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Mass Timber Poised to Dominate the Sustainable Construction Industry

Mass Timber Construction continues to be a growing sustainable construction trend with the potential for exponential growth. This post is a quick introduction to Mass Timber: what it is, why it’s growing in popularity, and what it means for different segments of our industry. Along the way, we’ll point out some of the benefits of Mass Timber that have us so excited and highlight the industry trends that can accelerate Mass Timber adoption.

Mass Timber is another structural material Owners, Designers & Contractors can choose to build with at its most basic level. For example, before Mass Timber, a typical building might have steel columns and beams and floors made of metal decking topped with concrete slabs. Mass Timber can replace those steel columns and beams with engineered wood elements like glue-laminated timber (Gluelams) and replace the decking with cross-laminated timber (CLTs). It can get more complicated than this, but in a nutshell, the key concept is that new engineered wood products are available for use in place of existing products made from other materials, and using these materials can offer several benefits.

Mass Timber Decreases the Carbon Footprint

A clear win for using more wood and less concrete and steel in buildings is that it can drastically lower the carbon footprint and increase sustainability. Cement (a key ingredient in concrete) and steel both require a lot of heat in the manufacturing process, and each has a large carbon footprint. Estimates vary but taken together; these two materials account for about 15% of global CO2 emissions annually. Compare this to wood that prevails on the carbon front in two ways.

  • The energy used to produce Mass Timber is far less than the energy used in steel and cement production.
  • Trees take CO2 out of the atmosphere, sequestering it in the wood.

As trees are harvested for the sustainably-produced wood products used in Mass Timber, new trees are planted. Younger, vigorously growing trees remove more carbon than older mature ones. The net result is, with properly managed forests, this CO2 sequestration can go on indefinitely.

Lighter Wood Reduces Construction Costs

Beyond sustainability, Mass Timber is also having a positive impact on costs and schedules. Wood is a lighter material than steel and concrete. That means potential cost savings from things such as smaller foundations, fewer ground improvements needed with insufficient load-bearing soil, and smaller cranes for erecting the structure. Also, Mass Timber projects can take advantage of the trend towards off-site prefabrication. This results in fewer components that need to be erected on-site, and the components themselves can come with things like MEP penetrations already in place. This results in less work to be performed on-site, which leads to a shorter schedule.

Mass Timber Market Adoption

With so many positives, you might be wondering why Mass Timber hasn’t already taken over the market. The answer is that it takes a great deal of time, money, and experience to build up all the infrastructure needed to adopt new building techniques. There is a need for design teams that can design for Mass Timber, BIM tools that can model Mass Timber, insurance carriers willing to underwrite projects, factories that can produce Mass Timber, etc.

The good news is that this process is well underway. Over the past decade, as more Mass Timber projects have been built, the needed infrastructure has developed and grown. Swinerton, for example, has an entire division focused on Mass Timber. A couple of their notable projects include the

First Tech Federal Credit Union in Oregon, completed in 2018 and consisting of an impressive 156,000 SF. They’re currently working on the Ascent in Milwaukee, an even larger project at 25 stories and 273,000 SF.

Across the industry, we see many of our friends and customers are completing Mass Timber projects, building up their expertise, and are taking on larger and more impressive projects. The building codes are keeping up with this trend, and recent changes enable taller Mass Timber structures.

With Mass Timber projects being sustainable, cost-effective, and beautiful, owners are increasingly picking Mass Timber for their projects. Atlassian and Google are two great owner examples. Both of these owners are in the software industry, and we use their products to help us build Touchplan. Atlassian is building a new

Headquarters in Sydney that will rise to 40 stories, while Google recently announced a new 180,000 SF Mass Timber office building for  Sunnyvale.

It’s rather apparent that Mass Timber is a trend poised to move from the pilot stage to a high growth stage. We’d love to hear about your experience with Mass Timber. Drop us a line, and maybe we’ll even feature one of your projects in a future blog post!

