Blogs Archive

Unpacking Lean Leadership – Building A Diverse Lean Leadership Team.

Introduction

Welcome to Part 2 of our 4-part series on unpacking Lean leadership where I will discuss how to build a diverse and inclusive Lean leadership team.

Diversity candidates for your leadership team generally come from groups that are underrepresented or marginalized in the workplace. These groups can vary depending on the specific context and region, but commonly recognized diversity categories include:

Racial and Ethnic Minorities.
Women. 50% of the work force who are largely absent form industrial and manufacturing businesses. There are many reasons for this including, historical precedents and gender roles, workplace culture and discrimination, occupational segregation, work-life balance challenges and ingrained perceptions.
LGBTQ+ Community, for many of the same reasons that dissuade women entering the industrial and manufacturing workspace.
People who are differently abled. These people could include those with physical challenges, mental health conditions, or those who are neurodiverse individuals (e.g., autism spectrum, ADHD).
Veterans, particularly those who have physical or mental health challenges.
Older adults, typically those over the age of 55.
Religious minorities, specifically those groups whose religious practices are underrepresented or marginalized.
Socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals that can include people from low-income backgrounds and first-generation college students.
Immigrants and refugees who have relocated from another country, particularly those facing barriers due to language or immigration status.

These groups should be a focus for diversity and inclusion initiatives aimed at creating more equitable and representative environments.

Building a Diverse Program

Building diversity into your Lean Leadership Program is crucial for reflecting the diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and life experiences of not only your workforce but also of your customers or clients. I have seen first-hand where diversity has made business stronger, so here I am going to suggest some proven steps and strategies that have helped to effectively incorporate diversity into a Lean Leadership Team.

Define Your Lean Leadership Diversity and Inclusion Goals. We all know that without measurable goals, progress is difficult if not impossible. Define what diversity and inclusion mean for your organization and then set SMART goals.
Alignment with Values: Ensure that your SMART goals align with the organization’s core values and strategic vision. Do not start a diversity journey just to fall into line with a trend. Do it because it is the right thing to do and ensure your business values are articulated and that they underpin your strategy for diversity alignment.
Leadership Commitment: Ensure commitment from all and particularly senior leadership to champion diversity and inclusion efforts. Change from the middle is never easy so ensure all leadership levels support your leadership diversity program and that they then become and stay engaged.
Role Models: From CEO down, all leaders must be role models and demonstrate inclusion valuing diversity through inclusive language and behaviors.

Building Diverse Recruitment Strategies.

Building Diversity into your leadership team must start with an inclusive recruitment program. Like any change you may wish to make in business, building a diverse recruitment strategy needs focus and bringing together the right people. Use inclusive language in job descriptions ensuring that the job adverts are accessible to a diverse audience. Be mindful of where job adverts need to be placed to ensure your leadership opportunities are reaching underrepresented groups. Think about how to use Community Outreach and Partnerships, and engage with local religious, educational, retraining institutions and specialist recruiters. Don’t forget that employee referral program can also be very helpful if you already have some representatives from diverse communities on your team.

Dealing with Bias in Recruitment.

Bias in the recruitment processes can be both conscious and unconscious so ensure hiring managers and importantly all members of your recruitment panel should be trained on bias and inclusive hiring practices. When it comes to interviewing, build a diverse interview panel. This can be a challenge but make it a positive requirement to use diverse interview panels to bring multiple perspectives into the selection process. This will not only bring the necessary cultural diversification to your hiring process but also provide a demonstration of diversity to your job applicants.

After interviews, continue to develop your diverse pool of talent. Mentorship and sponsorship program should be created that pair diverse talent with experienced leaders. This ensures each learn from each other to the benefit of better understanding and building diverse businesses leaders.

Mentor and Coach

Build a diverse pipeline by identifying high-potential diverse talent early in their careers and provide targeted development opportunities. Encourage established leaders to mentor and coach high-potential and become advocates for the career advancement of your diversity candidates. This needs to start with leaders identifying new or current employees but also leaders need to take the time to visit schools, colleges and universities to make candidates aware of your businesses positive diversity strategy to attract diversity candidates.

It is now important to ensure the business is putting effort into creating a sustained inclusive culture. Encourage and support the formation of inclusion using Employee Resource Groups (ERG) for various diversity groups (e.g., women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, differently abled employees, etc.). Celebrate the strength of what each group can bring to the business, as well as celebrating their diversity. Remember the object is to develop a ‘team’ but to acknowledge difference by celebrating inclusion.

Involve your ERG in the leadership development process, providing a platform for diverse voices and to bring understanding of individuals needs from differing backgrounds and cultures. This can be as simple as providing a quiet room for daily prayers, ensuring ramps are built to ensure access to all areas of the business, or providing vegetarian options in your canteen or vending machines.

Feedback Mechanisms.

