LCI is giving away one free registration to the 22nd LCI Congress core program valued at $695, offered virtually Oct. 20-23, to the winner of our LCI Corporate Member COVID-19 Lean Solutions Campaign!

To enter, post the link to your company’s blog post on how your organization has:

• modified its approaches to continue to employ Lean methods and tools; or
• put in place Lean practices designed to mitigate worker exposure to COVID-19 whether on a job site or in the office.

The purpose of this campaign is to share innovative ideas and inspire conversations in the design and construction community.

Deadline for submission is September 11, 2020.  The winner will be selected randomly and announced in the LCI Update Newsletter scheduled for October 1st.

• Submitting on Twitter: Reply to this Tweet with a link to your company’s blog post, a sentence or two about which Lean approach that was used and hashtag, #C19LeanSolutions
• Submitting on Facebook: Comment on this Facebook post with a link to your company’s blog post, a sentence or two about which Lean approach that was used and use hashtag #C19LeanSolutions
• Submitting on LinkedIn: Comment on this LinkedIn post with a link to the blog post that showcases which Lean approach was used OR on your company LinkedIn Page and tag @Lean Construction Institute US with the link to the Lean approach used and use hashtag #C19LeanSolutions

To be eligible to win:

• Your company must be a current LCI corporate member
• Your blog post must be hosted on your company website and a minimum of 200 words
• The blog post must be submitted to at least one of the LCI social media accounts mentioned above by September 11th.

While only one company will receive a free 2020 LCI Congress core program registration, each submission will be considered for promotion on LCI communication tools including the LCI Update Newsletter, social media posts and/or on the LCI website. The submitted blogs will be used as resources and solutions to support the design and construction community as it works to address the pandemic impacts.

We look forward to learning how our industry’s leading Lean organizations are mixing up their standard approaches to Lean to continue to improve project outcomes!  Create a MyLCI profile if you do not already have one to receive the LCI Update and other opportunities.

In 2016, the staff at the Lynn Community Health Center (LCHC) implemented a PDCA approach in the clinic. PDCA is part of the Lean thinking process. They began by trying to reduce chaos. Part of the PDCA approach is to reduce factors that impede work flow, by doing so the staff is able to gain stability. Every week team members documented problems they were facing and the impacts of those issues to develop experiments which would help the leadership pin point issues and find out the best way to address them. This experiment process encouraged continuous improvement. By working collaboratively to trouble shoot these issues the staff was overall able to elevate their mindsets about their workplace and shift to a Lean thought process.

This was just the beginning. Overtime they saw the need to improve staff flow, patient flow and material flow. Which got the leadership team wondering, does the physical space we are working in support the flow that needs to exist to optimize performance? They utilized a 3P work model to get the stream and flow of traffic working better to cut down on patient wait time.

Fast forward to March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. LCHS was faced with the problems that the pandemic brought to every healthcare facility. Their Lean thinking system, which had been working very well since its implementation, was pushed to its limit. The work flow that had become part of the culture at LCHC saw strategic adjustments to keep staff safe. Teams created initial standards for safety. These “standards” were the cornerstone for creating a foundation which would keep the clinic running at top performance while dealing with COVID-19 patients. The leadership at LCHS put into place a plan which prioritized safety. After putting the plan into place, it quickly revealed which standards would and would not work to optimize the work flow and treat the most patients as quickly and safely as possible.

Adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for many. Healthcare facilities needed to adjust their way of doing things pretty much overnight when the pandemic swept the US. LCHC is a fantastic example of how Lean thinking was able to support that process of shifting gears without having to change the work flow drastically.

Lee, A. (2020). Using Lean Thinking to Create An “Emergency Management System”. Knowledge Center. Lean Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.lean.org/common/display/?o=5274&utm_content=132484760&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&hss_channel=lcp-91948

Dome received survey results in early 2018 that indicated that women do not see as much professional growth opportunity for them at Dome as men do. Internally we discussed this issue and the fact that we believed we were doing all the right things, yet women were still leaving the company, getting stalled on the career ladder, and indicating general dissatisfaction. We decided to use our Lean Thinking hats and go direct to “the people closest to the problem” and formed a Women’s Leadership Team with ladies from all departments, offices, and levels along with a few male sponsors.

