As a specialty contractor you are often held to one measure of

success: your ability to meet the project schedule.

In the other courses in the Innovative Builder series you’ve been introduced to the ways in

which you can best implement technology at your company and how to identify the ways in

which you can reduce rework with the right documentation and drawing management. All

of these improvements (and really all technological innovation and efficiency) are

dependent on one thing: your team. In this course we’ll explore how to build highly

effective specialty contractor teams.

As a specialty contractor you are often held to one measure of success: your ability to

meet the project schedule. Construction is an inherently variable business, and sometimes

it can feel like the odds are forever stacked against you, like you are planning for delays

and setbacks rather than for success.

Specialty contractors suffer their biggest productivity losses through interactions

with one another: stacked trades, restricted site access, consequential delays, and a
congested jobsite. When the end-of-contract pressure is on, you adapt by any means
necessary, like overtime and the addition of crews. But this type of reactionary
problem-solving fails to address the root cause: the efficacy of our existing crews
and teams. 
Maybe your team is already effective. Somehow the job gets done every time, right?
You wouldn’t be taking this course if that felt like it was enough. You and your
team should feel empowered to take ownership of quality work on a schedule that
actually allows you to produce quality work. Yet, more often than not, we are
bogged down by processes that bring more waste than value, and more rework than
quality work. 
In this course, we’ll use Lean Construction as our lens to take a deeper look at the
scheduling and project management tools that can help you and your team work
better together and reach peak performance. The best part? These are tools you
already have. We just need to sharpen them.
We are bogged down by processes that bring
more waste than value, and more rework than quality
work.
By completing this course, you’ll learn how to spot wasted time, talent, and
resources on the job, optimize your workflows to meet tough schedules, and, most
importantly, begin to shift your culture and team dynamics in the small ways that
have a big impact. Let’s get started.

The Schedule Problem

As a specialty contractor, you don’t often have the ease of working off of one
schedule. Instead, you have to integrate your own schedule into the schedules of
multiple contractors on site, and ensure the right materials and labor are coming on
and off site at the right time. Every time a project falls off course, you’re at risk of
leaving money on the table. 

Projects start with something called Master Planning. This work determines the

major milestones and completion dates that will inform the overall duration of the
project. Typically, both the design phase and construction phase stakeholders are
involved in creating the master planning schedule. 
In the construction phase, the most common form of scheduling used is what we
know as the Critical Path Method (or CPM for short). Mirroring the master
planning schedule, this scheduling technique is usually displayed in Gantt format
and is used to determine the minimum completion time for a project using the
possible start and finish times for each task or project activity. We can also refer to
this as activity-based scheduling.
Take a look at the sample CPM schedule below. Let's review how a CPM schedule
is built and the ways we might visually represent concurrent tasks, recurring tasks,
and milestone tasks.

As you may have experienced, the primary drawback of CPM or activity-based

scheduling is the challenge of accurately predicting the duration of each of those
activities, which often results in the misallocation of costly labor and materials, and
a need to amend the schedule with delays. It also leaves little room for the
absorption of delays, meaning a delay in the proceeding work will not accurately
translate into a delay with the subsequent work. And as one of the teams doing the
work, you are responsible for documenting those delays each time and covering
yourself against damages. 
Waste vs. Value
There are many dangers associated with a poorly planned and executed schedule,
profit loss being one of the more impactful repercussions. A weak schedule also puts
us at risk of bringing lower quality, generating more waste in our haste to get things
done, and delivering less value to our customer.

What is value? Value is any beneficial transformation of information, materials,

or work. At the end of the day, we are ultimately referring to the end value we hope
to deliver to our customers. When the entire team has one goal, to optimize the value
to the customer, we can start to more critically evaluate processes and see greater
team alignment.
So what's standing in the way of providing pure value to our customers? What
would you think if you were told that the Construction Industry Institute reports
that 57% of all construction can be defined as waste. That means that more than
half of what we see on the job is bringing no value. You might consider that to be
impossible, but it’s true. We see it every day: overproduction, unused materials,
defects, and underutilized talent. 
Waste is anything that consumes resources but does NOT provide value for the
customer. But how do you spot it? You might immediately picture the leftover
material inventory once a job is completed, but in reality waste haunts us in every
phase of construction. 

