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ConTech for Owners: What to Prioritize on Your Project

When commissioning a project, it can be challenging to select a winning bid. You want a fair price, but can’t afford to sacrifice quality, either. As more contractors are incorporating technology in their processes, the use of digital tools is an increasingly important differentiator. But anyone can purchase technology; how do you know you’ve hired a contractor that uses it well?

Look for Tools, Not Toys

It’s easy to impress when showcasing futuristic innovation labs with larger-than-life displays, but how does that translate to the jobsite? As the client, it’s key to distinguish between useful tools and eye candy. To be worthwhile, the technology needs to have an impact outside the lab—most importantly on your project. Here are some things to look for:

Data capture

Is data on a project’s progress consistently being collected? Contractors have a wide variety of automated sensors and other tools that collect input on an ongoing basis to track how a project is progressing. Ask your contractor what data they collect and how it will be used, and whether you’ll have access to it.

Visibility enhancement

Now armed with valuable knowledge, you’ll want to share it. Think about who can see the data—is relevant information shared with the entire project team in real time? Contractors work most efficiently when their teams are consistently updated with accurate information, but if they’re using static, paper-based plans, that isn’t happening. Similarly, it doesn’t matter how much data is collected if it isn’t shared in a way that increases visibility for the project’s architect, trade partners and owner.

Process improvement

Is the data that’s being collected and shared also being used to benchmark and improve performance? It’s much easier to improve a process when you have accurate information about its input and results. If you know how many people were required to complete a task last week, how long it took them and the amount of materials involved, you can try to find ways to accomplish the same task faster or with fewer resources going forward. If your contractor is consistently optimizing performance in this way, you’re guaranteed to have a better project.

Collaboration enablement

Project teams that can communicate easily have a much higher chance of running a successful project. Digital tools that facilitate collaboration are among the most valuable technology investments because they can both spread improvements made on one phase of a project to others, as well as identify issues early in order to limit their scope. Without effective ways to collaborate, these insights would be limited to a small group of people and left largely untapped.

Organizational commitment

Any company can purchase technology, but using it effectively requires comprehensive training, ongoing feedback and above all, user buy-in. Contractors that invest time and money making sure their digital tools are used as intended will get much better results than those that don’t follow through with the initiative. Teams that are saddled with new technology that’s difficult to learn, access, or that isn’t compatible with the systems and devices they already use are being set up to fail. Contractors that are committed to consistently empowering their teams will reliably deliver superior projects.

Communicate Your Vision

It can be hard to evaluate these criteria externally, but keeping these considerations in mind when reviewing bids will increase your chances of engaging with a contractor who can partner with you to effectively execute your vision. Communicating openly throughout the project and collaboratively addressing any issues that arise will help your contractor understand your expectations and deliver their best work. How will you engage differently in the bidding process next time?

(This article was previously published in Constructech)

Your Data Should Work for You—Not the Other Way Around

It’s no secret that good data, when harnessed, enables better decisions. However, the long-standing challenge for construction has been in collecting and accessing high-quality data.

As Touchplan’s President Michael Carr wrote in a previous post, it’s worth taking a hard look at how data affects your business: “What decisions are you required to make today with limited or no data? How would your business change if you had new insights into these areas from reliable data? How disadvantaged would you be if your competitors had these insights and you didn’t? This is high-stakes stuff, and, as with any disruption, there will be winners and losers. The good news is that there is still time for those of us in construction to respond to our advantage.”

And the industry has responded, increasingly adopting digital tools in recent years that have made data collection significantly easier. Whether through video site capture, monitoring through drones and sensors, or digital collaboration and project tracking tools, getting accurate insight into the state of your project is exponentially easier than ever before.

Unlock Productivity Metrics

Collaboration tools such as Touchplan facilitate real-time data collection and sharing that increases visibility and enables more precise planning and communication. Data on a project’s progress and productivity metrics is especially useful information for contractors. Strategically tracking productivity data has huge implications for everything from project bidding to materials to staffing levels. Granular visibility into production rates allows you to better calculate your bids, and can help in determining how many people will be needed to get a job done in a given timeframe.