Revisiting The Five Big Ideas Transforming the Design and Construction Industry: Bring an Outward Mindset to all Interactions (Part 6)

(Hal Macomber, EVP, Touchplan with Mark Jussaume, VP, Office Director, SmithGroup) Some of the most important decisions are taken at the early stages of projects. This is true when we bring architects and engineers together for conceptual and schematic design. It’s true when a general contractor assembles trade partner foremen together for the first phase pull planning. To get the most out of these sessions care must be taken to tap the available perspectives, expertise, and judgments. Otherwise, we fall short of what we could be doing for our clients. The challenge is larger as we pursue industry-wide change. In 2004 when we wrote the Five Big Ideas Transforming the Design and Construction Industry we claimed,

The chief impediment to transforming the design and delivery of capital projects is an insufficient relatedness of project participants. Participants need to develop relationships founded on trust if they are to share their mistakes as learning opportunities for their project, and all the other projects.

While the industry made great strides, the challenge remains. Change the people to change the projects and the industry.

My Prior Guidance for “Intentionally Build Relationships on Projects”

Whether you are a leader or team member see to it that you take the time upfront to build your team. What does that take? Try these five steps:

  1. Explore each others’ personal intentions and ambitions. Projects offer sufficient opportunities to take care of individual needs and desires. We just need to find out what they are. Then bring those intentions into alignment with the promise of the project.
  2. Cultivate practices of commitment-making. At the very first opportunity begin practices of making promises in front of each other. This practice provides a factual basis for making assessments of trustworthiness and care for the team.
  3. Make it your habit to acknowledge and appreciate team members. Become a mutual admiration society. High-performing teams are characterized as environments where people are acknowledged at least once every seven days for the talents, efforts, and contributions each team member brings.
  4. Foster an environment for healthy conflict. Encourage team members to express alternate views. Even in the face of the agreement have someone create a different perspective.
  5. Make the project setting a place where people can be their authentic selves without fear of judgment or mockery. Granting each other their legitimacy is the basis for the healthiest of relationships.

Our New Guidance for Bringing an Outward Mindset to our Projects

Perhaps you’ve made the statement, “change behavior and you’ll change results.” My prior guidance only focused on the actions we want from people. That was good as far as it went, but it was not far enough. When we change our minds, we change our actions.

Mark Jussaume leads the Boston office for SmithGroup. The people in that office stand out in their community, markets, and on their projects for bringing an outward mindset to their interactions with each other and those on their projects. In this mindset, we see people as people, with their own wants and needs, expertise and perspectives, purposes and ambitions, and cares and concerns. This contrasts with an inward mindset where we have our attention only on those issues for ourselves. When we’re inward others appear as objects or obstacles in our way. Mark says,

Bringing an outward mindset to projects is a force multiplier for changing behaviors.

It starts with caring enough about others to be helpful. That entails:

  • See people as people, as a human, with goals and aspirations like me.
  • Be considerate, helpful, attentive, and thoughtful.
  • Be curious around others. Suspend advocacy in favor of inquiry.
  • Take accountability for your impact on others.
  • Take care of others while you take care of yourself.
  • It’s an “our work” disposition.

We move from outward to inward when we become self-focused.

  • “When we turn inward,” Mark says, “we tend to behave in ways that are less helpful such as subtly holding back information or we don’t bring up issues that might make us look bad.”
  • “Other people become vehicles to get what we want, obstacles in our way or even irrelevant to us. We start to think in terms of “my work” as opposed to “our work”.

Some people might confuse an outward mindset with simply being kind or pleasant to work with. Having an outward mindset means that other people matter like I matter and by conceiving our work in this way we can achieve amazing results for ourselves and others.

Now, look back at the above five recommendations I made. Notice that each one of them is easier in an outward mindset — we are taking care of ourselves and the client — than the inward mindset — I need to have a productive work session. It’s also true that bringing about the conditions for conducting projects as high-functioning networks of commitments — a no-blame, learning-first, one for all, and all for one environment — is possible when we turn our mind outward. (See last week’s post, Conduct Projects as Networks of Commitments.)

Bringing an outward mindset requires practice for it to be always available. It takes work. For us, it’s the work of choosing, again and again, to be outward. The behaviors just follow.