Use and action employee surveys, focus groups and feedback mechanisms to understand the experiences of diverse employees and leaders. Use these forums to continuously improve diversity and inclusion efforts within the leadership program. However, one word of warning: do not reach out for input and then ignore that input; such hypocrisy driven by political correctness will not build diversity or inclusion.

Succession Planning.

Develop a diverse pool of candidates for key leadership roles to ensure a sustainable pipeline and create individual development plans for diverse talent to prepare them for future leadership roles. Nurturing your own people not only brings you the right staff but is a key factor in retention when individuals see they have a future if they stay with the business. Conduct workshops on diversity and inclusion for all leaders, focusing on positives to the business by building inclusive leadership.

Here are a few examples where I have experienced changes to promote inclusion in the workplace.

Ensure all staff get opportunities not just those that look like you. Giving such an opportunity to a female graduate where none had been offered before, turned a disengaged employee into a prime mover for change who after just 6 months took my place at the annual review presenting to the national C’suite.
Providing a place for a Muslim employee to carry out prayer helped them fulfil their religious commitment and become a part of the team.
Building access ramps helped a wheelchair user gain access to a part of the paper mill previously closed off to them.
Moving from complex written instructions to pictorial instructions enabled a Hispanic operator to become a shift leader.
Including non-English speakers in work social events encouraged them to tell their friends about the business from which several were recruited and two became team leaders.
Selecting a person that was the best person for the job, who had been rejected by others just due to their size. They were easily accommodated with a golf cart to get around and also became a great mentor to a new potential leader.

Conclusion

Introducing diversity into your Lean Leadership Program requires effort but brings great reward. You will need to build a comprehensive approach that spans recruitment, development, culture, and accountability. By setting clear goals, implementing inclusive practices, and fostering an environment that values diverse perspectives, your organization can develop a diverse leadership pipeline that drives innovation, enhances problem-solving, and reflects the diversity of your workforce and customers. Time and again I have seen how this effort brings business benefit. In short if you do not have a diverse and inclusive work force you will need to do something different. Try some of the ideas above or even better think of your own.

New Study: Top 4 Factors Impacting Construction Project Schedules

Contributors:

Tim Negris, CMO
Jason Lyon, Vice President of Customer Success

MOCA Systems, Inc. used data from the Touchplan® production planning platform to analyze over 321,042 committed activities over the last 12 months to identify what issues are having the biggest impact on construction project schedules.

Key Insights – Top Schedule Variance Reasons

Schedule variances related to handoffs are the #1 reason for delayed activities, with over 168,000 reported issues.
Variances related to Staffing/crew/manpower are the second highest reported variance reason, indicating the impact of the skilled labor shortage on project schedules.
Material/Equipment-related issues are the third most cited reasons for activity delays.
Design Issues/Changes cause variances in the schedule and have the fourth number of reported issues.
Weather follows closely behind design issues/changes as the fifth largest variance reason reported.

What are variance reasons?

Variance reasons are explanations for why a planned activity that was committed to finish on a certain date was not completed as planned. Originating from the Last Planner System®, the practice of tracking variance reasons stems from the fundamental Lean principle of using data to continuously learn, improve planning, and ultimately deliver projects on time and under budget.

For example, “predecessor not ready” is a common variance reason indicating that the preceding work was not finished in time for the next activity to start. This leads to delays and requires replanning to get back on track.

The following is an analysis of the top reported variance reason types: handoffs between disciplines, staffing/crew/manpower, material/equipment-related, and design issues/changes.

Jason Lyon, Vice President of Touchplan Customer Success, provides details about each of the top categories.

Handoffs Between Disciplines

Handoffs between disciplines are the #1 reason for delayed activities, accounting for over 168,000 reported issues.

Poorly executed handoffs between disciplines are the leading cause of delays, severely impacting the master schedule in commercial construction projects.

For general contractors (GCs), this means extended deadlines, increased costs, and disrupted project timelines. Improving handoff processes is crucial to maintaining the master schedule, ensuring timely project completion, and enhancing overall efficiency and profitability.

“One of the cited variances that went into handoff variances was ‘predecessor not ready,’ which is a good example of waiting on the trade ahead to finish their work. This screams handoff. It’s the transition point where one trade partner completes their work, and another begins. When these transitions aren’t managed well, it leads to delays,” says Lyon.

Along with delays, when handoffs are not planned or executed properly, they lead to worker congestion and rework, which hampers overall productivity. As Lyon noted, “Missed handoffs equal replanning, and replanning creates more time spent in planning meetings. You have to work through the challenges that are created as a result of missed handoffs.”

Properly planning handoffs for Touchplan’s users has proven to reduce rework by 20% and planning-related project delays by 50%.

Staffing/Crew/Manpower

Staffing/Crew/Manpower issues resulted in 65,000 variances.

“The construction industry is grappling with a persistent shortage of skilled labor that is driving up costs and delaying projects,” says Lyon. “With rising labor demands and no immediate workforce solutions, contractors must proactively ensure tasks are performed efficiently and disruptions are minimized through proactive, collaborative planning practices.”