Trade partners also benefit from access to this data to help count their materials. Those quantities, along with information on the headcount and time required for each task can be used to better gauge production rates and the cost for materials and labor. Better insight into all of these factors can help trade partners work more effectively with general contractors in identifying any potential issues or delays and working to address them proactively, minimizing disruption to the project schedule.

Empower Users

At Touchplan, we focus on making it easy for front-end users to input accurate data because it benefits everyone involved—including the users themselves, which incentivizes accurate reporting. This will become even easier within the next few months as we unveil our new mobile app and dashboards. Stay tuned for more details on these new features soon!

How Sparrow Hospital’s Renovation Beat the Odds

Granger Construction undertook a $3.1 million project to substantially renovate the 5 Foster Pediatric Unit of Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. In addition to the complexity of working within a functioning hospital, the looming threat of RSV season (respiratory syncytial virus, which commonly spreads in the colder months and poses a high risk to young children) added urgency to the completion deadline. Work began in mid-September of 2016, and the project was slated to finish in early February of 2017.

Conventional wisdom dictated that renovations within a working hospital can’t be completed in fewer than three to four months, and if patient rooms and wall movement are included in the scope, in fewer than six months. That timeline created a dilemma for Sparrow Hospital, which needed its pediatric unit back at full capacity sooner than that.

Further complicating the situation, all of the work needed to be done in tight, occupied space on the fifth floor of the hospital, taking care not to disturb the floors above or below. The floor below houses a cardiac recovery ward, and at one point valves on that floor had to be shut off in order to isolate the fifth floor. This required extensive coordination with the nursing staff, hospital management and the owner’s representative to ensure that no operations were disrupted. Walls couldn’t be closed off until the valves and pipes had been replaced, so the timing of every step of the project needed to be accurately predicted and adhered to.

While the work was in progress, the pediatrics unit had to be relocated to other areas of the hospital, putting pressure on the operations of those units. Additionally, the project’s scope increased as it progressed, which required stringent change management on the part of the project team to ensure that the pediatric ward could continue to operate.

In the face of these complexities, the project team, under the guidance of Lean consultant Hal Macomber, decided to implement Touchplan to make sure they could still meet their deadlines.

High-Stakes Planning

The project’s anticipated scope consisted of removing all of the drywall and completing an architectural finish of the walls, floors and ceilings. However, the scope increased when it became clear that more work including valve replacements, plumbing work, the removal of galvanized piping, and servicing of med-gas outlets would also be necessary. Since the hospital was still fully operational, careful management was required to ensure that none of the work interfered with patient care.

To accommodate the increasing scope of an already challenging project, the team knew that they would have to work very strategically. Under Macomber’s guidance, they implemented Touchplan and were the first team to combine it with takt planning. The takt planning approach centered on four flow units (the unit used to measure the completion of work); the twenty-six patient rooms, the nursing core, the pediatric rehab area and the corridor and support space. The teams adjusted their takt planning process depending on the function of the space in which they were working. For example, work on the nursing core was more focused on systems due to the complexities of the plumbing and HVAC infrastructure than the work on the patient rooms. The patient room planning was primarily based around space constraints.

A key motivating factor for every team involved, from the Granger staff to the building inspectors, was the ultimate purpose behind the work. According to Project Manager Bill Bofysil, “The inspection process, with the HFES, the Health Department, and Bureau of Higher Services, went off without a hitch. Same with local inspectors. They [were] very accommodating to the workflow that we established, because they had to come out multiple times for inspection to allow us to keep progress…Everybody bought into the idea [that]…it’s for the kids.”

A Healthy Result

The combination of ambitious implementation of new strategies and the motivating purpose behind the project combined to yield a very successful result. The project was completed six weeks ahead of schedule; rather than finishing the renovations in early to mid-February as originally forecast, the work was completed before Christmas.

The accelerated completion was a double boon to the hospital, which was not only able to operate at full capacity during the onset of the RSV-intensive winter season, but also relieve pressure on the other wards that pediatric services had been occupying.

Because the project finished with time and money left over, the team was able to expand upon some of the renovations to deliver some of the hospital’s wish-list items, such as an upgraded corridor finish outside of the pediatric unit.