Learn more about an outward mindset from this delightful 10-minute video Why I [Wish I Could] Hate Arbinger and from Arbinger’s books, The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box, The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict.

To see the outward mindset in action, read the Sparrow Hospital Case Study. You’ll see the outward mindset that the Granger Construction team brought to the renovation and how that mindset permeated to everyone else involved. Learn how you can get more value from Touchplan by using Custom Fields and how they make tracking progress on repetitive scopes easier; written by Andrew Piland from our Sales Engineering team. If you missed last week’s post, be sure to read Conduct Construction Projects as a Network of Commitments.

If you would like to revisit any of the posts from the Revisiting the Five Big Ideas series you can find all of them below.

Revisiting The Five Big Ideas Transforming the Design and Construction Industry: Conduct Construction Projects as a Network of Commitments (Part 5)

(Hal Macomber, EVP, Touchplan with Connor Butler, Managing Principal, Relevate) An uninterrupted flow of value-adding work product is within the reach of every superintendent or project manager operating on the Last Planner System of Production Control®. Three new practices are necessary. First, there must be a practice for project performers to continuously update their promises and declare complete. The second practice is a system that calls attention to the action required to keep the promises that are outstanding. The third practice is the development of the project organization so people are in a position to declare breakdowns and initiate compensating action.

My 2010 Guidance on “Conducting the Project as Networks of Commitments”

A project is a single-purpose network of commitments performed by a temporary social system. Unlike recurring business processes, the networks of commitments on a project emerge rather than are designed are designed and then evolve. Networks are refined as performers have experience. Performers in a project get one shot through the network. To complicate this project performers come together as strangers. They often lack experience with each other’s reliability to perform within the network. Without the experience with each other, project performers will hold out on making their best commitments.

Your role as project leader is to activate the network of commitment on your project. Here are four actions you can take:

  • Set an example of making offers (promises) that take care of the concerns and needs of project performers. People will follow your example.
  • Encourage project performers to negotiate offers and promises that they can reliably deliver. Help them as needed to improve on reliability.
  • Be a good customer for the promises made on your project by offering your help to performers and announcing your anticipation of completion.
  • Be quick to show your appreciation for the completion of promises including being notified at completion rather than at the next project team meeting.

These actions begin to bring project performers together as team members who are taking care of each other while they take care of the project. Doing this publicly provides the basis for people to develop trust in each other’s competence and reliability to perform. And it is just the beginning. Your role as project leader requires continued attention to the functioning of the network of commitments.

Our New Guidance to “Conduct Projects as Networks of Commitments”

Project leaders must continue activating the networks of commitment as stated in my previous guidance. Collectively, the above four practices support performers to make reliable promises. I struck the above text “network of commitments emerges rather than designed.” Design occurs in a process the Lean construction community calls phase pull planning. Evolution occurs by teams managing the promises in the network with a “practice” of making commitments with the intent to improve as the project progresses.

Design and Negotiate the Conditions of Satisfaction for the Phase

Pull planning starts by defining the milestone that completes the phase. This is a collaborative conversation among the project performers for the phase. They engage with each other in the customer mindset — the next performer in the sequence is my customer. The conversation establishes a clear statement of the conditions of satisfaction (COS) that are to be achieved at the milestone.

COS are nouns and adjectives, not verbs and adverbs. We often give names to COS. For instance, two all-beef patties, Special Sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun is a list of ingredients (nouns) that when assembled is called a Big Mac. For the construction phase that we call “overhead rough-in,” the COS may include:

  • Ready for third-party inspection,
  • Material installed in accordance with the building information model,
  • No pipe insulation where heat trace is installed,
  • Fire sprinkler capped without heads,
  • Ductwork openings covered with plastic,
  • Etc.

Often in Lean, we call establishing COS reaching “strong agreement on the what and how.”

Managing Promises with the Last Planner System®

The difference between the Last Planner System of Production Control® and traditional scheduling is the negotiation that can take place between the Construction Manager/Owner and the performers. Reliable promises are the responsibility of the requestors and the performers. Our aim is to agree not to commit to unrealistic requests just because a schedule says it should start. When we make promises, particularly those that we deem in the making as reliable promises, we expect that people will keep those promises. However, the future is not just uncertain, it is unknowable. Not keeping a promise might be the best action to take for the project. For instance, if the promise to install plumbing in cabinets can’t be kept due to an illness, we don’t want the countertops installed. Doing so would harm the project. We say manage the project promises to respond appropriately to the changing conditions we encounter.

