Real Life Lean 035

Happy Monday lean construction family and welcome to another edition of Real Life Lean. This newsletter is intended to give construction professionals worldwide 4 quick and easy resources to grow and continue on your lean journey.

Today's Summary:

• Lean Article - Project Production Management: Occupied Construction - Moving In With Takt (Part 10)

• Lean Podcast - We are In Trouble.- What Can We Do About It

• Lean Event - Application of Lean Construction In Renewable Energy Infrastructure

• Real Life Lean - New Team Member On-boarding

Lean Article

After a quick break last week, we are back with our regularly scheduled lean article. We are picking back up with the Project Production Management series from Touchplan, and are diving deeper into the takt process. This week’s article shares how takt planning can be used as a communication tool for working in occupied spaces. The consistent flow of takt, as it marches to the specified beat, allows the project team to predict where there trades will be working and can help show and share the plan to tenants of an occupied space.

Takeaway: Communication is key when working in an occupied space. Most of my career has been spent working on TI’s (tenant improvements) and communicating the work is always a major focus for the team. Finding a planning tool that can also be used as a communication tool is a huge bonus.

See the bottom of this newsletter for an offer and discount for Takt University.

Lean Podcast

In this episode Jason shares about the overall state of the construction industry and the crisis we are facing. Projects are squeaking across the finish line on the backs of our trades. Jason provides ACTIONABLE tasks you can take to help the labor and construction crisis we are facing.  Our teams need to get back to the fundamental skills that make a builder and companies need to take the time to train their people and track/score the people on a monthly basis!

Takeaway - The construction industry is facing a crisis from a labor and overall industry standpoint. We have the ability to change this though, but it is going to take effort from ALL companies. Keep the horses' heads up and provide the vision and education for our people!

Lean Event

Lean construction tools and methods can be used in all types of projects and is not one size fits all. In the free webinar below from leanconstructionblog.com, John Lerche will share his experience on implementing lean in the energy sector.

Takeaway - I had a revelation at LCI congress a couple of weeks back, and while not a major breakthrough by any means, it was more of a confirmation and consolidation of my current thougths. It was that lean construction is for everyone. Lean is for every project of every style, everywhere and everyone needs to hear it. Learning from how a different industy has implemented lean is exciting and inspiring.

Real Life Lean - Lean practices in the real world

Last week my team added a new construction manager to the team to help lead us through our upcoming shutdown. The Friday before he started, I was tasked with “getting him up to speed” on our project. This didn’t give me much time to plan, but it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my on-boarding process and areas we could improve. It also had me think about some of the sessions I attended at LCI Congress about on-boarding and creating a well oiled team (it starts at the beginning).

My on-boarding consisted of an 8 hours site orientation (pretty standard in life sciences) and then I was given a brief introduction to the team. My manager was busy with principle meetings for my first two days and then left for a vacation. I was thrown to the wolves and left to piece together who played what role and figure out what was needed from me. Needless to say, there was a lot of room for improvement. On such short notice, I had to come up with a list of the most valuable things a new team member would need to know to get up to speed, and then plan to fill in the rest throughout the week.

I identified 3 major items that our new team member needed to get up to speed on - Scope, Team and Schedule. To do this, we spent an hour and a half walking through the work area, going over main trades in each area, superintendents that manage each area and going through the area priority breakdown. We then made our way to the job trailer/big room to meet the team, and discuss roles and responsibilities. We ended the morning of day 2 with discussion around the schedule, pointing out priorities, risks and unknowns. This half day project orientation on day 2 was an opportunity for me to get to know a new colleague, while also getting him up to speed on our project. Moving forward, he now has an idea of where and how the project is moving and can insert himself where he sees fit.

This was not a robust and detailed on-boarding (working towards that) but it does not diminish the value it added. Lean projects and lean leaders need to think about how new team members come on-board to a project and plan for getting them up to speed.

Takt University Special Offer

I have partnered with Spencer Easton from Takt University to share a great offer for Real Life Lean subscribers. Purchase Spencers Introduction Course at the link here and enter “reallifelean2023” for 50% off your purchase!

Have a Real Life Lean story you think would be a great feature in an upcoming newsletter? Send me an email at [email protected].