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The workers on the Michael R. Myers Hospital site are focused on one date. It’s not 2010, when the West Des Moines hospital is scheduled to be completed, nor is it deadlines for their separate tasks on the project. It’s April 7, the day CECO Concrete Construction arrives to pour the first elevated deck.

This way of thinking is new for Weitz Iowa, the general contractor on the project, and the owners, architects and subcontractors involved. Whereas a foreman might arrive on site a day or two ahead of work, now field leaders are being called together at least six weeks ahead of time to work through how each team will complete its various tasks, deal with any questions or obstacles standing in their way and decide in what order the jobs need to be done to ensure that milestones for the entire project are reached on schedule.

“You’ve got all this stuff coming at you from all different directions,” said Mike Tousley, president of Weitz Iowa, a division of Weitz Co. “This process tries to boil it down and get the people who are actually closest to the work involved in the planning of the work. … The goal is, you become a lot more efficient in what you do, and by doing that, you finish earlier, which is a benefit to the owner because time is money.”

This detailed planning system is part of a growing trend in the construction industry called lean construction. Using many of the ideas developed in the manufacturing sector, construction companies have been applying new techniques to become more efficient and effective in their work.

The concept

The Lean Construction Institute (LCI), a Louisville, Colo.-based nonprofit organization founded in August 1997, defines lean construction as “a production management-based approach to project delivery.” The goal is to maximize value and minimize waste through practices such as designing the facility and its delivery process together, structuring the work throughout the process, striving to manage and improve performance for the entire project rather than one activity and monitoring results.

“Almost everybody says we’ve been doing this for years,” said Gregory Howell, who founded the LCI with Glenn Ballard. “They’re not dishonest, they actually believe what they say, but what they usually mean is that they are collaborative in their nature and that we like to work honestly and openly with people.”

However, Howell sees lean construction as a total change in the process of constructing a building and a cultural change for companies involved. Instead of top-down authority, which “pushes for local productivity and ignores the predictability of work flow in projects,” Howell said, lean construction focuses on better coordination at the construction and design phases, applying production management principles to the project and working as a collective enterprise so that everyone strives to reduce waste and save money for the entire project, not just his or her task.

Many of these principles stem from the Toyota Production System, known for ideas such as just-in-time delivery, where items are put into production when ordered, and anyone in the production line can stop the process if a defect is detected.

The concept is gaining momentum in construction as projects such as the $5.5 billion Sutter Hospital development in California have gained international attention for their lean methods. Contractors such as The Boldt Co. in Wisconsin and Messer Construction Co. in Cincinnati were early adopters of lean principles. These companies are “routinely getting projects done ahead of schedule and under budget,” Howell said. Now, he added, LCI seminars on lean construction are selling out, with participants in the construction industry eager to learn about the techniques.

Weitz’s approach

Similar to Weitz Co.’s pilot projects in Denver and Phoenix, which started a couple of years ago, Weitz Iowa is implementing the Last Planner system of lean construction on the division’s first lean pilot project. After hearing about the other two projects, Amy Fetters, senor project manager for Weitz Iowa, thought Last Planner would help Weitz meet its aggressive timeline for Myers Hospital.

“I thought it would be a good way to try to tackle the aggressive schedule requirements on the project without doing the same old same old where you try to struggle and fight and meet the schedule objectives,” she said.

The Last Planner system is a detailed scheduling system, where milestones are set a few months out and then those field leaders involved in getting the project to that milestone meet to work through the steps of how to get there. It encourages foremen to dig through construction documents early to see if they are missing any information or materials needed to complete the project, then resolve those problems before they get on site. It also has crews work together on a sequence for getting activities done most efficiently.

The plan-ahead method is especially effective, given that construction on Iowa Health-Des Moines’ hospital has begun before all design details are finalized, meaning some crews may need architects to make decisions before proceeding. Representatives from Iowa Health, Shive-Hattery Inc. (the architect) and Weitz are also at those “pull-plan” sessions to better understand the process and help work through details.

“It eliminates crisis management that a lot of times the office side has to get into,” Fetters said, “because you have to chase an answer that’s holding something up in the field.”