Make it Easy to Update Promises and Report Completions

Managing promises starts with making it easy for project performers to continuously update their promises and report completions. This is typically done at an end-of-shift stand-up meetings with the last planners (trade partner foremen). It’s best done in the location where the phase plan work is performed. It’s done at the end-of-shift to minimize the delay or lag in sharing and responding to the day’s performance. This gives the team the time overnight to make compensating adjustments before the start of work the following morning. Other project stakeholders can know and respond to the outcomes when you electronically capture the completions and adjustments to promises along with reasons for any variation.

Develop Your System to Call Attention to Opportunities for Improvements

We also want to engage in practices that call attention to the action required to keep the promises that are outstanding. While we set out to make promises that can be kept, we can encounter unforeseen circumstances. Materials deliveries can be delayed; field conditions may be different than specified; production staff may be unavailable; equipment can breakdown; the workspace may be unavailable. And there can be a pattern to these emergent conditions. Standard practice is to measure the performers’ commitments via percent plan (promises) complete (PPC). The best practices for high-functioning networks of commitments are to measure the reliability of enabling work such as materials, RFI’s, and submittals along with investigating the promises that are missed.

Timely production data that is tracked and analyzed will aid the team to make improvements to their system and practices.

Develop the Project Organization to Take Care of Each Other and the Project

Last, we won’t hear about the problems people see and encounter if they don’t speak about them. We must develop the project organization so people are in a position to and will declare breakdowns and initiate compensating action. We use the word “breakdown” to mean any condition that would interrupt or keep us from completing a commitment. We often see trades, acting in a spirit of “minding their own business,” fail to speak about something they see about another trade’s work. We also see trades not report problems they have with their own work. Instead, they see a problem — fix the problem — move on to the next problem. The networks of commitments are fragile when those patterns prevail.

We need a no-blame, learning-first, one for all and all for one environment for high-functioning networks of commitments. Creating this starts with project leaders and trade partner supervisors and entails everyone on the project.

Closing in on Uninterrupted Flow

The combination of promising reliably, designing the milestone conditions of satisfaction, and managing promises create a basis for designing production systems that follow sound production laws and that are robust to the remaining breakdowns in the project setting. This brings us closer to the lean thinking ideal of uninterrupted flow. It’s there for your taking.

If you missed last week’s post, be sure to read Optimize the Project as a Whole If you would like to learn more about the Last Planner System®, please see Data Driven Decisions for Better Project Management or visit our case study about our work with Jacobsen.

If you would like to revisit any of the posts from the Revisiting the Five Big Ideas series, you can find all of them below.

 

Revisiting The Five Big Ideas Transforming the Design and Construction Industry: Optimize the Project as a Whole (Part 4)

(Hal Macomber, EVP, Touchplan With Jeff Loeb, Project Coach, Lean and Integrated Delivery, Jacobs) People acting from local or workgroup concerns rarely take care of the project as a whole. We learned that buildings don’t perform as intended when engineers oversize elements of building systems on a discipline-by-discipline basis with concerns to minimize risk. We also learned that work gets out of sequence causing rework and delays when trades act independently of each other. These and other shortcomings detract from what we set out to accomplish for our clients when we design and build. Optimizing a whole takes attention and intentionality.

My Prior Guidance for Putting to work “Optimize the Project as a Whole”

AEC projects are contracted in ways that usually result in optimization at local or subcontract levels. Consulting engineers often manage their work to maximize engineering utilization. Plumbers do what is good for the plumbers. Other performers do the same. Some people say that if we do well with each of the parts, the whole will do well too. That is blatantly not true. And, people on the project know it. Sometimes it takes one group to go slow so that the project can proceed more effectively. However, the incentives are not set up to accomplish that.