According to Bofysil, the communication Touchplan enabled was also critical to the project’s success. “The best part of the collaboration/communication is that you get to find the variation as far as the roadblocks that are there through the communication and you’re able to plan around those, which you typically don’t do on a traditional setup.” The communication also facilitated the coordination required to maintain a predictable workflow, which was vitally important to minimizing disruption to the pediatric ward and the adjacent floors.

As is often the case, success on one project quickly spreads. The productivity metrics from the Sparrow Hospital project are so persuasive that Granger has already won new work on the strength of that project’s results, embodying their commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

Project Highlights

Finished six weeks ahead of schedule
Completion was accelerated through better communication and planning
Cost savings enabled upgrades and wish-list items
Sparrow Hospital was able to open in time for its high season
Successful first-time use of Touchplan and takt time planning

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Technology Alone Won’t Save Your Project — Here’s What Will

The statistics likely are familiar by now: construction is behind almost every other industry when it comes to using technology. To put it in perspective, out of twenty-two industries, construction comes in at a whopping second-to-last place for digitization — above only agriculture and hunting — according to a study by McKinsey & Company. Construction’s productivity has trailed overall economic productivity, and even declined in some areas since the 1990s, according to McKinsey.

However, organizational mindsets are changing fast when it comes to buying technology. Venture capital investment in construction technology in 2018 was over $1.05 billion, an increase of thirty percent from the year before according to a report published by professional services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. According to the report, collaboration software is the most active category, closely followed by off-site construction and project management.

With a widening pool of technology solutions to choose from, many contractors are currently developing their adoption strategies as the consensus around the benefits of digitization grows. While this is a positive development, it’s crucial to remember that technology alone won’t solve the industry’s productivity problem. The right people and a goal-oriented mindset need to be in place in order to get the most out of these tools, or these investments won’t pay off.

The Right Tools and the Right People

While adopting technology can provide a business with enormous gains in productivity and profitability, it’s imperative that the teams using it are empowered to succeed through comprehensive training and demonstrations that focus on realistic use cases and challenges. It’s also crucial that teams are made aware of the benefits the business is seeking to get from using a given tech solution — if they aren’t, success will be very difficult to measure and define, and buy-in will suffer.

Common Pitfalls

According to a 2017 report from McKinsey & Company, common pitfalls include a lack of resources to manage and update software and train employees on how to use it. Another frequent obstacle is the incompatibility of new technology with legacy systems that companies have in place. When researching tools, be sure to check out more than the actual software. Ask about onboarding processes and time, review support documentation and availability, and note any integrations with other tools.

How to Choose

Choosing software that’s difficult to use or access will also discourage user adoption. Technology is pointless if it isn’t used, so the easier it is for people to learn and put into practice consistently, the greater the likelihood of widespread use and a positive return on investment. Look for intuitive software that’s easy to learn, and your team will be up and running in no time. In case a problem does arise, make sure that your technology vendor offers responsive customer support services that users can quickly consult to resolve any issues and optimize performance.

Who Can Help?

Support from leadership is a critical component of any technology initiative. If the C-suite isn’t invested in a new solution and closely tracking its impact, any gains are likely to be minimal. A successful implementation requires a clear goal driving the initial adoption, sustained reflection and feedback once use has begun, and consistent benchmarking of progress with a view to continuous improvement. It’s worth noting that leadership doesn’t always come from the top down; sometimes the most actionable improvements come from the jobsite trailer, not the board room.

Get Started Now

Whatever technology you’re considering, now is the time to plan implementation and put it into motion. As the industry moves toward an automated future, companies that are able to streamline their operations and support their people through the process will have a competitive advantage over those that continue with business as usual. To ensure success, make sure to dedicate sufficient resources not only to getting started with a new tool, but for ongoing training, updates and feedback from the team. Finally, be sure to identify key individuals who can take the lead in mentoring others and maintaining momentum around the rollout to help boost ROI and increase employees’ commitment to new technology.

Image credit: Peter Dargatz

Why ConTech Matters for Owners

ConTech solutions are typically discussed in terms of their benefits for contractors, but any technology that adds value to a project’s planning and execution benefits its owner as well by reducing the risk of cost overruns and delays.