As much as 57% of all construction can be

defined as waste.
Types of Waste
Lean Construction utilizes a framework of 8 types of waste, simplified by the
acronym D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E.: Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-Utilized
talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Extra-processing.

Whenever time, resources, or talent are underutilized, we can attribute the loss in
value as waste. When describing waste in construction, sometimes it is easier to split
these types of waste into two categories: process waste and physical waste. 
Physical Waste
Physical waste represents the waste we actually find on-site, waste that is a by-product of
an erroneous schedule.  
Process Waste
 Process waste can refer to any non-value adding activity during the end-to-end
design and construction management phase.

Both of these types of waste are symptoms of inefficiencies found throughout the
entire lifecycle of a project, and more alarmingly, are symptoms of inefficiencies
found within teams.
So how can we trim down inventory, eliminate defects, limit the movement of
people and material, avoid the underutilization of our most valuable resources, and
still meet the project schedule? Scheduling and project management have begun to
evolve to be more effective for the specialty contractor, but making room for these
process innovations will require some baseline culture changes. Let’s dive in and see
how Lean Construction and some other less familiar tools can help us drive more
effective teams to a better outcome.

Framing Up Lean Construction

By now most of the construction industry is familiar with lean construction, and
many of us practice it on a daily basis. If you have ever planned your work,
established a process to complete your work, and scheduled the work as a result of
that process...you’re already practicing lean! There are 5 basic principles to lean
construction as demonstrated by what we call the Lean Wheel:
THE LEAN WHEEL

 1
 Customer Focus
 2
 Culture & People
 3
 Workplace Organization
 4
 Waste Elimination
 5
 Continuous Improvement

So, why is lean important when we talk about building effective teams? Together,
these 5 principles inform a fairly simple goal: the goal of lean construction is to
honor a process that optimizes every person and piece of equipment on a
jobsite in order to bring greater value to the customer. That optimization is the
crux of team efficiency. 
People are at the root of every aspect of the lean wheel, and “continuous
improvement” is the shared focus that your team needs to establish in order to drive
customer value. As a specialty contractor, you know the best results come from you
and your team having the space to do what you do best and directly inform your own
work. Fostering a culture that values continuous learning and improvement takes
work, but it starts by beginning to implement and honor processes that put
everyone’s heads together, drive transparency and ownership, and strengthen
relationships with not only your own team, but the teams you work with on every
project.

Scheduling Innovations
As projects grow to be more complex and outpace industry standards for scheduling,
project teams have been faced with one major obstacle: deliver the same project in less
time, every time. Project planners, managers, and estimators have been hard pressed to
evolve CPM scheduling into a system that is resilient in the face of delays and a system in
which every person on the job is well-informed and willing to be more critical of the
quality and accuracy of their work. 

Let’s look at how modern scheduling techniques create opportunities for specialty
contractor teams to lean in and take a bigger stake in the overall success of the project. 

Location-Based Management
One well-practiced potential alternative to traditional CPM scheduling is called
the Location-Based Management System (LBMS), also known as location-based
scheduling. LBMS differs from CPM in that its calculations are based on the work being
continuous, allowing for work to be done simultaneously in the event of a delay during one
project phase. LBMS better prevents those run-ins between trades on the jobsite that we are
so familiar with. Case studies have shown that when CPM schedules are converted into
LBMS schedules, 10% of project duration is saved without an increase in resource
use! Think about cutting a 4-year project down by 10%. That’s a savings of 146 days or
nearly 5 months! This process has been streamlined in recent years by applying Lean
Construction methods and, in some cases, even combining it with the Last Planner©
System. 

Resource Scheduling

Resource scheduling is another schedule variant that uses an analysis of resource

constraints (constraints in both time and resources like equipment and labor) to schedule
work. This is a very pragmatic approach to building a project schedule, especially for the
specialty contractor, because it accounts for the finite amount of resources that are available
on any given project, as opposed to building out a CPM schedule that focuses only on the
average duration of each activity and not on the staff and material required to perform
them.

