Commercial Lean Building – Cutting Waste

The implementation of lean building and construction has been getting traction over the last several years as a growing number of firms understand the advantages of applying lean thinking to building and construction. The principle is easy enough, make the most of worth for the client while at the same time minimizing waste. Correct execution of the lean building philosophy, on the other hand, can be tough to execute. For beginners, the lean building includes an entirely various method to job delivery from standard construction techniques.

Among the other difficulties to lean building is that there isn’t one set method or process to achieve lean. There are several tools, approaches, and systems that have been established to equate lean believing in building and construction. Much of these can be utilized independently or jointly to carry out lean practice in construction projects.

Cutting costs, reducing building and construction times, increasing performance and effectively and successfully managing projects can all be attained through successful implementation of lean principles. These concepts need to drive and direct you to find and establish the tools and techniques for achieving the goals of lean construction and taking a more holistic approach to project delivery.

Identify Value from the Customer’s Perspective

What your client truly values in a building and construction job generally exceeds delivering what’s laid out in the plans and specifications. It’s more than just the quality of your work or completing a project on time and within budget. This requires a customer-focused technique that can best be achieved by developing a relationship with the client. In lean building and construction, this should consist of all stakeholders: owner, architect, engineers, general specialist, subcontractors, and suppliers.

Recognizing customer values ought to begin early in the conceptual preparation stage of a project and be carried on through construction. It has to do with comprehending not only what your client desires, but why they want it so the task team can manage expectations and finest recommend the customer. A deep level of trust must be established between all stakeholders in order to effectively implement lean practices.

Identify Processes that Provide the Worth Stream

The value stream is simply what the client values. As soon as you have determined value from your customer’s perspective, it’s time to identify the processes needed to provide the value stream. All steps in the procedure need to be thoroughly drawn up to identify what activities are involved. Take into consideration the labor, details, materials, and devices needed for each activity. Any steps in a process that don’t include a value for your client need to be eliminated.

Getting Rid of Waste

The lean building is accomplished by cutting out waste. The common types of waste in commercial construction are simple to keep in mind since they lead to DOWNTIME.

Problems
This is anything not done properly the first time which results in rework. This wastes time in having to make the repair work and materials required to fix the work.

Waiting
This lost time where employees are stuck awaiting products to be delivered or for preceding work to be completed. This interrupts the workflow and leads to employees waiting for work.

Not Utilizing Skill
You would not employ an electrical expert to fill a building and construction worker position. It would be a total waste of their skills, skills, and knowledge.

Transportation
This can be the transport of equipment, products, and employees to a job site before they are needed, or it can refer to the transmission of info with no included value.

Inventory
In lean building and construction, you want to move toward “just in time” stock as opposed to “just in case” stock.

Excess Processing
Excess processing is normally generated when needing to deal with too many circumstances of other waste such as defects or stock. Double-checking or including extra procedures to attempt and get rid of other locations of waste will involuntarily lead to more waste from over processing.

Attaining Work Flow Processes

The goal of lean construction is to attain a continuous workflow that is dependable and foreseeable. Each stage of production is done in sequence. For example, you would not start hanging drywall in space till all the electrical and plumbing was roughed in. In order to accomplish circulation, all celebrations have to interact and work together to prevent disruptions. You wish to avoid workers awaiting work or vice versa. Dividing a job up into different production zones can assist specialists to guarantee they have the capacity to end up each task on schedule. If one stage of production gets behind or ahead of schedule, it is essential to communicate and make changes to prevent the workers from awaiting work scenario.

Utilizing Pull Planning and Scheduling

When utilizing pull preparation or scheduling the work is launched based upon downstream need in order to develop reputable workflows. Because work is done sequentially and the conclusion of one job releases work on the next job. This requires beginning with a milestone or target conclusion date and working backward to schedule work when it can be performed.

In lean building and construction pull planning is done by those performing the work, generally the subcontractors, through communication and collaboration with each other to determine the schedule of jobs. This is since they are best matched for determining their capacity for performing a given job. They can work with the next subcontractor, or consumer, downstream to collaborate schedules and handoffs.

Refining the Processes Through Constant Improvements

Continually making improvements to further get rid of waste and include worth is critical in order to perfect your lean building and construction procedures. Not only must changes be made throughout the private task to identify and minimize waste however taking what you gain from task to job will allow you to continuously innovate new ways to include value and eliminate waste.