The use of a digital collaboration tool like Touchplan encourages transparency, accountability and efficiency. Based on the Last Planner® System, a Lean planning framework for construction, the tool enables all stakeholders to have the same visibility into real-time information as the project team. Owners can see how the project is progressing in full detail, and are able to coordinate more proactively with their project team. This improves the working relationship by increasing trust and satisfaction with the overall experience.

The Benefits of Digitized Planning

In addition to increased transparency, digital project planning boosts schedule and commitment reliability, enabling everyone to track changes in real time. The use of a digital tool makes the plan accessible to everyone, including the owner, and makes it easier to see that tasks are being completed on time. It also facilitates the use of increasingly popular alternative project delivery methods, like integrated project delivery, design-build, or construction-manager-at-risk by tapping into everyone’s best thinking.

Collaborating to execute projects more efficiently and predictably minimizes the chances of conflicts or disputes. Precise and transparent planning incentivizes reliability and lessens the likelihood of one party attempting to recoup perceived losses through change orders, cutting corners, or delays. If a delay does occur, there is a proven system available to the team to rework the plan to create a recovery schedule, maximizing the likelihood that a project will be completed on time or early. Shortening a project’s duration and minimizing risk translates into savings in contingency funds, which can then be used to expand the project’s scope to address wish-list items.

Real Results

On a recent BOND project to relocate Lahey Hospital’s general internal medicine department to a nearby office building, the team used Touchplan to overcome a delayed start and a major design change that required significant rework to finish five weeks ahead of schedule. By scheduling and coordinating their work more precisely, the team saved time and money, returning four percent in savings to the owner which was reallocated to support end user requests.

Additionally, the early completion allowed the hospital more time for setting up the new space. “The end users were able to spend more time ahead of the move in a finished space doing training and getting supplies and equipment into place. There was also additional time for administration, philanthropy, marketing and other departments to document and promote the site prior to seeing the first patients,” said John Navarro, Project Manager of Planning, Design, and Construction at Lahey Hospital.

What was particularly notable about this project was that it was the team’s first experience with Touchplan and Lean construction. “The project was, overall, extremely smooth,” said Mike Walsh, Vice President of Healthcare and Life Sciences at BOND. “At first, I think a lot of the players were very skeptical, they had not really been exposed to the Last Planner System® or Lean construction and by the efforts of our team… [we] got to lay out what our vision was and our goals for the job, and how we were going to get there and to see if we could improve that…and with everyone sitting at the table I think they came around right from the beginning kick-off meeting.”

What Is Touchplan?

Touchplan is a web-based, accessible-anywhere construction collaboration tool that quantifies and qualifies areas for continuous improvement. Based on the Last Planner System®, a Lean methodology developed for the building process, Touchplan enables teams to improve performance on every project. Ready to use within minutes, Touchplan allows teams to collaborate in real time to deliver projects that finish weeks—and even months—earlier than originally planned. Trusted by over $22 billion of construction on 800+ global projects and ranked by Constructech and G2 Crowd as a top construction management tool, twenty-one percent of the Engineering News-Record top 100 use Touchplan to finish ahead.

4 Tips for a Zero-Punch-List Project

Getting to the end of a project only to tackle hundreds of punch-list items is anything but satisfying. Punch lists, or lists of work that needs to be redone, typically result from some kind of process failure during the project. Generally, a punch list item is work that wasn’t done correctly the first time, or that was damaged by other work that was done afterwards to the extent that it doesn’t meet standards.

While most people accept punch lists as a necessary evil, they’re more avoidable than you might think. Read on for four tips from Lean construction expert Hal Macomber on how to run your projects in a post-rework world.

1. Define Acceptance Criteria Early

Make it a practice to establish a benchmark for each task the first time it’s performed. A benchmark is set by having each type of work inspected the first time it’s done to ensure that it’s acceptable to the architect before the work continues. The benchmark then serves as a visual standard for the team to reference going forward. “It depends on the project, but if you have eighty-four rooms and you benchmark the first one, you can avoid all the mistakes you made on the first one in the eighty-three additional units. So it’s possible that you could build eighty-three units without rework associated with standard,” says Macomber.