Resource scheduling determines capacity by using two methods: time-

constrained and resource-constrained. Each of these are used as variables to look ahead
and more accurately depict project duration. This type of scheduling is particularly vital
when we are working with a shortage of skilled labor, which is often.
The Last Planner© System
The Last Planner© System, a product of Lean Construction Methodology, is an even more
holistic approach to project planning and scheduling. Most of us recognize this technique
by a swath of post-it notes across a trailer wall, but that’s just one component of the Last
Planner System. Think of the “critical path” in CPM. Last Planner© builds alternative
routes into that path, working backwards from the last team on the job: yours.

Instead of the general contractor building a schedule toward a minimum completion

date by estimating  task duration, The Last Planner© System starts with the “last
planner” scheduling their own work and milestones, and doing their
own resource allocation, using what is called “pull planning” to build the schedule
in what might seem like a reverse from the project outcome. This not only more
accurately depicts activity duration and total project duration, but also means we
have a schedule that is built collaboratively and is based on handoff between
trades. The “last planner” in the design phase might be the architect or the engineer,
whereas the “last planner” in the construction phase are typically the foremen and
superintendents for each trade.
After the pull planning phase, Last Planner© is intended to increase in detail and
quality control as the project goes on, combating traditional schedule-fatigue and
quality degradation. This is done through a cadence of 6-week look-ahead
schedules, weekly work plans, and tracking percent-planned-complete on a daily
basis. 

It is within this process that the PDCA system is often implemented, otherwise

known as “Plan”, “Do”, “Check” and “Adjust”, to further support the mindset of
continuous improvement throughout the project's lifecycle.

Now we'll hear from Jim Cavaness, Services General Manager at MMC

Contractors, about why utilizing the Last Planner© System is so valuable for specialty
contractors. 
Voice of the Specialty Contractor
Click the play button to begin the video.

Scheduling is at the heart of effectiveness, but scheduling to hit a particular date

hasn’t always proven to be the most effective. Instead, more proactively involving
the boots on the ground in scheduling has proven to be a more effective approach.
The team that takes the time and care to look critically at their work each week
together and make adjustments where needed will have an easier time meeting a
schedule requirement than a team that is heads-down to a completion date. When
your material drops and truck rolls are perfectly coordinated to coincide with the
work that needs to be done each day you’ve not only become more efficient with
your scheduling, you’ve made each member of your team more effective. 

Let’s take a look at some of the other methods that will help you continue to carry
this momentum across the job.

Methods for Waste Elimination

Let’s face it, as specialty or trade contractors you spend a sizable amount of time clearing
space for your work on site, carrying and trucking in materials, and cleaning up once work
is complete. That process can not only consume time, it can deplete resources. 
Scanning for Inefficiency

Let’s recall the 8 types of waste we discussed earlier and put ourselves on the job site
for a moment. Part of implementing Lean on your job is the ability to use your
own "inefficiency scanner" to spot wasted time, talent, resources, or unnecessary
logistical movement on the job. 
Let's take a look at a typical jobsite to see how you can turn the things you see into an
evaluation of the potential waste on your job, keeping the 8 types of waste in mind: defects,
overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and
extra-processing. 

The 5S Plan
So, how do we create a process for beginning to eliminate some of that waste?

The 5S workplace organization method is a good place to start. The 5S’s stand for:
sort, straighten, shine-sweep, standardize, and sustain.

Sort
Click to flip
Co-locate your items, only stage what you need, remove surplus.
Click to flip
Straighten
Communicate locations to entire team, every piece of material and equipment should have a
location.
Shine-sweep
Tidy up materials at the end of use and return equipment to it's rightful location.
Standardize
Formalize cleaning schedules, establish consistency, communicate this schedule to the
team.
Sustain

Techniques like the 5S method are rooted in one fundamental practice: effective

communication. When we break down waste and its causes, we most commonly find that
communication among teams is the crux of the problem. 
Let’s take a look at the practice of value stream mapping and how mapping processes as a
team can help us more efficiently identify waste and prevent communication breakdowns
on the job.
Value Stream Mapping
When it comes to teamwork, transparency drives progress. In construction, mistakes
become commonplace when too many of us are working in silos. Value Stream Mapping is
designed to give individual contributors a bird’s eye view of the team’s progress.

