Planning - Integrating the 4 Key Responsibilities

There are four major responsibilities the foreman has that often seem to be competing with each other.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

Effective planning combined with regular feedback (at least weekly) combined with a structured look at how to improve each week is the key to integrating these four key responsibilities of a Foreman

Field Productivity: Planning, Integrating the four key responsibilites. Safety, Production, Customer Satisfaction, and Quality.

Greg Howell and Glen Ballard founded the Lean Construction Institute (LCI) based on analysis of construction projects showing that on average only 54% of the tasks planned for a week by the Foreman actually got completed. 

They developed The Last Planner System (LPS) that focuses on helping the Foreman plan then execute more effectively.  

The system includes a structured weekly learning element for the project team where they look back at what they accomplished measuring their Percent Plan Complete (PPC) and doing some rapid Root Cause Analysis to improve the process for the following week.  

PPC is a simple measurement - the quantity of tasks that were completed during the week compared to those that were planned.  This is described well in this whitepaper from LCI.

These tools are best used for a whole project team but can be effectively used by a single contractor on a project.  


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

Related Training
Labor Productivity
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Changes and Cash Flow Improvement
Construction is a cash-intensive business and change orders are often one of the root causes of poor cash flow. A 30-day improvement to change management workflow can generate over $400K in additional cash flow for a $50M contractor.
Levels of Improvement: Start with the Foundation
Every process in your business including field productivity will go through three levels of improvement: From predictable to productive to scalable. Trying to skip levels is the surest way to slow down improvements across the company.
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.