In our first meeting of this committee, we started by creating a Force Field to identify negative and positive restraining forces and used Affinity and Multi-Voting to identify the key problems. From there, we developed potential solutions to those problems and used an Impact/Difficulty Grid to identify where we could put our focus to have the greatest impact.  We chose the areas of Mentoring, Unconscious Bias, and Recruiting to focus on and formed a committee for each. Each committee started by using an A3 to dig into the topic and to set goals. We have been on this journey for (2) years now and we have seen the impact of our committees starting to take effect on our culture. Moving forward we are expanding into the Diversity & Inclusion Committee, we plan to continue to do PDCA until women and minorities see as many opportunities as men at Dome and until our top leadership truly reflects diversity.

By Melissa Berg (Dome Construction) & Remy Behl (Dome Construction)

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the recent passing of Greg Howell, one of the co-founders of the Lean Construction Institute and of the Lean Design and Construction discipline itself. Together with his friend and colleague Glenn Ballard, Greg was a true pioneer in conceiving and developing the concepts and tools that remain foundational in extending Lean thinking to the built environment today.

Greg passed away peacefully on June 15, 2020 at the age of 77. He is survived by his wife Dana Howell, his daughter Emily Thomsen, son-in-law Ian Thomsen, 3 grandchildren, his brother Kenneth Howell and his two favorite dogs, Chispa and Furgus.

Greg was a kind and generous man with a heart for helping others and a burning desire to improve the industry as a whole. He was a gifted and patient teacher, a much sought-after consultant and coach, and a persistent advocate for Lean through the period when it struggled to gain acceptance at any level. The fact that it has been maintained and its use expanded in the ensuing decades is in no small measure a tribute to Greg’s passion for making the industry better through a laser-like focus on improving project outcomes. This, and the growth and expansion of LCI since the days when Greg’s wife literally kept the books at their kitchen table, will serve as a lasting testimony to his life’s work and the clarity of his vision.

Greg graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from Stanford University. He served as a Navy officer in the United States Civil Engineer Corps in Vietnam and Thailand. After his time in the military, he worked as a project engineer on heavy construction and general building projects while simultaneously managing his consulting firm, Howell Associates. He served as a visiting professor, then an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of New Mexico. Greg went on to serve as an Eminent Scholar at Arizona State University. It was not long after his time in academia that he and Glenn Ballard went on to found the Lean Construction Institute in 1997.

Greg was a co-founder and principal of LeanProject, a Lean construction consulting firm. His time there was spent helping clients improve projects and organizations through Lean thinking. Greg left his mark on the Lean design and construction industry through his dedication and passion for improving the industry as a whole with Lean methods. That is his legacy which will live on.

LCI Executive Director, Dan Heinemeier, had this to say about Greg: “I was privileged to know Greg and to benefit from his advice and counsel, particularly in my early years at LCI. His guidance was instrumental in helping me recognize and embrace the true potential of Lean as applied to construction. He also connected me with many other leading lights in the field who have contributed so much to my early onboarding and continued learning about Lean. For me, that personal legacy will continue to live on as a testament to Greg’s many contributions to LCI and our industry.”

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time.

Please email GregHowellMemorial@gmail.com to share condolences, memories, pictures and stories. If you would like to donate to an organization in Greg’s honor we suggest Kiva.org or organizations supporting Alzheimer research, veterans and equal rights. There is also a memorial website if you would like to share something publicly about Greg Howell.