Optimizing the whole requires on-going attention. Circumstances change. What appears to be good for the whole at one point in the project may not be so at other points. It takes a recurring conversation and assessment among the many project participants to continue to act for the general well-being of the whole project. Try asking just one question at each of your coordination meetings:

What is the best we can do for the project in the coming week?

Answer the question in the group setting. Be open to adjusting scope, fees, and plans accordingly. As a result, you’ll do better for your client and the team.

New Guidance: Start with the “Customer Mindset”

Why is it that there is something to be built? What is the purpose or business case for the project? What consequences does the Owner anticipate should the project not go forward? What constraint does the Owner mean to address with the project? The answers to these questions are not only important during design but throughout the whole project. Failing to keep these concerns present throughout the project life will lead to individuals acting from their own perspectives and perceptions. The client will suffer.

Operationally, the next person in line (production sequence) is my customer. The plumber is the customer of the framer. The electrician is the customer of the plumber. The framer installing bracing is the customer of the electrician. In design, it’s more like a network than it is linear. Disciplines must regularly interact with each other to coordinate the design. Failing to do so results in requests for information, change orders, and rework all of which result in sub-optimization for the client.

Adopt New Standard Practices

Production system design of all stages of design and construction is essential for delivering the most value for the money available. The “design” of the project is the first act for optimizing the whole. The design of systems for material and non-material (professional services) production follows proven production or process theory. One good reference is This Is Lean: Resolving the Efficiency Paradox, by Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström. Follow these three laws:

  1. Small batch production results in quicker handoffs which mean shorter project durations.
  2. The production pace is set by the bottleneck activities.
  3. Variation of activity durations compounds with dependence. In other words, gains are lost and losses accumulate.

Good production system design will lead to better outcomes and speedier projects while reducing overall costs. We’ll take this up in more detail in a future production system blog series.

Concurrent set-based design coupled with Choosing By Advantages Decisionmaking is the current best practice to establish the “basis of design” at the client’s target cost. It alone will get the team far along to maximizing client value. Target Value Design is one example of this. Another is Jacob’s Collaborative Design and Scoping. In lean we place a lot of attention on reducing wasteful variation, and rightly so. However, in design, not all variation is bad. In fact, intentionally producing variety is essential for innovation.

We must always remember that the future is not just uncertain, it is unknowable. Therefore, we want to visualize the process to engage all project performers in the ongoing process of adjusting and redirecting action in the always unfolding project situation. The Last Planner System® of Production Control and the Kanban Method are two widely-used collaborative visualization approaches. Visualization creates the conditions for people to act with responsible autonomy to steer the project. Steering is the essence of project control.

One important principle of Lean design and construction is “Make commitments at the last responsible moment.” Jeff Loeb says its corollary is, “Collaborate at the earliest responsible moment.” That goes equally for designing the project, the practices, and the relationships among the project participants.

If you missed last week’s post be sure to read Tightly Couple Learning with Action. If you would like to learn more about the Last Planner System® check out Hal Macomber’s post LPS Is a Kaizen Method—Here’s Why That Matters.

If you would like to revisit any of the posts from the Revisiting the Five Big Ideas series you can find all of them below.

Tracking Progress for Repetitive Scopes Made Easier

Scopes usually vary greatly across a project.  Why manage them all the same?  For repetitive activities, it is sometimes best to track production not by individual unique actions, but rather compile completion by daily production rates.  Accounting for quantities, linear feet, etc. enables forecasting and tells the story of a project. With Touchplan’s new Custom Fields update, tracking progress for repetitive scopes will be much easier.

Everything we build requires a finite quantity of material to complete. For these activities, communicating production in terms of defined quantities helped me be more concise in tracking progress with trades.

To get the most out of my efforts, I had to ask my trade partners a different question. Instead of, ‘when do you think you will be done?’, the question becomes, ‘With an understanding of the drawings and site conditions, what is a reasonable production rate here?’ I could take that input, match it with the “need-by date”, and continue the conversation.

Having a mutually agreed upon standard of performance at the start of a scope was a great way to have a baseline for future conversations.

