The Generals - Spring/Summer 2016 - (Page 39)

FEATURE How Lean CAN IMPACT CONSTRUCTION O By Garry Doyle, Lean consultant and trainer ver the last 30 years we have all seen how Lean philosophies and techniques have been embraced and adopted by almost every business sector throughout the world. The intent, through Lean training and/or consulting support, is to develop the techniques and understanding within your business to optimize your resources, delight your customers and decrease your costs. So, can Lean have the same effect when applied to the construction industry? Absolutely! Adopting the principles of Lean, such as identifying customer value, making the value flow and eliminating waste, into the construction process can pave the way for better employee communication, more effective partnering relations with your main suppliers, a more efficient work-site and a working methodology that can be fine-tuned for all your future projects going forward. In fact, you might ask yourself what costs in time, materials, manpower and reputation you are continuing to incur by not embracing proven improvement methods. When you multiply this by all your future projects, it can quickly add up to thousands of dollars. So why hasn't Lean been readily embraced by the construction industry? Unlike most industries that are usually under one roof with a stable group of personnel and predictable environment, construction models are entirely more disparate. It's harder to enforce a philosophy on a workforce that is constantly changing from location to location and who all have separate schedules and agendas. Add to this complexity a contractual environment that is adversarial at best and with an uncertain chain of command, and it starts to become clear why this has been a hard nut to crack. However, the exciting news is that certain new tools (Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), Target Value Design (TVD), Business Information Modelling (BIM) and Pull Planning Systems (PPS)) have been added to the Lean arsenal, specifically designed for construction, which close the gaps in communication flow, provide a collaborative environment and harness all the experience of the workforce. Where do we start on our Lean Journey? Like any other discipline, Lean construction starts with the basic Lean foundational teachings. The objective here is to create and nurture Lean awareness and practices in your own organization first. This can be an immediate application and can progress as quickly as required by senior management to build up your Lean profile. Once this has been achieved, your staff is better equipped to apply themselves to the project based tools (IPD, TVD, BIM and PPS) to fully complete the Lean construction program. Approaching any project from a customer's perspective not only ensures that you know what is required, but also highlights the wasteful items that the customer is not willing to pay for, which can sharpen your focus to what is important. Lean construction training highlights the typical types of waste as experienced in this industry including: 1. Building ahead of time 2. Waiting for people, material, or information for the next operation 3. Unnecessary transport such as double handling, priority shipments and tool transportation 4. Inappropriate processing (larger machines than required, unnecessary steps, machines not quality capable and over design) 5. Material Stocks such as early delivery, storage space, deterioration and damage and cluttered site 6. Building defective parts like Snag lists and walk through 7. Waste of untapped human potential Once you adopt and apply Lean methods to whatever process you currently have, you will quickly begin to appreciate the power of this philosophy as experienced by countless industries all over the world. A key benefit to Lean construction is that all learnings can be carried forward to the next project and integrated into your daily working practices. It also provides an outlet for ideas from staff members who will know the workings of your site better than anybody else and includes them in the solutions going forward. A key consideration in business today is "what is your competitive advantage?" What separates your organization from the herd and provides you with a solid platform to achieve outstanding results for your customers? In many cases the onslaught of technology has forced a rethink into how many businesses, in all sectors, fulfill their customers' ever increasing demands, Spring/Summer 2016 39

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Generals - Spring/Summer 2016

Chairman’s Message
President’s Message
Government Relations Report
Events, Upcoming Events & Member Milestones
Following Their Footsteps: A Profile of OGCA Chairman Jason Ball
Meet the 2016 OGCA Board!
COR – The Game Changing Revenue Driver
PCL Raises the Roof on BMO Field
78th Annual AGM & Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Investigative Solutions Network Inc. Provides Workplace Threat and Risk Assessment
New Technologies for Builders
How Lean Can Impact Construction
Five Things You Should Know about WSIB’s New Rate Framework
Index to Advertisers

The Generals - Spring/Summer 2016