Developing problem solvers to advance lean construction

When it comes to work, it is hard to deny the complexity construction companies face every day. In part, this is the result of the diversity of the types of projects they undertake (infrastructure, residential, mining, etc.), but also of the difficulty of coordinating and integrating the work of many actors – including owners, designers, suppliers, contractors and subcontractors – throughout the entire process, from planning to product delivery and after-sales. Quality control is almost absent, and incomplete designs often cause errors, delays, cost overruns and rework. On top of all this, we still commonly see a lack of leadership across the entire value chain, stressful working conditions on the front line, adversarial relationships in the traditional contracting system and a tendency not to trust that people (at all levels) can actually solve problems. With all this, we might think construction is beyond saving.

However, this traditional industry is evolving. As a movement, the industrialization of construction – inspired by manufacturing techniques – came into being after World War II, when the need to rebuild entire countries pressured the sector to deliver its projects faster than ever. In recent years, we have seen a new wave of industrialization, with innovative off-site techniques such as modular construction, rationalization of assembly on the job site and advances in digital technologies (such as BIM, Building Information Modeling, and new planning and management software).

In this new phase of evolution, construction has also been showing greater interest in lean thinking. More and more companies are realizing that lean can bring a profound transformation to the industry, as it already has in almost every economic sector. However, with only a few exceptions, construction companies still tend to see lean as mere process improvement. What happened with lean in manufacturing 40 years ago, when people thought lean was limited to kanban and a bunch of other tools, is happening in construction today. Worse still, improvement work usually takes place in isolation – perhaps on a single job site –, and even when it leads to good results, the fact that the rest of the organization has no exposure to lean makes progress limited and hard to sustain.

At the Lean Global Network, our goal is to help companies achieve a sustainable lean transformation by addressing the five dimensions of our Lean Transformation Framework (LTF): 1) value-driven purpose, 2) process improvement, 3) capability development, 4) changing management systems and leadership behaviors, and 5) transforming mental models. If we look at construction through the lens of the LTF, we can see that much of the improvement work in this sector is limited to the process dimension. Even within that dimension, it focuses only on the planning phase. In fact, in a project-based industry like construction, planning is fundamental, which makes the Last Planner System a valuable tool for organizations interested in achieving basic stability. But there is much more to lean construction than just Last Planner!

The LTF teaches us that there is a lot to explore here. How does people development happen in construction? Are construction companies able to define value for customers well? How often do construction managers go to the gemba to see the work with their own eyes, listen to and support people as they try to solve problems? Does the management team understand the value stream in detail, from end to end, and work with the on-site team to improve it as a whole?

In the construction sector, lean is not yet seen as a strategic asset that can transform the entire organization – and its culture – by turning frontline employees into autonomous problem solvers so that more value can be delivered to the end customer. We believe it is time for that to change. A broader adoption of lean thinking as a sociotechnical management system is essential to help the industry overcome its most pressing problems, such as safety, cost overruns, low productivity (according to OECD data, productivity in construction has not changed in 20 years), quality problems and chronic delays.

 

Developing problem solvers in construction

To solve the problems highlighted above, however, we need to focus our efforts mainly on developing everyone's problem-solving skills, from senior executives to foremen, from tradespeople to employees in support functions. But what does it take to create an army of problem solvers in the construction sector? In our minds, it requires that we give people the ability to raise problems, the tools and knowledge to solve them, and the support so that problem solving becomes part of their daily work.

Critically, we also need to make sure that the right people are tackling the right problems. For this, Art Smalley's four types of problems framework is particularly useful. Before we delve into problem solving, let's look at how the framework can be applied to construction.

First, as a precondition for any sustainable improvement to happen, we need to create basic stability in the process. This can be achieved by fixing reactive Type 1 (containment) and Type 2 (deviation from standard) problems right on the front line. Unfortunately, in construction there are usually few standards in the work, which makes problem solving difficult. How can you solve a deviation from the standard if you don't know what the standard is? Before any improvement can be made, therefore, it is necessary to establish a clear work standard.

Once basic stability has been achieved, the company can begin to pay attention to higher-level strategic issues that concern the entire value stream – Type 3 (target condition) and Type 4 (innovation). To solve these problems, management needs to get involved, together with all business functions – from the supply chain to design. At this stage, an organization can begin to innovate regularly. By achieving basic stability and establishing a structured approach to problem solving, lean thinking can give innovation in construction a clear purpose.

Let's now look more specifically at how we can turn our employees into skilled, autonomous problem solvers.

To develop problem-solving skills in the gemba, we first need to drive fear out of the workplace and replace it with trust. This can bring about a major change in an organization's mindset and encourage people to raise their hand whenever a problem occurs. For this to happen, we need to change behaviors and build a system in which visual management allows problems to be tracked and people across the company to be aware of them and know what to do about them. This is a very big problem in construction because of the project-based nature of the work, with different companies and teams operating on different job sites. That is why a lean implementation should be seen as a transformation of the entire company, rather than an initiative that takes place on a single site or a single project.

Communicating to everyone what needs to be done, who should do it and how it should be done is difficult on a construction site, where thousands of people may be working at the same time and deadlines are often tight. The foreman typically makes the decisions about what work to do and when, but the focus is usually on output rather than productivity. With this approach, as soon as a problem occurs, the solution is usually to throw more resources at it (in the form of people or overtime, for example). Unfortunately, this is often not enough to avoid compromising safety and quality. Standardization, on the other hand, breaks work down into smaller tasks, clearly defines roles and responsibilities and, most importantly, makes it easier to recognize deviations before they become problems too big to be solved.