A few years ago, I had around 200 piers to drill for a group of structural slabs.  At the outset, the concrete superintendent and I determined we needed to hit a minimum of 12 per day to meet schedule. I did what every other superintendent has done; I put the activities into Touchplan and built a spreadsheet that tracked quantity drilled by day. Easy, right?

Below is an example of a chart I would have created from my daily hole log.  As you can see, we started off in good shape.  Maybe a few piers behind to start, but nothing we could not recover.  At the end of the first week, everyone was confident we were on the right track.  However, when the rig started drilling corkscrews on 3/10 and production dipped, it became apparent we needed a get well plan. On 3/11 we were still drilling out of spec.  That set conditions for a data-driven conversation about getting a new piece of equipment, operator, or both. On 3/12 we hadn’t done any better, and we had 96 piers to finish by next Friday.  Now we were talking about working the weekend….

 

Tracking progress in an excel sheet worked just fine. Really, there wasn’t a problem with it from my perspective, except that it didn’t allow me to continuously communicate progress across the team. I could stay in sync with everyone, but only intermittently because the single source of truth lived in a document that I had to actively publish.

My least favorite question to answer was always ‘Hey Andrew, when are we going to be done with xx?’  Having Touchplan helped, because I could refer people to my phase plan for foundations. As good as that worked, it still lacked a way to track production quantities in a useful way.  This is why I am excited about Touchplan’s new Custom Fields feature.

If I had  the ability to define my fields, I could’ve made tickets that accounted for our planned production rate in a way that allowed me to actualize progress just like I did in the spreadsheet above.  It’s better because everyone can see it in real time, and the information only has to be handled once.  I can pull a report from my data that looks a lot like the spreadsheet I would create on my own. It eliminates the telephone game, and lets me come back to trades early enough to get ahead of issues before they become problems.

Next, track progress accordingly.

Custom Fields is a great next step for teams who want to be able to stack up their planned throughput vs. work in place.  In my opinion, the sky’s the limit here for project managers and superintendents to innovate within Touchplan’s planning and communication space. I am looking forward to seeing what else we can do with custom fields after project teams have started using it.


Watch our video to learn more about Custom Fields for Workflow Efficiency >>


Interested in other Touchplan product features? Watch our webinar on Master Schedule Alignment.

Have any questions about my story and would you like insight as to how I would use Custom Fields on a project?  Let me know! Email me at: apiland@touchplan.io.

What the World Needs Now: More Women in Construction Please

It isn’t hard to answer the question – what opportunities exist for women in the construction industry, I just don’t want to do it without acknowledging all the female pathfinders that burst through the barriers of male dominated industries before us. Janet Guthrie zipped across the finish line of the Daytona 500 more than a decade before Danica Patrick was born. Madame Curie was the first female to win the Noble Prize, and the very first person to win it twice – the very first! Rosa Parks sat on a seat in the front of the bus, and built a bridge to change in America. Annie Duke became the first female to enter the World Series Poker Hall of Fame, and what of Sarah Breedlove, Stephanie Kwolek, Ada Lovelace and Michele Obama? Where would our industry be without entrepreneurs, Kevlar, computer programming, and the assurance that we belong at the table, in the field, or wherever the heck we choose to be. Bam, bam, bam, down came the barriers, but still there is work to do. It’s work worth doing, because on the other side of it there is a payday, there is opportunity, there are milestones to achieve, and some of you out there reading this, you, and you, and you too, can, and will, become part of our courageous, intelligent, ambitious, and passionate female force, forcing the numbers to climb from 9% to greater and greater heights. I hope that you will consider this the waving of the green flag, indicating that the race has begun, and having received an invitation, you have your foot on the pedal, prepared to speed your way to success.

Opportunity Knocks

So where is it, this opportunity? It’s in the field, and in the office, as an engineer or electrician, a marketing professional or a mechanic, a project manager or a plumber. Construction is a booming industry, one where the need outstrips the available workforce. This reality represents an unprecedented opening for women, and underrepresented groups to gain entry. Tight labor markets have a history of creating change. Send the men to war, get the women to work in the factories, agriculture, the ship building industry, and even on the baseball diamond. If you are looking for answers to the construction industry labor shortage, women can not only help you solve the problem, they very well could be the answer to it.