Insufficient staffing and improperly planning manpower leads to missed deadlines that can severely impact project progress. Addressing staffing variances requires ensuring that teams are optimizing the flow of labor by sequencing activities in the most efficient order possible and collaboratively planning crews with those who will be completing the work.

Material/Equipment

Material/Equipment-related issues caused 44,000 variances.

“Material and equipment-related issues often stem from delays in the delivery of supplies or machinery,” says Lyon. “When materials or equipment aren’t available as planned, it causes significant disruptions and delays in the project schedule.”

With critical materials like switchgear taking a year or more to arrive on site, teams need to address long lead items in their schedules as early as possible to minimize potential delays. Proper management of materials and equipment and the ability sequence work around their delivery are essential for preventing these variances and keeping the project on track.

Design Issues/Changes

Design Issues/Changes led to 18,000 variances.

“Design issues or changes often result in rework and delays. When there are discrepancies or modifications in the design, it leads to confusion and requires additional time to address these changes, impacting overall productivity,” says Lyon.

Addressing design issues promptly and ensuring clear communication about any changes can minimize the impact on the project timeline.

Weather

Weather-related events caused 17,350 variances.

Weather variances in construction refer to delays or disruptions in the construction schedule caused by adverse weather conditions. These variances can impact labor productivity, material delivery, and overall project timelines.

“The construction industry is extremely vulnerable to delays due to weather events,” says Lyon. “Heavy rain, high winds, and extremely high or low temperatures can put work on hold.”

Although no team can control the weather, proper planning for upcoming weather issues can mitigate impacts on the schedule. This means teams need a real-time, digital platform to re-sequence activities when weather impedes work. This proactive approach ensures that teams do not need to scramble on the day of an event to adjust activities, thereby maintaining project momentum and reducing potential delays.

Methodology

Resulting from a decade of capturing more than 22 terabytes of project data, Touchplan has the largest set of as-built construction data in the world.

Over the past 12 months, 321,042 total committed activities have been captured in Touchplan. To track the status of these, users regularly update the completion dates of their activities. If a task is completed early or late, users must provide a variance reason. These variance reasons allow teams to explain why the work was not completed on time, and give context to any delays or early completions. The data in this report represents the top reasons users reported for why their individual tasks were not completed on the promised dates.

What is Labor Flow Optimization (LFO)?

LFO is a software-enabled production planning regimen that assures continuous utilization of available construction labor resources for optimum productivity and safety using production planning software based on the Last Planner System®. LFO enables flexibility and speed in daily trade worker management on the jobsite to avoid dangerous worker congestion in tight spaces, costly rework caused by incorrect task sequencing, and potential litigation for lost labor productivity. It does this by providing master schedulers, superintendents, and crew foreman a shared, detailed view of all planned and in-progress trade activities that allows them to assure that the right skills are always in the right place at the right time for efficient and effective task execution.

Without LFO, the common, natural variances that occur throughout the workday can cause cascading, and sometimes catastrophic delays in the trade workflow. These variances can include changes in the delivery of materials and equipment, the discovery of the need for unplanned tasks, the occurrence of design inconsistencies, disagreement between the master schedule and the production plan, or the unavailability of certain trade skills when and where they are needed.

With LFO, variances can be rapidly recognized, reported, and remediated through real-time collaboration between project superintendents and trade foremen, enabling them to quickly change the production workflow to avoid delays and lost productivity by reassigning crews to other ready tasks or resequencing tasks to take full advantage of ready workers.

In addition to enabling the general contractor to manage task execution more easily for multiple trade partners on a project, LFO also enables the specialty contractors to manage multiple crews more easily across multiple projects. And for project owners, LFO dramatically reduces the impact of labor issues on project profitability.

Unpacking Lean Leadership

Leadership of Lean in business is far too important to leave to happenstance: who is available, who is the next in line, what can we afford, who is the best out of what we already have?

If you want the best leadership available for your business and particularly on the shop floor, it will not happen by accident but only by a focused and well directed strategy. In this four-part series I will help you think about business leadership as a cohesive program by answering these four questions.

How do we identify Lean Leadership potential?
How do we build a diverse Leadership Team
Once Identified how would we train them?
Once trained how would we nurture them and keep them in our business, rather than be training them up for their next employer?
Once they are adding value, how do we develop these leaders to be the next generation of Lean Leaders in our organization, particularly bearing in mind the needs of Leadership 5.0

Make sure to tune in over the next 4 weeks for each update, and if you would like a head start on your competitors take a look at the Project7 Lean Leadership Academy at Lean Leadership & Management Academy and then drop me a note if you have any questions.

Introduction

Identifying Lean Manufacturing leadership potential in an organization is essential, but it necessitates effort and focused strategic intent. There is nothing accidental about great leadership in an organization, and that goes for shift supervisors, operating theatre managers, middle managers or CEOs.