Fetters and the project superintendent lead the meetings, which usually last a couple of hours and occur about once every couple of months. From there, Weitz creates a pages-long schedule and every week subcontractors are given a schedule for that week. If tasks for the week are not completed, the team works together to figure out how to get them done.

Though it takes more time upfront, Tousley said it saves time “exponentially” compared with having a crew arrive and not have the materials they need or having to rework something because of a mistake. The subcontractors are able to see the bigger picture of what their work means to meeting a deadline. If deadlines are met, the building owner could save money if the project is done faster and with fewer mistakes.

Despite a bad winter, Fetters said, “we have not missed any of our milestones. There are things we’re behind on, but the things that matter, the critical path items, we are hitting those.” Crews also try to build in time for unfavorable weather in the schedule.

Getting crews on board has been a bit of an education process, including a learning session led by the LCI in December. Subcontractors also received information about the Last Planner process when Weitz sent out its bidding packages and then their contracts required them to participate in that process. Some contracts also require crews to share equipment, such as using one set of scaffolding for multiple tasks, with the goal of saving the entire project money, not just one group.

“There hasn’t been anybody that’s pushed back,” Fetters said.

Weitz may consider rolling this process out to other projects, but believes it is most effective on longer and more complicated projects, like the hospital, rather than a quick speculative building project. Tousley said the company could adopt other lean practices, including ones to make its internal processes more efficient.

Other methods

Kaizen is a term Ryan Companies US often uses throughout the company, referring to the Japanese word for “continuous and incremental improvement,” a business philosophy for improvement in productivity and performance that is often associated with the Toyota Production System.

Doug Dieck, vice president of development at Ryan, says the company has examined about 50 processes company-wide, from its payment system to building new construction projects to its development relationship with clients, such as Target Corp. This focus on lean processes has led to an easier and faster system for paying invoices, a new database management program and overall less overhead as employees have been reassigned to other parts of the company as it has grown, rather than needing to hire more workers.

“Are we doing twice the work with the same amount of people?” Dieck said, “Not yet, but we’re working towards that. It’s definitely a goal.”

Locally, Ryan was called in near the end of the design phase of the Whiteline Lofts to look at how it could reduce costs and streamline the processes on the project. “We had to come up with a creative solution of how to, A, implement and, B, solve their problems without compromising quality,” Dieck said, which he said Ryan was able to achieve.

In the construction field, one of “the most important components” for Ryan is to have a kickoff meeting, where representatives from the owners or developers, the architecture firm and the construction company meet to go through the entire project.

Ball Construction Services LLC was forced to adopt some lean practices in the construction of the Davis Brown Tower, given its quick deadline and tight location downtown, meaning limited space for materials and equipment. One of the main methods used was to have some of the building’s parts prefabricated off site while other crews could continue to work on the project; those prefabricated pieces would arrive just in time to be placed on the building when needed.

“We try to look at things in a more defined plan and process today than perhaps we would have done in a downtown environment five years ago,” said Rick Ball, president of Ball Construction.

Better planning before construction and striving to have crews arrive just in time for work are things Ball Construction focuses on with all its projects. “Basically,” Ball said, “we’re trying to organize projects in a manner so that we can be efficient with manpower and materials.

“We spend more time on paper in the office preparing for application than we do once we’re in the field. The most expensive time for a project is the physical labor and the efforts when you’re on site, so the more efficient you can be generally translates into better applications, safe procedures and generally the objective is to get to higher quality.” The rising cost of materials in the past couple of years also encourages builders to stay on project budgets, Ball said.

Still, weather and other problems can throw a project off schedule, creating more work in the office to rework the timeline, Ball said. Project leaders from Ball and subcontractors meet once a week to look at what tasks are ahead that week and the ownership group meets about once every two weeks.

Ball expects lean construction to gain momentum locally as more owners ask how construction crews work on a project. He said Aviva USA was the first company he has seen that has specifically asked about lean construction on its bid proposal to build its new West Des Moines headquarters.

“I would say today the owner in most cases is getting more and more sophisticated about the products they are buying,” he said.