A Value Stream Map, as defined by the Lean Construction Institute,  is a “tool that helps
individuals visually see and understand a given process rather than simply looking at
results”. This is crucial when it comes to identifying and removing waste from a project. 

A VSM separates “value” into three categories:

 1
Customer value-added
  2
Business value-added
 3
Non value-added

These categories are built into a percentage model that easily visualizes where “non-value”
creeps into the project scope, allowing teams to better analyze their process and develop it
for future projects. 

A VSM is a visual that represents this process. It can take many forms that often look quite
complex, so the important thing is that is easily understood by you and your team. It should
show the entire process, including materials, information flows, decision points, handoffs,
and any other interactions with teams or systems. Once the process is documented, the team
works together to determine which steps are value-added and which are not. 
Here is an example of what a built-out VSM might look like: 

Here’s how you can put a process under the VSM magnifying glass yourself: 
 1
Assemble a team of stakeholders.
 2
Select a process to take under study.
 3
Go to the process on the job, see the work, collect real data.
 4
Avoid making assumptions about the process. We're looking for raw, objective data.
 5
Map the process visually to assess the CURRENT state.
  6
Identify and discuss opportunities for improvement,
 7
Map the process visually to establish the ideal FUTURE state.
 8
Document the changes required and get to work.

The Effective Meetings Framework

The "Big Room" Concept

There is another Lean technique that can dramatically reduce friction on the job and lead to
more unified project outcomes, and it’s called the “Big Room”. It is, surprisingly, exactly
what it sounds like. The Big Room is a space that physically brings together all of the
designers, builders and facility operators on a job in order to support cross-functional
collaboration.

Let's hear one more time from Jim Cavaness, Services General Manager at MMC
Contractors, about the benefits of utilizing "the Big Room".

The Big Room is a place where everybody gets together- all of the owners, and all
of the people that are stakeholders on the project get to voice and hear what is
going on.
Jim Cavaness, Services General Manager, MMC Contractors

The “Big Room” doesn’t have to come together daily. It could be weekly or bi-weekly.
This concept may sound like an obvious solution, but how often do we create these
collaborative spaces on the job? If we want quick resolutions and effective communication,
we have to foster them.
Leading More Effective Meetings
Meetings can seem like the ultimate time-stopper, especially in an industry that runs at the
pace of construction. It can be easy for a manager to assume the role of meeting owner and
take the floor for the majority of a meeting for the sake of time. When that happens we not
only miss out on valuable information that one of the other stakeholders in the room may
have, but also, and more importantly, on the opportunity to make those stakeholders
understand that their opinion is valued.

The Agenda
Whenever possible, an agenda should be shared in advance of a meeting. This gives
everyone insight on the scope of the meeting, and allows people to prepare. It’s
important to remember that many of us need time to gather thoughts before walking
into a meeting, whereas others may be able to think out loud. Sharing the meeting
agenda ahead of time ensures you don’t miss out on any valuable perspectives or
potential solutions. 

The Attendees
Be strategic about whom you invite. Not everyone needs to be at every meeting. The
more people you invite, the harder it will be for everyone to contribute in a
meaningful way. Refer to your agenda and if someone doesn’t need to be there give
them their time back. If someone has to miss a meeting, make sure they have a way
to access the information after-the-fact. 

The Place
Consider both your working environment and your attendees when deciding when
and where to hold a meeting. Maybe you normally hold your safety briefing
outdoors, but does that work for everyone? Moving a meeting indoors may help
your team members more actively listen and focus. These small changes go a long
way.

The Time
You and your team are always strapped for time, and budgeting the right amount of
time for a meeting can be a challenge. Refer to your agenda here and make sure
there is enough time to hear from everyone and still cover all of the agenda items. If
you stick with this minimum, it is often more timely than you think. And as a
meeting owner you should feel empowered to keep the meeting on track while
maintaining inclusivity. 
Whether it’s the “Big Room” or a daily stand-up, holding effective meetings is
integral to your ability to be on and lead an effective team. 