To build the next generation of Lean leaders, current leaders must first know what to look for in the next generation and recognize the specific traits and behaviors from all areas of the business that align with Lean leadership principles. In this first of four articles on ‘Unpacking Lean Leadership’ I am going to offer some guidelines from my 40 years’ military and industrial experience that will help you accelerate great Lean leadership in your business. Buckle up!

Understanding Lean Principles

Look out for those junior personnel in your business who already grasp or exhibit Lean behaviors. These could be team members who are enthusiastic about Lean principles, tell others about the advantages of Lean and already look for opportunities to use the Lean principles to bring about continuous improvement. These individuals may instinctively operate the principles of Lean even when they do not yet know the Lean tools or ‘buzz words.’ My experience is that these people will easily pick up the tools of Lean; far more effort is required to build the leadership behaviors and culture so utilize their enthusiasm and put your effort into identifying potential. You can also identify these individuals by asking yourself the following questions:

Do they try creating value from the customer’s perspective?

Do they identify waste in the value stream and do something about it?

Do they identify weaknesses in processes flow and smooth out variance?

Do they only produce what is needed by the customer and importantly question excess?

Individuals who model these behaviors are valuable assets to your business and merit the opportunity through training and coaching to become Lean leaders.

Observing Key Traits and Skills

Now I will look at some of the key traits and skill sets needed in your current and future Lean leaders.

Problem-Solving Skills: Lean leaders need to be problem solvers or at least not be content to sit back when they see things going wrong. Potential Lean leaders are those people who are not content with the status quo but who proactively look for solutions. It is my experience that these people exist in almost all organizations where leadership are open to the creativity of their people. Look for those who bring you solutions, rather than those who only ever bring problems for you to solve. Be open to potential leaders who use data to identify root causes who naturally apply logical problem-solving methodologies even if they do not understand buzz words like PDCA, or DMAIC, and also acknowledge those who demonstrate persistence in resolving issues even if not using traditional Lean tool. Dogged determination is critical in Lean leadership and is a personality trait needed in all Lean leaders.

Continuous Improvement (CI) Mindset: CI is more a matter of mindset, culture and intent than knowing the Lean tool kit, after all people were solving problems long before the Toyota Production System (TPS), CI buzz words, or Lean tools. In my own experience of being a Royal Air Force engineer for 30 years, we lived CI and Lean principles, but in all my service I never heard about what is now universally known as TPS or Lean. In looking for your next generation of potential Lean leaders, identify those who consistently seek ways to improve processes, who naturally encourage and implement their own CI ideas and particularly those who have the mindset and take time to regularly review their ideas and refine workflows.

Customer Focus: Whatever business you are in, be that manufacturing, banking, health, or whatever, your success is dependent on your customers repeat business and ensuring that you always try and exceed customer expectations. For example, out of several options in my town there is only one garage where I will take my car, and that is directly due to Scott on the front desk who always exceeds my expectations, is polite and is an excellent communicator. Every business leader needs to be a Scott! Potential Lean leaders prioritize customer needs by understanding customer expectations and acting on feedback and aligning processes and improvements with customer value. If you have individuals working with you who have a keen sense of the customer need, put effort into these people as I have seen time and again how these people can literally save a business.

Leadership and Influence: Lean leadership involves guiding and inspiring teams so look for the following in your current and potential Lean Leaders. Lean leadership is more about the right influence, rather that the traditional ‘telling’ and ‘leading by shouting.’

Ability to lead cross-functional teams: Your leaders must be interested in all departments and learn their language and build cross-functional relationships. Leaders must break down all barriers using every interaction as an opportunity.

Effective communication skills: Leaders must learn how to be active listeners far more than active talkers. When leaders listen, understand and act, they build relationships, integrity and credibility.

Encouraging collaboration and teamwork: Participative Action Research has shown that collaboration is a force multiplier in all areas of business. Bringing all stakeholders together to find the very best solutions, rather than the traditional ‘stove pipe’ and ‘top-down’ thinking is proven to be the way forward in business. Remember a team is more than just a group of people; a team is a culture, a force, a thinking way and a business driver. Find the people who naturally engender collaboration and teamwork.

Mentoring and developing others: The worst thing you can do is to employ someone and then expect them to just ‘survive’. Invest in the whole person, put effort into their development and it will pay dividends in business efficiency and also employee retention. Mobility is very prevalent in the post millennial workforce but only where those people do not ‘feel’ valued’ and are not rewarded accordingly – and this is not just about salary.

Adaptability and Flexibility: Lean environments are dynamic and potential leaders must be able to adapt quickly to changes, be open to new ideas and approaches and importantly be able to manage stress and uncertainty effectively.

Conclusion

Identifying Lean manufacturing leadership potential requires a comprehensive approach, combining the observation of key traits and behaviors with formal nurturing programs and continuous development. By focusing on problem-solving skills, a continuous improvement mindset, customer focus, and effective leadership abilities, organizations can cultivate leaders who drive Lean transformation and create lasting value.

