Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton

Lean is a body of knowledge dating back hundreds of years focused on sustainably growing an organization.

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During the last 20 years the construction industry has been rapidly adopting some of these tools to improve productivity.  

Field Productivity: What is Lean Construction? Maximize customer value while minimizing waste by leveraging people.

Major advancements were made by Henry Ford and during WWII with the Training Within Industry (TWI) program.  

Toyota made major contributions to the body of knowledge from 1948-1975

The term “lean” was only coined 30 years ago in 1988 by John Krafcik with Greg Howell and Glen Ballard starting to apply the concepts to construction around 1995.  


The core concept of lean is maximizing customer value by minimizing waste and leveraging people.  

The book Lean for Dummies elegantly defines value-add to the customer as having to meet 3 criteria:  

  1. The customer must be willing to pay for it.
  2. It must transform the raw materials (inputs) in some way.
  3. It must be done correctly the first time.

Learn to identify and eliminate your waste

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Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Percent Planned Complete (PPC) - Calculation Example
Yoda would be the perfect coach for managing schedules on projects: “Do or do not. There is no try.” This is the heart of Percent Planned Complete (PPC) and the weekly cycle of continuous production improvement.
Lean Principle - Value Add vs. Non Value Add
For specialty contractors the field workforce represents most of their competitive advantage as well as their biggest source of variability. Making improvements to field productivity requires deeply understanding what truly adds value to the customer.
Weekly Percent Planned Complete (PPC) and Project Performance
Improving the project planning and delivery process starts with improving predictability around the schedule. Nearly every Superintendent and Foreman is familiar with the Short-Interval-Plan (SIP) and typically fill one out weekly looking ahead 1+ weeks.