Shift Toward Effectiveness

All of the scheduling and project management techniques we've reviewed in this course
have one thing in common: they focus on value and quality to improve the way we work
with one another on site, all while improving efficiency and eliminating waste. Because
something happens when we plan with flexibility and the parts of a whole in mind: we get
better results, and we get them on time. 

If it’s this simple, you might be wondering why every job doesn’t operate seamlessly.

If all it takes is a Big Room and post-it notes, why are we here? Because it’s not that
simple. At the foundation of each of these practices is something much bigger: a culture
shift.
Let’s dive deeper into three shifts in culture teams must internalize in order to build the
most effective teams in the industry.
Shift 1: Information Sharing + Transparency
Sharing information more openly may seem like a breach in authority or strategy, but in
reality it strengthens teams and builds institutional knowledge. Activities like Value Stream
Mapping are crucial in promoting team effectiveness because they are based on the
diffusion of information to the entire team. It creates more accountability and a higher
grade of performance when team members know exactly what is required of them and have
access to the answers.

Shift 2: Utilizing your Underutilized Talent

Let’s revisit the “8 Wastes of Construction” we discussed in Part 1. One of the most
challenging “wastes” in this matrix to address is “non-utilized" or "under-utilized" talent.
Lean can be implemented on a surface level, but it will not be impactful unless you place an
emphasis at your organization on your talent. In other words, your people.

It is also important to define “underutilized talent” here. The purpose of this Lean principle
is not to say that underperforming team members are waste that should be eliminated. By
tackling this at the organizational level we can begin to shift this paradigm throughout the
industry, an industry that is forced to do more with less in the face of a severe labor
shortage. Your companies and your job sites may be abundant in waste but they are also
abundant in something else, and something that is an extreme value-add: the untapped
potential of your labor force.

Let's turn to Wes Simpson, COO of Green Mechanical Construction, Inc., for his
perspective on the importance of growing what he calls an "organic workforce"
from within your organization.
Voice of the Specialty Contractor #3
Simply put, if you are not building the framework in which you can hire unskilled workers

and train them to become skilled workers, you don't have a sustainable, organic workforce.

Wes Simpson, COO, Green Mechanical

It is more important now than ever before to invest in your people, the skilled workers that
will drive productivity, quality, and the future of construction. You’ve heard it before,
"Your process is only as good as your people". Every process we have outlined in this
course is a path toward talent utilization and team empowerment. The companies that
successfully identify and apply the strengths of their people will continually outpace the
competition in employee retention and overall productivity.
The companies that successfully identify and apply the strengths of their people
will continually outpace the competition.
Shift 3: Driving Curiosity and Continuous Improvement
At the core of every positive alteration in scheduling, project management, and talent
optimization is perhaps the most important principle of lean: continuous improvement.
The "5 Why's"

The "5 Why's" is a simple lean technique that is leveraged to encourage teams to always
find the root cause of an issue, which leads to the discovery of a long-term solutions
instead of short-term solutions.

Below is a flowchart of what the "5 Why's" look like in action. See what happens when we
take a problem like "productivity on site is low" and apply this method. We get to the root
of what is a much deeper issue- that "management is not aware that collaboration benefits
everyone."

Copyright Lean Construction Institute

The "5 Why's" exercise is a good example of how breaking down your process more often
can uncover the shortcomings of the culture of your organization. An agile and effective
team is one that takes it upon themselves to ask questions and look for pitfalls in every
phase of the work and schedule, and an organization has to be open to receiving and
incorporating that feedback.

When employees feel empowered to speak up, to voice a contrary opinion, to call out
inefficiencies on the job, and to be open to feedback, they work better not only alone, but
together. They’re more effective. 
Conclusion
As a specialty or trade contractor, your job is to manage a high-performing workforce that
can move on and off site without run-ins or schedule delays. Building a team that can be
effective in the face of the extreme pressure of a rigorous schedule is the hardest job out
there.

Lean management and effective teams are not things we can purchase and pull out of a box.
They require some rework (the good kind) on the most basic interactions and behaviors we
see on the job every day. They require us to step back and look at our job from the eyes of
one another and find respect for the people that own each process, and to foster a culture
that values innovation and continuous improvement - a culture that withstands even the
toughest job - yours.