Embrace the Power of Takt Time to Improve Data Center Construction Productivity

Time is money in any construction project, and this is especially true for data center construction. A single delay can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, construction productivity has declined since the 1970s due in part to an adherence to command-and-control planning that creates silos between the general contractor and different trade partners.

On the surface, holding trades responsible for finishing on time sounds logical, but finishing on time doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve finished at the right time. What good is it for one trade to finish work when the next one isn’t ready for the handoff? When teams lack a structured cadence to complete activities and allocate resources, the project slows and costly delays ensue.

What’s needed is a new way of planning that focuses on flow, or as the Lean Construction Institute defines it, “a process that includes smooth, unimpeded handoffs between and among project team members from one crew to the next.”

An often underutilized methodology for achieving flow is Takt planning, which creates a rhythm for each phase of work to finish and ensures handoffs occur at the same pace. To make Takt work, you need a construction production management platform to visualize the components necessary to achieve flow.

Where did Takt time originate?

Takt is a German word meaning rhythm, cadence or cycle, and it was originally used to reference timekeeping in music. The implementation of Takt time as a manufacturing concept first appeared in the 1920s with Germany’s Junkers Aircraft Works, which created sub-assembly lines that fed into main assembly lines at predetermined intervals to create consistency and predictability.

By the late 1940s, Toyota had adopted the Takt philosophy for auto manufacturing and based its famous Toyota Production System on Takt time. The methodology eventually found widespread adoption throughout the manufacturing world, and its waste-reduction benefits were popularized in lean manufacturing.

Increasing construction flow with Takt time

While manufacturing accepts Takt time as a standard for production, its popularity within the construction industry hasn’t caught on as it should. As we’ve pointed out, command-and-control is often the go-to philosophy for construction projects, but Takt time makes more sense for data construction projects. Takt time drastically reduces confusion and offers the predictability necessary to ensure on-time project completion.

Takt requires greater collaboration between trades, breaks down traditional silos and prioritizes setting a shared pace for every operation in a sequence. Potential productivity issues are addressed with a visual plan that allows tasks to finish concurrently and encourages easy handoffs between trades for sequential tasks.

Here are some important components of a Takt construction plan:

Takt phase: Work to be done that is separated into logical groupings based on specific milestones or achievements.
Takt zone: Geographical areas within the phase where work is scheduled on a rhythm. Trades will move through these zones at the same pace.
Takt wagon: Grouping of one or more Takt packages or scopes of work.
Takt package: Manageable units of work within a Takt wagon that can be assigned to a trade for execution within a designated Takt time.
Takt train: A series of wagons that will move through the zone.

In a data center construction project, zones may be split up like this:

Zone 1: Data Hall
Zone 2: Generator Yard
Zone 3: Substation
Zone 4: Central Utility Buildings (CUB)

Within each of the zones, it’s critical to identify similar scopes of work that allow for consistent pacing. For example, in a data center construction project, there may be multiple sectors of the Data Hall that are equal to the entirety of another zone. So, the work within those sectors may be broken down to create a consistent amount of work in these predefined areas to ensure consistent pacing.

Once a work cadence is established, trades can work rhythmically through each zone with intentional buffers to allow each team to adjust to unforeseen circumstances and complete work within the Takt time. This level of predictability is critical in data center planning, as it sets expectations early on and creates an environment where productivity is consistent and repeatable, increasing the possibility of on-time completion.

Construction production management software enables better Takt planning

When coupled with the right technology, a Takt data center construction plan can make flow more easily achievable. Let’s look at ways a platform like Touchplan can enhance a solid Takt plan.

Breaking down trade silos

Construction production management software can help bring trades together and encourage collaboration via a platform that visualizes real-time updates. When this data is current, trades have the insight necessary for accurate decisioning and projections. The end result? Takt packages finish in rhythm, and handoffs flow as expected.

Minimizing bottlenecks

Bottlenecks are unavoidable in data center construction, but construction production management software can help you manage them. The right platform visualizes where bottlenecks exist early on and allows decision-makers to address them and keep work moving at the prescribed pace.

Allocating resources accurately

When utilization is at capacity, production, and flow are impeded. As variations within the project increase — fluctuating crew sizes, changes in work, start times, material availability — delays emerge. Construction production management software creates flow and avoids delays by allowing you to visually plan which tasks can be completed concurrently while facilitating seamless handoffs between trades for sequential tasks.

Avoiding or addressing rework

Removing installed work is an immediate flow disruptor. Solutions like Touchplan can assist by integrating the master schedule with the actual workflow and avoiding corrective rework via issues like inaccurate design fulfillment. When unavoidable design changes occur, teams can track rework in real time and incorporate updates into ongoing production to avoid delays.

There’s simply too much at stake in data center construction projects to operate in a manner that inherently limits productivity. With Takt planning and the proper construction production management software, predictability becomes a natural component of the planning process. Watch this webinar to learn how Touchplan can enhance Takt planning initiatives.

