Field Productivity - The Improvement Pyramid

Few things will improve the competitiveness of a contractor more than materially improving field productivity.

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An improvement of a few minutes per day to actual installation time compounded monthly is worth about $800K per year for a $25M contractor. What is it worth to you?

Field Productivity: The Improvement Pyramid. Start with the Foundation of basic field productivity techniques & improvements. Then progress up to Virtual Construction and Prefabrication including full modularization. Next, integrate your supply chain at the workflow and technology levels then fully integrate with the whole project team providing synergies from supply chain through architect in alignment with the project owner's business strategies.

Look at improvements to field productivity as 4 major stages of a pyramid and start with the foundation:

  1. Basic field productivity techniques and improvements focused on creating the “Perfect Day” for the field by relentlessly focusing on the 6 Pillars of Productivity. This foundation will amplify every other layer of the pyramid. 
  2. Virtual Construction and Prefabrication when done correctly will dramatically improve productivity. Done incorrectly they will create an unbelievable amount of stress on the team as well as waste.  
  3. Supply Chain integration at the levels of risk management, workflows and technology can eliminate significant waste while improving the schedule.  
  4. From the project owner and general contractor side integrating all trade partners and leveraging lean construction techniques is really the top of the pyramid. Like all other layers, if done well the improvements are amazing. Done poorly and failures are just as big.  

Improving Field Productivity Workshop


Field Productivity - The Improvement Pyramid
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Field Productivity - The Improvement Pyramid
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Field Productivity - The Improvement Pyramid
An improvement of a few minutes per day to actual installation time compounded monthly is worth about $800K per year for a $25M contractor. What is it worth to you? Improvements to field productivity can be viewed as 4 major stages of a pyramid.
Impacted Productivity - Disrupted Workflow (No Schedule "Flow")
One of the biggest impacts to productivity in construction is when tasks cannot be completed as planned. When this happens frequently, it starts to impact every aspect of the contractor’s scoreboard in a negative way starting with customer satisfaction.
Time-on-Tools and Minimum Required Installation
Labor productivity IS NOT the biggest problem with field productivity. Under similar conditions the variation in how fast two crafts people actually “turn wrenches” is about 2X but there are far bigger problems to tackle. Focus on these three areas.