In collaboration with HMC Architects, Bernards is serving as design-builder for a six-story, 160,000 SF patient tower at the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital which will connect to the existing hospital. Chris Maslyk, Director of Planning and Lean Initiatives at Bernards, ran the first pull planning session on the project. We checked in with Chris last week to see how the session went as well as hear his insights on Touchplan.

For starters Chris could not wait to spoil the results and tell us that the planning session had been a huge success. He was particularly keen to let us know that “I’ve never had applause at the end of a planning session in my life and we had applause after one. They were very excited by Touchplan.”

“I’ve never had applause at the end of a planning session in my life and we had applause after one. They were very excited by Touchplan”

 

When pressed for a few more details Chris talked about the crews working on Henry Mayo. He mentioned that this project had “guys who participate a lot.” That being said even with a crew that was keen to participate in the planning, he noticed that Touchplan “increased the amount of engagement and coordination amongst the participants.” In addition to that, the meeting was more efficient and went faster. We asked him what was it about Touchplan that he thought enabled this meeting to go so well. Chris stated that the real benefit was that “Touchplan understands the process and stays out of the way. It’s not about the software it’s about the process.”

“Touchplan understands the process and stays out of the way. It’s not about the software it’s about the process.”

 

Chris also mentioned that after creating the master schedule “[o]ne of the big challenges is learning how to properly establish the plan to make it a workable weekly plan. With Touchplan it is so much easier to document and manage your actual planning process…it’s all on screen. Touchplan is so visual that it makes it really easy to grasp and understand.”

I asked him if he had any specific examples of this in action and he told me the following. “On this particular project we had a framer that was unable to see his durations in way to break them down. the weekly meeting allowed him to see progress, evaluate and shorten his durations to their actual lengths…Touchplan helps implement lean by facilitating the process, It makes it easier to do by taking superfluous steps out of the process.”

“They’ve produced a tool that allows you to plan. Other software is so caught up in their cool metrics and graphic that they’ve overlooked how labor intensive it is to use, and they’ve forgotten that it has to be something that’s easy to use for guys in the field.”

Stay tuned for our report when we check back in with Chris in a few weeks to see how the Henry Mayo project is coming along.