Real Life Lean 037

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 - Transition from Responsibility to Accountability with Takt Planning

• Lean Podcast - Thinking About How To Think: Mastering Lean Construction With Victor Ortiz

• Lean Event - First Hand Perspective On Certification from LCI-CPCs

• Real Life Lean - Win-Win Competitions

Lean Article

The last 11 or so weeks the article section of this newsletter has been focused on the Project Production Management series from Touchplan. As this series comes to an end, I wanted to skip weeks 12 and 13 and jump to week 14 to share an article that focus' on best practices and accountability. The article shares 4 of the best practices you can implement with your team when you start implementing takt on your project.  These 4 best practices are Benchmark your first in place work, Install in place, Finish as you go and Own your zone. These 4 concepts are easy to remember and will help your team be successful with takt implementation

Takeaway - Over the past couple of months I hope you have been able to see why takt planning is used, and how it can benefit your team. I hope you have enjoyed the series, and taken advantage of the generous offer from Takt University to learn more about takt. These 4 best practices shared here should make your takt journey even more successful.

Lean Podcast

Last week I was on a call with superintendents from across the country, discussing continuous improvement and working together to find how we can improve the industry. On that call Nick Clemens of O'Shea builders mentioned the podcast below and some of his key takeaways. It sounded like a great fit for this newsletter and I immediately downloaded the episode. The episode focuses on the idea of "If we want better results, we need to focus on better solutions." 

Takeaway - The episode is full of great takeaways and actionable ways to get better. One of my biggest takeaways (and one that Nick mentioned as well) was the idea of bettering our Plus/Delta Sessions. How often do we only get to surface level ideas when we ask for plus/deltas. Topics such as "the food was good" "the room was cold" etc. How can we improve this process so we can get better feedback and thus improve the process? In this episode Victor talks about different ways to improve this process and get better feedback.

Lean Event

What is the LCI-CPC certification?  What value does it bring to both yourself, your company and your clients? How hard is it to receive? How do you go about receiving it?  Learn about these questions and more from first hand recipients of the LCI-CPC.

Real Life Lean - Lean practices in the real world

The client site I am working at right now recently posted new poster boards in their main hallway showcasing their continuous improvement competition. I thought this was an awesome way to encourage your teams and your crews to work together to come up with ways to improve. These ideas weren't groundbreaking, but they were solutions to actual problems that they teams were facing. These ideas improve the day to day work flow of these teams and in the end lead to happer teams, and in some cases, more money for the business. How easy would it be to start a competition like this on our construction projects?  You could easily run this for a month where you educate the team on the eight wastes, and give them 4 weeks to identify and fix these wastes. The best solution will have a lunch provided for them or some other giveaway. The best part about this - event the solutions that don't "win" make the workplace better, and improve the lives of our teams.

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].