LCI conducted a survey of member companies to gather information on how they have adjusted Lean practices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was reported that 93.8% of companies have adjusted Lean practices as a result of the pandemic. Those practices include social distancing requirements (6 feet apart), having virtual meetings, temperature scanning and disinfecting equipment. Some specific Lean practices that were mentioned to improve safety onsite included 5S to reinforce the importance of cleanliness and organization of materials, tools and equipment. Like many industries, a lot of design and construction work is being done virtually. Lean practices that are being used virtually include Last Planner System®, A3 and pull planning. Implementing these practices helps keep projects on schedule and supports mitigating the risk of exposure to COVID-19.

Many have reported that they are continuing to do daily huddles and weekly work meetings, whether they take place on site or virtually with the intention of keeping project teams connected. Although the pandemic has changed the way we work, it has given folks the opportunity for continuous improvement. Communication has become even more important for everyone involved on projects. While we continue to look for a long term solution to COVID-19, the design and construction industry pushes on and continues to build necessary structures. Using Lean practices to stay efficient and timely has become even more important.

Some of the survey highlights include:

• Virtual work practices actually seem to have been helpful in improving focus on areas like continuous improvement, innovative milestone planning, and waste reduction.
• Social distancing requirements have prompted revised and somewhat slower-paced work schedules for trade contractors, which actually has served to improve work flow and trade stacking.
• Enhanced use of visual communications tools and methods are improving safety and making virtual meetings more productive.
• Numerous companies report stronger efforts towards improved communication between and among teams, which has served to promote collaboration and team building.
• Several respondents noted successful adaptation of traditional Lean methods to virtual in doing pull planning, retrospectives, continuous improvement, etc.
• Technology is not a panacea, but tools like Trello and Sharepoint are enhancing productivity in various ways in the virtual work environment.
• One of the most positive comments made seems to sum up much of our industry’s experience in continuing to pursue Lean even in the face of COVID 19 restrictions: “Doing things virtually has been extremely effective, and easier than many people thought it would be.”

What does Takt Planning & Scheduling have to do with COVID-19?

Takt Planning & Scheduling could be one of the most important construction practices to keep both your workers and your bottom line healthy. This is because Takt Planning & Scheduling treats “space” as a critical constraint. On an assembly line, workers have a designated space to do their work. Similarly, with Takt Planning & Scheduling construction workers have a designated space to do their work. The main difference is that instead of the work coming to the worker, the worker goes to the work during a specified time or takt.

The big benefit in these times of physical distancing is that a Takt Plan & Schedule focuses on providing sufficient space for workers to do their job. Once workers complete their jobs, they do not go into the next area until the start of the next takt. A little buffer ensures everyone is finished before the start of the next takt. This also keeps the job on a predictable pace and punch lists to a minimum.

This is not a new idea. Many of the large suburbs built after WWII were done this way with great success. Productivity, as well as cost and schedule certainty, went way up. It also reduced training time and enabled workers to master a specific skill set.

BMW is a leader in Takt Planning & Scheduling. Takt, by the way, is a German term that refers to rhythm or the beat of music. It should be no surprise that a car company with years of experience applying Lean principles and practices to manufacturing would figure out how to apply them to construction. A great example is the plant BMW built in Brazil to assemble the all-electric i3. They built it in half the time and at half the cost of similar projects. The sketch below shows the overall Takt Plan used on this job. It’s amazing how powerful and simple it is.

The Takt Plan for the BMW Assembly Plant in Araquari, Brazil.

The takt time for building this plant was 1 week.

Two trains of workers started from the outside and worked their way to the middle.

It’s worth noting that this simple sketch replaced multiple pages of a typical construction schedule.

The mantra to follow is just as simple:

Takt if you can,

Pull if you can’t,

Push as a last resort.

A good Takt Plan creates flow and value and eliminates waste as work progresses with a predictable rhythm. And with the need for physical distancing, the value from Takt Planning & Scheduling has never been greater.

About the author:

Mike Staun was responsible for Global Capital Management at Procter & Gamble before his retirement in 2019. He is now the Chairman of the Board for the Lean Construction Institute and a Senior Advisor for McKinsey & Company in their Capital Projects & Infrastructure practice.