Lean Construction is an adaptation of Lean Manufacturing. It combines the collaborative planning methods with the best production practices to deliver highly-efficient construction projects.
BMWC has established a lean culture by fully implementing lean principles, practices and behaviors throughout all facets of the company. This is accomplished by developing, training, governing, measuring, improving, communicating, marketing and most importantly executing our lean process.
Key concepts on Lean Construction include:
Defining activities from project milestones
Breaking activities into smaller measurable tasks
Identifying constraints associated with each task
Schedule tasks only when constraints are resolved
Track the completed tasks versus the uncompleted tasks and specifies reasons why tasks were not completed
Resolves issues preventing task completion to improve planning capabilities
Use data to analyze production rates and eliminate waste
All disciplines work together to identify and optimize a single, unified plan for project
Field supervisors make commitments for work activities to be performed daily and weekly.
Lean Construction results in more organized projects where constraints are identified early and solved with minimum interruptions in daily work, reduced premium time, strong safety performance and on-time completion within the project budget. Supervisors attest that after a month of on-the-job learning, the methods make their jobs easier.
Project Examples:
University of Washington Medical Center G&H-Wing Renovation - Stop and start work was prevented. We choose to delay the work in the utility tunnel four months until all engineering questions were resolved. As a result no RFI’s were created during the actual execution of work and man-hours expended were 10% less than anticipated.
Boeing Auburn Acid Waste Piping Project - The craftsmen informed the management team during a lean scheduling meeting of space limitation that would prevent a critical tie-in. The project team was able to re-design the tie-in connection point to allow the work to be performed as scheduled.
University of Washington Global Health Project - During planning sessions, the mechanical craftsmen coordinated with the electrical craftsmen to detail the work flow in a highly congested area. What was thought to be the riskiest part of the project was completed almost two weeks ahead of schedule.