Pay Gap

In a refreshing twist of fate, construction on average brings in higher wages than many other professions that are typically the domain of women. While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women are paid 81.1 cents for every dollar a full-time working man receives, in the construction industry that gap is nearly closed at 95.7 cents.   Trade professionals that enter a union have the additional benefit of being trained in their profession, their annual dues being the only price of entry. Think, no college loans to pay off, and the opportunity to make a six figure income. Construction Professionals that choose to take the college route, and receive a degree in civil engineering, construction management, or mechanical engineering, can expect to receive an annual wage of $98,000., according to the BLS.

Out with the Old in with the New

Not only do we expect to see construction jobs increase by over 10% in the next 7 years, there is an aging population of professionals that are slated to retire, that make up 41% of our current workforce. They will leave General Superintendent, Foreman, and Operational Leadership positions open and available for the taking.

If the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself is appealing, to make a living that not only provides security and flexibility, but offers you the chance to pave the way for future generations is attractive to you, construction just might carry you across the finish line.

Women in Construction: Sandy Hamby

We sat down with the MOCA Systems President Sandy Hamby and asked her some questions about her experience as not only a woman in the construction space, but a leader.

How has the industry changed for the better, and where do you see areas for improvement?
When I first started back in the 1980s, there weren’t very many women in the business, but at the same time, I personally didn’t perceive a lot of limitations. Originally, there was a good ole boy’s club. Today, it can still be intimidating and challenging, but the industry is more open than in 1985. Women still face limitations, especially if you don’t have an assertive type personality. In general, I think inclusivity in the construction industry is being addressed more candidly today, and we’ve got a ways to go.

What advice would you offer to young women looking to build a career in construction? What resources need to be made more readily available?
The one piece of advice I’ve consistently given is: “Always ask questions”. The industry is complex. There’s no one professional that knows everything relative to construction. So, don’t think you have to know it all, and when you come into an environment in which you may not have automatic respect; don’t pretend that you know everything; ask questions. If you see something relative to electrical power or chiller plants, find the right person and utilize their expertise for what you want to know. What I found in the industry is people like to help people. They like to answer your questions, and it allows you to learn. So that’s my biggest advice. Nobody, not even the people to whom you’re asking questions know everything; it’s just too complex.<

So, in terms of asking questions. Do you feel that the average woman feels that males will be “well, you should know that already”? Do you get that impression, or are people open to anyone inquisitive?
I’ve found people incredibly open to inquisitive minds. I think that sometimes people think they have to know more than they do. When this particular behavior appears, the response in the field can be an immediate shutdown. This approach does not allow progressive learning, and does not build trust in the field. On occasion, there are individuals who may respond with: “you don’t know what you’re doing,” or what a stupid question!”? Unfortunately, those people do exist, but 90% of people aren’t like that. You have to be confident in yourself and know there are no dumb questions. And if someone treats you like that, don’t waste your time with them….move on.

Do you feel that women are being recognized for their achievements in the construction industry?
Most women just want to be recognized because they are good, not because they are a woman. And yet, to inspire young women to get into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) programs, it’s good to set aside accolades just for women. It is important to promote women through awards because this helps encourage others to choose this career field. Many of my colleagues, including myself, were mentored by men in the industry. The men have promoted us and submitted our names as exemplary professionals in this industry. As a result, we received awards, got on boards, and were appointed to committees. I was fortunate enough to be adopted and to be a part of and early group of women in construction to break a few ceilings.

What opportunities for growth do you see for women in the industry?
I see a lot of growth opportunities. I like to pivot a little bit here because my perspectives are a little bit different. I was raised in the fighter pilot, “The Right Stuff” kind of environment. I bring that up because not only does this group of people have a very high tolerance for risk but the women were individuals who thrived in that environment as well. So, why does that matter? Growing up, I was never told I could not be President of the United States of America; it never entered my mind that I couldn’t be an astronaut. It never entered my mind that there were limitations because I was a woman. In the culture that I was raised in, I was treated fairly and equitably. I could walk up to fighter pilots, and they would teach me about an airplane. The women in my world were intelligent. So being a woman in the construction industry did not seem like a big deal. It wasn’t until I grew into the industry that I realized that my worldview was very different from the majority of my counterparts. It never entered my mind that I couldn’t be a leader in the industry for a company or an organization like CMAA. I saw individuals like Christine Keville, from Keville Enterprises, and Rebecca Jones from Safework CM become the chair of CMAA and I said to myself, of course she’s the Chair.