Once problems are seen as opportunities for improvement and a system is put in place to identify and solve them quickly and effectively, it is important to focus on giving everyone who contributes to value creation the tools they need to become problem solvers. When we talk about coaching, people usually think of a classroom, but in the lean world, capability development happens in the gemba, on the job. Simply put, there is no other way to develop problem solvers than to have them solve problems!

But how can we solve problems in the process without mentors helping people? As always, the role of leadership here is absolutely critical, as the following examples show.

We need to model the behaviors we want to see in our people.

Turner Construction Company (one of the largest construction companies in the US and a learning partner of the Lean Enterprise Institute) has been on a lean journey for six years, with a strong focus on developing the problem-solving skills of its leaders through LEI's Lean Leader Program (LLP). We all know how important coaching is, but if you want leaders to be coaches, they first need to become problem solvers (“we need to model the behaviors we want to see in our people,” a Turner senior executive said recently). After several “lean field visits” to the gemba, senior leaders realized that, to truly engage their people, they needed to make sure the improvement work was focused on their problems. They committed to understanding the work from the employees' perspective and to making things easier for them. This attitude, fueled by extensive use of A3 thinking, became a powerful catalyst for change at the North American-based construction company.

A3 thinking was also a key tool at Socovesa, a Chilean construction company that has been on a lean journey for four years. Lean Institute Chile, an LGN affiliate, helped Socovesa understand this important problem-solving structure. The first step was to stabilize and standardize the planning process for all projects – no matter how different they were. This helped create a common language and an opportunity for weekly interaction. The initial problem-solving experiments, which focused on a specific project with three teams, led to exceptional results. According to the project manager, however, the best result was the fact that area supervisors began to develop the capabilities of their team members and that everyone began to learn how to solve problems.

A similar approach is being followed at Battistella Spa, a small construction company in northern Italy, which recently began its own lean journey with the help of Italy's Istituto Lean Management. After receiving basic lean training, the management team began to focus on real business problems (using the Lean Transformation Framework as a reference), while the use of A3 thinking on the front line led to a series of quick wins in process efficiency. This is gradually creating awareness at Battistella that change is possible and that processes can be continuously improved.

In fact, the most effective way to engage people in problem solving is to show results, especially those that most directly impact their work. Leadership should engage in small PDCA cycles, while showing employees how their problem-solving efforts are making work safer and the company more productive.

This strategy worked for the Andrade Gutierrez conglomerate, a large Brazilian infrastructure company operating in several countries. Lean Institute Brasil (another Lean Global Network affiliate) helped create a distinctive culture there by supporting the development of an initial group of lean facilitators. LIB provided them with the lean knowledge they needed to bring about change across the group. This clearly paid off, as over the years Andrade Gutierrez has developed four generations of facilitators, who have progressively been able to introduce lean thinking to every construction site and business area.

 

A more holistic application of lean

Lean thinking is more than just a transformer of operations. If it is seen as a comprehensive framework, lean can bring about a change in a company's mindset, its leadership and its strategy. When applied to the entire value-creation process (as it should be), it can lead an organization to a complete turnaround. We already know how impactful lean thinking has been in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare, and there is no reason to believe it cannot bring the same benefits to construction.

As mentioned above, the construction process is highly atomized, and the supply chain that supports it is incredibly fragmented. It is normal, therefore, for investors and builders to file lawsuits, for designers to have to deal with constant design changes, for material suppliers to deliver late, for invoices to be routinely disputed at the end of each month, for after-sales service to be slow, and so on. Moreover, and more dangerously, the culture that permeates the industry discourages people from highlighting these problems. Ultimately, all of this impacts the real customer, whether a homeowner or the operator of a hydroelectric plant.

Thanks to the holistic and “broad” view it offers, lean can help the industry overcome these obstacles, becoming a powerful differentiator for companies that decide to take the lean leap. In particular, we believe it can be extremely beneficial in addressing issues such as culture, the supply chain and the industrialization of the construction process.

Transforming the culture that prevails in the sector, which is notoriously tough and based on a command-and-control approach to leadership, is perhaps the most fundamental outcome lean can achieve. In an environment lacking trust, people tend to hide problems rather than flag them, worsening an already difficult situation. In this scenario, problems only surface at the end, when the project is handed over to the customer. Lean teaches leaders to respect people and to lead by example, which is essential to creating a work environment where problems are welcome.

Lean thinking can also contribute to the effectiveness of the construction supply chain, increasing collaboration among owners, designers, suppliers, contractors and subcontractors and overcoming the toxic relationships that so often exist among them. As with culture, it is about injecting trust into communication and interaction among the different actors – for example, by running experiments such as relational contracts and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The growing use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) is another enabler of supply chain integration and, combined with lean concepts, can be a powerful catalyst for change.

Finally, lean can help this sector make the most of the opportunities offered by new technologies to achieve full industrialization of the construction process. For this to happen, the industry will need to incorporate the principles set out by Lean Product and Process Development, which emphasize the importance of bringing design and production (in this case, construction) together from the outset.

In conclusion, applying lean in construction can lead to:

• Greater safety at work.
• Higher quality in delivery to customers.
• Shorter delivery times.
• Greater productivity.
• Reduced material waste.
• A work environment conducive to continuous learning and collaboration.
• The ability to anticipate problems and better manage risks.
• More integration between subcontractors and project owners.

To make the most of these benefits and sustain them, construction needs to engage in a broader and more strategic application of lean management. A shift in focus, moving away from thinking only about tools and toward focusing on problem solving, can help this sector improve considerably and support its evolution into a true 21st-century industry.

The Lean Global Network's Lean Construction Working Group aims to contribute to the development of the industry. We have witnessed and supported many lean construction experiments and believe that our global, cross-sector experience can contribute ideas and concepts that have so far not received the attention they deserve.