2. Foster a “Customer Mindset”

If you can get your teams to view on another as customers, the entire mindset of the project changes. When people see the next trade in line as their customer—rather than the eventual occupant of the building—the need to optimize the use of the space becomes more immediate, as does the obligation to protect one another’s work. “Get people to treat each other’s work with respect, treat each other as customers and ensure that you are not going to make work for other people, just like you don’t want other people to make work for you,” advises Macomber.

3. Look for Patterns

One way to preemptively minimize punch list items is to look for systemic patterns that may be causing issues on your project. Macomber offers an example: “If a procurement was held up because a submittal took too long to get approved by the architect, engineer and owner, the likelihood that the next submittal that goes through the process will also be late could be very high.” Noticing problematic patterns and addressing them early on at the system level will greatly minimize your punch list.

4. Address Punch List Items Daily

Along the same lines, punching your list (figuratively speaking) early and often is important. By waiting until an entire floor is finished, for example, you increase the likelihood of having to do the same type of rework multiple times. “If someone took a shortcut, they probably didn’t take it once. They probably took it as many times as they had to do that task,” says Macomber. Set a benchmark as early as possible to avoid having to fix the same mistake multiple times later on.

Macomber recommends daily punch lists for maximum efficiency. “Often people think that a zero-punch-list project means that you punch as you go so that when you get to the certificate of occupancy, you’re done. But that’s not what we mean by zero-punch-list project. We mean you didn’t have anything to punch in the first place.”

Touchplan on Best Construction Project Management Software List

Touchplan has been named one of user review site G2 Crowd’s “13 Best Construction Project Management Software Solutions in 2019.” G2 Crowd collects objective reviews from users of a variety of business technologies to enable customers to easily find a solution that meets their needs.

All reviews are written by verified users of the product, and must answer a set of specific questions regarding their experience. The site’s review model allows technology buyers to research beyond analyst reports or vendor-supplied materials so that they can purchase with greater confidence and a higher chance of satisfaction in their choice based on information provided by industry peers.

Currently ranked third on the list, Touchplan scored 4.1 out of 5 stars across its user reviews. According to a featured review, “Touchplan has made it so that we can ask our subcontractors/vendors for input on building their tasks into our overall project schedule. They prep this information ahead of time and we can all sit down together to build our schedule. It’s a very Lean process and has eliminated the need for us to transcribe information from conference room walls into a digital format: the record schedule is being created in real time.”

Another featured review shared tips for success, advising users to “Ensure that everyone stays involved. Hold weekly meetings or even morning standing meetings to make sure everyone checks in and is on track. Make sure that this technical [product] is compatible with the personnel that you have. If they are unwilling to use the computer and quickly check things complete, etc., then you will be unsuccessful.”

Having previously been designated a “High Performer” for Winter 2019, this is the second distinction Touchplan has received from G2 Crowd since December.

“We’re thrilled to see our customers confirming the value they get from using Touchplan. To achieve this ranking as a five-year-old company tells us that we’re on the right track as we work to improve the way projects are planned and executed,” said Josie Cutts, Senior Customer Success Manager at Touchplan.

4 Ways to Improve Projects Using Digital Platforms

Thinking about using technology to step up your project planning? Many contractors have amplified the benefits of a Lean or Last Planner® approach through the use of digital tools. Here’s a rundown of how your projects will change, and tips to set you up for success from industry expert Hal Macomber.

1. Identify a Guide

“The first thing that you need to be successful in both analog and digital settings is someone who knows how to use the Last Planner System®. Somebody needs to know what they should be doing. What does success look like? You must have somebody who knows what it looks like when it’s happening. It’s always easier if the team has experience. But one person on the team who is recognized as being knowledgeable is sufficient. Just let that person lead.”

2. Improve Faster

“There are some very practical aspects of why your first weekly work plan needs to be digital. All the calculations are done for you. All statuses can be distributed. You don’t have to be chasing people around. They have tablets, they can tell you that they finished or they didn’t finish. Right off the bat, you have a far better chance that you’re going to get a good report on percent plan complete (PPC). I don’t mean that it’s going to be high PPC, I mean it’s going to be an accurate reporting of what happened, and that you’re in a position to share that promptly and to improve on that.