Introducing Management Analytics — The New Standard for Analyzing Construction Planning Data

The Need for Data-Driven Construction Planning Software

Touchplan recently announced the availability of Management Analytics — a new and significant enhancement to the analytics capability of its collaborative construction planning platform. Management Analytics provides a top-to-bottom alignment of customers’ analytics dashboards, putting all vital analytical elements into three easy-to-use dashboards.

Whether you’re rolling out a collaborative planning/Lean construction process for a project, a business unit, or across your entire organization, analytics are paramount in monitoring the effectiveness and continuous improvement of your planning processes.

Management Analytics sets a new standard for construction planning by providing aggregated trend, KPI, and roadblock analytics at both the project level and for your entire company and its business units. The enhancement results from a decade of capturing more than 22 terabytes of data for over 6,000 construction projects, 33,000 construction plans, 7 million tickets, and 85,000 Touchplan users.

Construction Planning Data Through Three Lenses

Management Analytics provides actionable construction planning views of past trends, the present state of your projects, and future resource needs that can impact your plans. It delivers insights appropriate for executives, managers, and field-level leadership, enabling data-driven, collaborative decisioning via three critical lenses: Project Analytics, Portfolio Analytics, and Company Analytics:

Project Analytics provides superintendents and project managers with site-level intelligence they need to rapidly anticipate, identify, and get ahead of leading indicators, trends, and blockers — and formulate the best strategies to address them. Additionally, Project Analytics reinforces a standardized way of planning that makes processes repeatable and performance measurable.
Portfolio Analytics gives regional and division managers the cumulative construction project data they need to analyze groups of projects in detail and take corrective action for projects not meeting their KPIs. Portfolio Analytics also enables easy comparisons between projects using data such as PPC, variance reasons, and constraint usage for more informed decision-making.
Company Analytics gives corporate managers and executives the insights they need to understand the status of the enterprise project landscape. That data will help them form and implement strategies and best practices to ensure optimum performance for existing projects and enable the rapid and standard setup of new projects.

The Value of Accessible Construction Planning Data

Projects are the data engine that drives company-wide success. They require consistency across data sets, analysis, and comparisons. Without a standardized process to track large amounts of information, individual successes can become isolated victories, as opposed to repeatable best practices across the organization. The opportunity to continuously improve processes is lost.

Management Analytics provides the ability to:

View condensed construction project data at the company and business unit level
Define your performance standard
Identify and improve your best practices
Identify who needs additional support to meet the organizational standard

All stakeholders in an organization can navigate the detailed dashboards to analyze teams’ week-to-week execution, Constraint Performance, and Milestone Performance or simply look at a blended Performance Index score that identifies trends over time.

If you’re ready for top-to-bottom alignment of company-wide project data, contact us for a first look at Management Analytics.

Data Center Construction with the Last Planner System®

There are three truths about the current state of data center construction projects: business is booming, a lot of money is riding on them, and deadlines are fast and furious.

While this is exciting news for owners and contractors, the expectations — and pressure — have never been higher. Delays in data center construction can cost owners millions, which creates a narrower margin of error for contractors.

One of the best ways to ensure data center construction projects run as smoothly as possible is by implementing the Last Planner System® (LPS). Let’s look at LPS and its application to data center construction projects.

Last Planner System: An Overview

When you consider the many collaborators in a data center construction project, it’s easy to see how schedule and time misalignment can emerge without a proven method for project planning.

Since its initial development in the 1990s, LPS has given contractors of large projects a roadmap that, as the Lean Construction Institute states, “promotes the creation of a predictable workflow among various parties so that it achieves reliable results.”

LPS brings all relevant stakeholders together during five different components of the construction process: master scheduling, phase scheduling, look-ahead planning, commitment planning, and learning. Through the LPS method, decisions go from broad and long-term to more immediate and granular as the project progresses, with applied learnings throughout.

The key to success is ensuring all stakeholders are sharing relevant data in real-time and all others are keeping up with those inputs to inform the next steps.

For more context, we’ll explore those five LPS components and how they apply to data center construction projects.

Perfecting Data Center Construction Scheduling

Master scheduling and phase scheduling are in the “things we should do” category of LPS, representing everything stakeholders hope to accomplish during the project.

Master Scheduling

A running joke about master schedules is that it’s wrong the second you send it. Numerous constraints throw even the best data center construction project off track, but a master schedule isn’t intended to be a crystal ball. Instead, the 30,000-foot view of the project sets the tone by identifying the high-level milestones and goals that will define future phases of work and potential overlaps, which can delay completion.

Communication among all the invested parties is paramount when creating a master schedule. Gather stakeholders — owners, designers, general contractors, and MEP contractors — to share their project visions as soon as it’s practical. Then, work together to determine the best combination of those visions.

The final master schedule will require a great deal of compromise, but LPS is based on the foundation of continuous communication. Working collaboratively throughout the project becomes second nature when a culture of dialogue is established early.

