Lean Project Process and Construction Documents

I’m not going to spend time introducing lean practices here.  If you want further information on what exactly it is, let your Google fingers get to work I would recommend the Lean Construction Institute, LCI.  I am assuming that you already know about Lean/Integrated Project Delivery and perhaps you are either currently on a lean project or are contemplating doing so.  Come on in, the water’s fine.

What I am going to talk about are what I consider to be two of the key requirements for getting lean to work and be successful.

Number one is open, transparent, and clean communication.  When I say open, I mean between all team members – those in your own organization and those other team members on the lean team.  Open means having the courage to say the hard things.  Things like holding each other accountable for missteps, for over-runs, for faulty estimates, for example.  The phrase told to me when I joined my lean team was, “thin skin, don’t come in.”  It’s true.  It’s not personal, just business.  We consider the feedback as binary data, just 1’s and 0’s, no need for emotional overlay. 

Transparent is about being vulnerable and about sharing the things that back in the old ways, you would never have dreamed of saying, like, “we can’t meet that date,” or “the work you gave us is disappointing; can you please revise it and get it back to us because now it’s impacting our schedule.” 

The clean communication part is that you conduct yourself like a consummate professional and deliver communication which is free of jabs and sarcasm, unnecessary snarky comments, or guilt trips.  And we all know that yes that happens sometimes.  If that’s who you are and you know it (and you do, it’s just that no one has stood up to your silly tyranny), it simply isn’t necessary and it’s not professional.

The second crucial requirement for a lean project to be successful is having the ongoing ability to question the process, and to redefine it and re-structure it to achieve the agreed-upon results.  One of the fundamental objectives of lean is to eliminate or minimize waste in all forms.  The only way that you can do that is to do things differently.  The only way to do things differently is to question process and not fall back into old patterns.

For example, every architect and interior designer is taught certain construction drawing practices in school.  When you begin your professional career, most likely you join a firm which has their own strategy for what goes into a Construction Document set.  The contents of the CD set, the items drawn, the items specifically not drawn, the dimensional indications, the material call-outs, the methods and means of attachment, all are very specifically defined.  So much so, that each firm’s senior staff typically go to great lengths to embed these standards into the firm’s culture and work-flow.  There are legal and philosophical reasons for all of it.  And then there are idiosyncratic elements (font styles, arrow styles, dimensional marking, e.g.) as well.  Many of these documentation standards are very strongly defended and for good reason – usually.  But in lean, things get shaken up a bit.

One of the curious things I’ve noticed is that after having worked in several prestigious international interior design firms for 15 years, and having had my firm now for 20 years, there has always been a division between the General Contractor’s construction document world and the Interior Design/Architect’s construction document world. 

There is no limit to the joking, chiding, disdain, and sometimes incredibly harsh commentary on what interior designers and architects draw and what the contractors seem to feel they need to be able to build the design.  The contractors quite frequently think that the documents are weak, incomplete, or less than effective, and that the designer who issued the set is not competent and doesn’t know about “the real world where things get built.”  The eye-rolling and the “we’ll fix this garbage in the field” is a common response from contractors when given a CD set. 

On the other hand, the ID firm frequently feels that their documents are immaculate and well beyond reproach. (Has the Smithsonian called yet to request our latest CD package to be put into their permanent collection?)  And if anyone has difficulty in understanding or interpreting their documents, then that party is surely an uneducated, knuckle dragger who couldn’t understand brilliant design if he fell on it.  The truth is, of course, both are right.  Sometimes.  No question.

But in the lean world,  if (and it must be) our collective objective is to reduce waste and communicate clearly only the essential details, facts and specifics so that the design can be built as quickly and in the most cost effective way possible, there has to be a change.  A big change. 

What I’m advocating is that from day one, those who are responsible for building should  be responsible for guiding, directing and co-creating the documents themselves.  Rather than the ID, the architect, and the rest of the “normal” consultant team designing away and then doing the documents the same way they’ve always done it, the GC and his subs should create the specific detailed parameters of what they want, need and require to build the project.  From this “inverted set,” the architect and ID can then set about drawing only what is needed.

I know this idea scares the hell out of most architects and designers.  Is your ego in the way?  Mine was initially.  Yes the set must be permitted.  Yes there are potential liability issues for the parties that stamp the drawings.  But remember, in the lean format, all parties have signed the same contract – every team member.  The risk and liability are shared by all parties. 

A CD Summit should be organized and from that, with all stakeholders present and all Last Planners present, everything should be defined and set up.  Then at pre-determined milestone dates, that CD set can be reviewed in a peer review by all parties to ensure everything is on track.  As a team they can make adjustments as needed.

The resulting document set?  Vastly different in layout, content, complexity and focus.  At a recent  Lean Summit I attended, I asked several contractors a question.  If you were handed two different CD sets, one done in a conventional format and the other done in lean methods, could you tell a difference.  The answer?  To a man, they all said absolutely yes.  The lean set would have far more detail in it and would have less fluff. 

So, my takeaway was this.  I have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.  If we want to streamline and reduce waste, and if we want to become far more effective, we must think and act differently.  There is no other way.  The future is here.