Bockstael: Shaping the Future of Our Province with Lean Construction

KaiNexus Consulting is one of the leading international proponents of continuous improvement in the realm of lean management. This respected firm suggests there are a number of factors which enhance or support lean construction and manufacturing. Those techniques include:

• A clear set of objectives for the delivery process.
• Identifying the customer’s end product but also their deeper values which provide a framework for the project. Communicating them to architect, subcontractors, suppliers, and tradespeople.
• Eliminate waste in materials, time, talent, transportation and inventory.
• Create a continuous flow of activity based on communication with all involved parties.
• Communicate regularly and collaborate planning and scheduling with all parties.
• Focus on continuous improvement to decrease waste and improve processes.

On the factory floor producing Toyota after Toyota, the lean manufacturing method can be a simple repetitive action. Once established the car manufacturer can produce car after car efficiently. For construction firms such as Bockstael using lean management techniques their products are seldom identical or routine. Each project is unique and comes with its own set of challenges. With this aspect of construction project management in mind, we cannot underestimate the supreme importance of communication between all the players from owner to the architect, to contractor, to subcontractors and the various tradespeople involved in any of our projects. This ongoing and regular communication and lean process improvement approach is an important factor in the success of any project in terms of cutting costs and bringing the project in on time.

Last Planner System

Bockstael Construction is Manitoba’s leader in the implementation of Lean Construction Management techniques and the Lean Construction Last Planner System®.

The process begins with establishing major milestone dates and project constraints. Bockstael staff then assemble a high-level Gantt Chart outlining preliminary durations and schedule expectations. From there, the Last Planner System takes over; using four pillars for schedule management. These include the following lean construction principles:

• Pull Planning – Trade Partners are required to actively participate in these interactive scheduling sessions that use collaboration to optimize the schedule (maximize float), obtain buy-in on the work plan, and ensure that team members have a clear understanding of their integration and requirements with respect to other trades.
• Look-Ahead Schedules – Two-week and six-week look-ahead plans are used to manage work flow and to identify and clear any constraints that could prevent work from occurring in its planned timeframe.
• Weekly Work Plans – These plans are updated weekly by trades to describe daily tasks for the upcoming week. They can be in list format or represented visually on drawings. They provide accountability by measuring the rate at which trades accomplish the tasks they said they would within a given week (the Percent Plan Complete metric). PPC is monitored on an ongoing basis to provide real-time feedback to owners on schedule adherence and trade performance.
• Daily Huddles – Trade foremen are required to attend a 10-minute huddle each morning to discuss the day’s work and coordinate with other trades on working areas, deliveries, and trade hand-offs.

Pull planning sessions are led by Bockstael personnel using lean construction principles. During construction, the Superintendent, with the assistance of our head office, maintains pull plan boards, look-ahead schedules, and other visuals for schedule tracking on site. This allows for a higher standard of operational readiness.

The PM is responsible for tracking the schedule, providing any variance analysis, and developing mitigation strategies for preventing or recovering slippage as required. Through Last Planner, slippage is identified early, while there is still time to mitigate.

Since Last Planner was implemented in 2015, our schedule certainty and ability to accelerate schedules has seen significant improvement.

The process itself is relatively simple. Rather than the traditional model of:

Large-Batch Design > Estimate Cost > Perform Value Engineering > Repeat;

TVD establishes targets very early (for all of cost, schedule, scope and quality), and then designs the project in small batches towards these targets. The key benefits of the process are:

1. It allows for SPEED in design and significant overlap between the design and construction phases (see graphic)
2. Continuous estimating leads to high levels of COLLABORATION and a constant feedback loop to ensure the cost remains on target
3. It requires TRANSPARENCY in budgeting and pricing, from comparisons to benchmark projects up to detailed breakdowns of unit pricing and assumptions.
4. The ability to implement RAPID PROTOTYPING / SET-BASED DESIGN of multiple design options submitted to the CM for pricing and evaluated for selection based on a defined evaluation framework
5. It provides a platform for the construction manager to introduce PRODUCTION DESIGN (prefabrication, modularization, prototyping, mock-ups, etc.)

After an initial Validation Phase is carried out to confirm the expected costs for each component of work, the Target Budget and target schedule is set. As the design progresses, the budget is updated in real-time.

A Cardinal Rule to a cost management plan is that the Target Cost should never be exceeded. In the case where unforeseen costs must be accommodated, trade-offs can be implemented or the cost can be drawn from an agreed upon contingency. This is one of the ways we ensure cost management is handled efficiently and smoothly, to avoid any unforeseen issues.