

If you really want to improve, stop running "junk miles" and institute a discipline of "deliberate practice" on your project.

Manufacturers, inspired by Toyota as a role model, have learned to take customer satisfaction seriously.  In businesses such as construction, where each product is custom-made, the practice of negotiation to understand the customer's conditions of satisfaction has also achieved its rightful level of importance. 

In manufacturing, a single process is used to make a large number of products.  The process is designed and then can be improved incrementally as the participants contribute their ideas for kaizen. 

In construction, a one-time process is used to make a single complex product.  The product is usually so complex that the process can't be understood and fully designed in advance.  The Last Planner ® System offers the possibility of continuously negotiating the process by which the product will be built through the discipline of planning.