Phase Scheduling

Once milestones have been established, phase scheduling can begin. This period is highlighted by sequencing out 6-12 week periods via pull planning: collaboratively defining and sequencing the tasks by working backward from milestones established in the master schedule.

This is also where those responsible for doing the work are brought into the discussion, and the goal of the planning sessions is to identify all of the tasks necessary to complete each milestone. It’s also critical in phase scheduling to establish the conditions of satisfaction for the handoffs between the tasks.

In data center projects, for example, phase scheduling helps prevent crew stacking and ensures general contractors and MEPs have the space they need to do their jobs safely and efficiently.

This is also the time when decision-makers need to address procurement of supplies and equipment. Given the unique nature of data center infrastructure components, e.g., power, cooling, etc., putting in extra legwork in phase scheduling can help reduce the risk of supply chain instability once work begins.

Last Planner System Addresses Tactical Needs

After master and phase scheduling conclude, the “boots-on-the-ground” portion of the project begins. Look-ahead planning and commitment planning focus specifically on plans of action and addressing variances.

Look-Ahead Planning

This is where last planners enter the “things we can do” phase of the project — what can be accomplished based on the information at hand. Last planners are no longer dealing with theoreticals, but instead focusing on identifying constraints that could impact deadlines over the next 4-6 weeks of work.

Typically, a weekly meeting is held to review work and review variance reports to identify any emerging constraints that can be addressed before they disrupt deadlines. Each constraint is assigned to a team member who will lead the charge in finding solutions to the constraint or initiating a workaround.

For example, if the shipment of a power system component is delayed, the last planners determine how to address the delay and what work can be done instead of installing that component. With this new direction, they’ll have to determine how to procure teams to do the newly scheduled work and determine the ripple effect of that change.

Adhering to look-ahead planning principles gives last planners the one advantage they need most: the time to course correct and prevent minor delays from becoming costly stoppages.

Commitment Planning

As the project moves further down the timeline, last planners identify “things we will do.” Commitment planning (also referred to as weekly work planning) is hyper-focused on making good on promises. With a commitment to collaboration and accurate data sharing in the first three phases, commitment planning becomes much easier to manage.

This is also when last planners send requests for information (RFI) to owners and other parties to weigh in on emerging issues. While owners are more than willing to invest a lot of money into a data center construction project, they’re less enthusiastic about delays that impede the return on that investment. As such, commitment planning is necessary to ensure stated deadlines are met, and progress is communicated to owners on a timely basis.

Typically, project teams have commitment planning meetings once weekly to go through the week’s work and implement minor adjustments as necessary. This is a good opportunity to address any safety concerns, crew allocation, and any other topic that could prevent teams from meeting commitments. The end result is a vast reduction of last-minute surprises. This is followed by daily huddle sessions to ensure the week’s plan remains on track.

Acquiring and Applying Historical Knowledge

Learning

Every project has a learning curve, and last planners are responsible for gleaning what went well and what went wrong, and applying that insight to future iterations. This is the “things we did” phase, where last planners rely on percent plan complete (PPC) reports to identify the percentage of weekly promises met and variance reason reports (VRR) that identify the reasons they fell short of commitments. Analyzing those variances are an integral part of mitigation plans and keeping operations on track.

To be clear, learning should occur throughout the project: the master plan, phase schedule look-ahead planning and commitment planning.

To continuously improve, teams must regularly take inventory of what went well (plusses) and what didn’t (deltas) with the previous week’s plan. We often see the most dramatic impact in learning is from the construction of one building to the next in a large data center campus project.

The PPC baseline is often at 50-60% in the first building construction. By the second, the plan will be refined. After that, the plan should resemble a template, with adjustments for constraints in later stages.

As data center construction projects become larger and more complex, contractors understand the need to run the tightest ship possible. The Last Planner System can provide the organization, communication, and collaboration infrastructure necessary to keep projects moving forward.

Learn how Touchplan helps to support the Last Planner System and gives decision-makers the accurate insight they need to keep data center construction plans on time and under budget.

2023 Feature Release Recap

As 2023 comes to an end, Touchplan is excited to reflect on another successful year of providing property owners, general contractors, and specialty contractors with instant insights to track progress, prevent schedule and budget slippage, and ensure jobsite safety on their construction projects.

Here is a look at some of the key product enhancements we released this year:

Ticket Export

Users can start building their Master Schedule out in Touchplan and transfer that data directly into P6 without having to re-enter those activities. With Ticket Export, you can save time by exporting data from Touchplan directly into P6 as often as needed. The entire project in Touchplan can now be exported and used to update P6. Users can also export pieces of the Touchplan schedule into P6 to continue to build upon the Master Schedule.

Ticket Export reduces time spent aggregating, analyzing, and reporting on updated plans and provides a more seamless process.