If you don’t have the data, you can’t improve right away. Digital tools immediately give you the data. So, from the beginning, you can make data-informed improvements from week two.”

3. Change the Dynamics

“Another key to making the Last Planner System® work is to shift the relationships of last planners to each other. We get high PPC and good flow when we have trade partner foremen treating each other as partners, as customers. How does software help this happen? The principal way is in the always-available visual display of the customer-performer relationships in the promise period. Nobody is able to do that when they’re analog. But if you start with digital, you get there in week one.”

4. Get Real-Time Data

“The latency in the analog approach makes the data less useful. Even when we get it, we’ve already gone on to different work. Eliminating that latency makes the data much more valuable. It’s much more like driving with a dashboard. What you’re looking at on the dashboard is useful while you’re driving, as opposed to calculating the miles per gallon of the last 100 miles you’ve driven. The usefulness of data is dramatically diminished by the latency, and you don’t even get the data if you didn’t put in the administrative effort. But with digital tools, all that latency goes away. And you get the benefits from that on day one.”

Touchplan Vlog: Why Your Project Needs Real-Time Updates

It’s inevitable that your schedule on any project will be subject to changes, but is everyone getting the same accurate information? Too often, teams aren’t notified in a consistent manner when there’s been an update to the project, resulting in confusion, delays and even disputes. The larger the project, the more of an issue this is likely to become. Watch the video below to learn how enabling your team to stay on track through real-time project updates will help you hit your project deadlines.

Continue reading “Touchplan Vlog: Why Your Project Needs Real-Time Updates”

How Make Ready Planning Can Make — or Break — Your Project

You have the right team in place, the materials have arrived on time, and even the weather is cooperating. “What could go wrong?” you think to yourself as the steam rises from your coffee in a perfect arc. And yet, three months later, the project is behind schedule, over budget, and no one even has time for coffee. How did this happen?

Incomplete or nonexistent make ready planning has derailed many projects, and yours is simply the latest casualty. Make ready planning (also called look-ahead planning) is a crucial step in the Last Planner® System between a pull phase plan and the weekly work plan. The aim is always to produce flow for every phase of work. When work is ready for people and people are ready for work, you get good flow and good productivity. The CM or GC’s superintendent (or a designee) is responsible for making work ready.

When you establish a pull phase plan, you’re establishing what the team says should be done. When you create the weekly work plan, you’re saying what you will do. But just because you should be able to do something doesn’t mean that you can do something, which can lead to promises being made that aren’t fulfilled. Make ready planning is designed to prevent this by taking time to establish what can be done and identify constraints.

During this step, the building process is broken down into specific operations or collections of operations, if it’s possible to do more than one at a time. These operations are broken down further into smaller tasks that can be promised individually. Planning at this granular level also identifies any safety and permitting issues that may need to be resolved.

Types of Constraints

There are three major types of constraints that are systematically uncovered during make ready planning. The first type is a directive, which involves getting direction from another party. Permits, RFIs and submittal approvals are all examples of directives.

The second type is a resource constraint. A resource is defined as anything that carries a load, and can include equipment, people, tools or space. “If you’re working in an electrical closet overhead, how many people can work in electric closet overhead? Maybe only one person. That space carries the load of one person,” explains Lean consultant Hal Macomber.

The third type of constraint is materials and prerequisite work. Material constraints are considered resolved when the material is purchased and promised for delivery on time. Increasingly, “on time” is defined as “just-in-time” delivery in which materials are only delivered shortly before installation in order to avoid wasting space, handling the material multiple times and disrupting the jobsite.

Plan Ahead

In order to have time to deal with any constraints identified, make ready planning should be completed well in advance of the work. “The creators of the Last Planner® System said we do this on at least a six-week horizon,” says Macomber.

When make ready planning isn’t performed with enough lead time, or is skipped entirely, constraints are usually identified too late to be addressed without causing delays or rework. If teams take for granted that a project will go according to plan and go directly from pull planning to regular work planning, they risk unforeseen delays and complications.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve done make ready planning, there’s an easy way to check. “If you’re talking about processes versus operations or some small collection of operations, the work’s not ready,” says Macomber.

Ready to start gaining on your schedule again? Invest time and thought in make ready planning and you’ll see the results you’re after.