Hover Over

Users can now see the critical details of their tickets without the need to click on the ticket or zoom in and out. You only need to move the cursor over the ticket to see the information. Also, Hover Over allows users to customize what fields will appear in the feature to help them focus on the things that are important to them and reduce visual clutter. This can help users hold huddles/meetings more effectively to review their tickets and keep them in the context of the overall construction plan.

Constraint Insights Dashboard added to Project Insights

When you log in to Touchplan today, go into Ticket Insights, you will notice a new drill-down called “Constraint Insights.” This dashboard allows admin users to closely track and analyze the project constraints and their performance all in one place. Admins can track a constraint, and their dependent tickets, as well if constraints are completed on time so the project schedule can stay on track.

Below is a glossary for the Constraint Insights Dashboard:

Constraint Promises Kept: When the Need by Date is less than or equal to the Present Date AND the constraint is closed.
Constraint Promises Made: The total number of accepted constraints where the Need by Date is less than the Present Date
Constraint Log: A list of all constraints within the project and their information including Assigned To, Requested By, Planned Finish Date, and more
Constraint Risk: Constraints with logic ties to other tickets
Overdue Constraints: Constraints that have not been marked as completed as well as the number of days that constraint is overdue
Constraint Impacts: A list of tickets that with variance reasons that have a logic tie with a constraint ticket
Need By Date Filter: Use the Need by Date filter to expand how far back the dashboard looks

SSO

Companies that want additional security and control over user access to Touchplan can now enable Single Sign On (SSO) for their account. When SSO is enabled, users only have to sign in once for all SSO-enabled platforms. For teams that are interested in turning on SSO for their projects, please reach out to the Customer Success team who can activate this feature.

Swimlanes Filter

Users can now filter information by swimlanes. Swimlane filters allow users to group reports and filter by swimlanes in a selected construction plan. Some additional highlights of our new swimlane filter include:

Greater reporting flexibility enabling more detailed planning
The ability to replicate visual planning spaces into reports and share those with members of the construction project team
Supports additional levels of hierarchy within Touchplan to more closely align with the master schedule
Swimlanes can be used for anything. They can cater to a multitude of different use cases and project types and product reports for your team

We are excited and gearing up for a busy 2024. Our best wishes for a happy holiday and a flourishing new year!

Streamlining Data Center Construction with Touchplan

Data center construction is a complex process that demands precision, efficiency, and effective collaboration among various stakeholders. In this guide, we will explore the intricacies of data center construction and how Touchplan, the number one construction planning platform, can be your guide throughout this journey.

Understanding Data Center Construction

Data centers serve as the backbone of today’s digital landscape, housing the servers and infrastructure critical to the operation of businesses and organizations. The surging demand for data storage and processing has led to a significant spike in new data center construction where the average build time is 12 months or less and the U.S. total planned square footage is growing at 350,000 square feet per month. Building a data center involves meticulous planning, cutting-edge technology, and adherence to stringent standards to ensure reliability, security, and efficiency.

The Importance of Efficient Data Center Construction

Efficiency is paramount in data center construction. Delays or inefficiencies can lead to substantial financial losses and missed opportunities. With data centers being vital to the operations of so many modern businesses, ensuring they are constructed swiftly and accurately is crucial.

How Touchplan Can Support Your Data Center Journey

More than a third of the 50 largest data center owners and more than half of the 25 largest data center contractors have used the Touchplan to transform analog chaos into digital calm. Here’s some ways that Touchplan enhances your data center construction process:

Collaboration and Communication: Touchplan facilitates seamless collaboration among all project stakeholders, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
Scheduling and Planning: Create and manage construction schedules efficiently, ensuring tasks are completed on time.
Visual Planning: Gain a clear visual overview of the entire project, allowing you to track progress and spot potential issues in advance.
Task Tracking: Keep a close eye on individual tasks to ensure they stay on schedule.
Risk Mitigation: Identify and address potential risk early, preventing costly delays or setbacks.
Resource Management: Optimize the allocation of resources to avoid bottlenecks and overruns.
Quality Assurance: Monitor and verify completed tasks to ensure high quality work.

Conclusion

Touchplan is a valuable asset to manage the fast-paced, costly, complex, and brutally competitive elements of data center construction. The platform’s real-time analytics and patented pull planning, supports (Owners, Contractors and MEP contractors every step of the way to ensure a project is on time and budget while ensuring safety.

Have You Used Touchplan’s Patented Active Line?

It’s no secret that as a construction plan progresses, there will need to be changes for various reasons. The challenge is keeping the project team aligned and accountable for the work needed to stay on schedule.

Touchplan’s patented Active Line makes it easy for teams to move from long-range planning to their look-ahead plan, which avoids the potential loss of data if teams were transferring between systems.

The Active Line also allows the construction team to manage accountability and see why tasks are not getting completed as promised, allowing for quick and flexible re-planning.

To get a complete understanding of the value of using the Active Line, watch the following video by clicking the button below.

For more information about the Active Line, please contact a member of our sales team.