Slowly and surely, more and more women have started from the construction trailer or as detail architects and became leaders in their own design and construction companies. Women have created an excellent path forward within the industry.

So, it sounds like the advice you might give those who want to get into the industry is “don’t ever think there isn’t a path”?
That’s right. Don’t ever let that that type of thinking enter your perspective on things. There is an absolute path to success. Are you going to find people that want to hold you back? Yes, you will. Are you going to run into problems? Yes, you will. But the bottom line is it’s not because you don’t belong there. Don’t ever let anybody stop you because you absolutely belong!

What is the most important thing you have learned over the last year?
I’ve learned two big lessons:

1) Relationships are the key to success, no matter what you’re doing. Build trusting and long-term relationships with the people you work with, your family, your professional associations are all extremely important. You grow because you care about people. If you keep that fact front of mind, the rest takes care of itself. Revenue, goals, KPIs, and all of the elements that track progress are important, but if you don’t take care of your relationships, nothing else matters. Recently, building and maintaining relationships in a remote environment has been very difficult. Taking the time to reach out consistently and staying close to other people helps maintain balance.

2) A labor shortage in our field offers opportunities. What’s important are things like the ACE and STEM programs. I am involved in both, and MOCA Systems, Inc. regularly sponsors scholarships for young women and professionals in construction, engineering, and design. We financially and professionally support young people to get them where they want to go.

Was construction your first choice and howwhy did you make the migration, and what are some of the key differences?
I was a design architect first. I would spend hours on the computer designing, and I began to think, this isn’t what I thought being an architect would be like. On my first design project I made multiple mistakes. I was lucky enough to have a contractor on this job that was interested in teaching me about my mistakes. I went out to the construction site and met with the contractor regularly and realized, wow, this is kind of fun. I like this side of the industry. The contractor showed me how everything was being constructed and what I did wrong on the drawings versus how it was actually built, and I absorbed those lessons. The key critical moment was when I was on a project for the San Antonio Convention Center. They brought in Big Bertha, which is the largest crane in Texas. We had a tower crane sitting in the middle of the convention center, and it needed to be disassembled as we were completing construction. I thought to myself, “I’m going to watch this.” They put out the outriggers and started setting the crane up for the lift. Of course, the crane itself weighs a lot. Well, it started to sink. I watched the construction professionals problem-solve in the middle of downtown San Antonio as this crane is starting to cause a collapse in the street structure. The next thing I know, a helicopter comes in with large steel sheets, one after another, and this construction team starts to distribute the crane’s load as quickly as possible. They were afraid to move the crane because they didn’t know why it was collapsing in the first place. Well, the quick problem-solving accomplished in the middle of a crisis was impressive and a fabulous example of what it meant to be a construction professional. After that moment, I thought, these guys are smart, they’re creative, they know how to resolve things, and this is what I want to do for my career!

What are the top three things you would want others to know about your experience or what it is like to be a woman in Construction?
That it’s really fun and a fabulous industry to go into. Always trust your gut. Finally, no matter how many years you have in the business, you never know everything there is to know. There’s always something to learn.

What President Anne Pfleger predicts for NAWIC, the construction industry, and construction women in 2021

It’s a new year for the National Association of Women in Construction. Looking ahead, many members within NAWIC are feeling optimistic about what 2021 will be like for the construction industry as the entire world seeks a glimpse of a post-COVID future.

NAWIC’s President, Anne Pfleger, took some time to reflect on 2020’s challenges and joins in that positive sentiment, noting that every obstacle in 2020 has provided a new opportunity for growth in 2021. With a renewed outlook on the association’s mission and the hopes of being able to reach even more construction women this year, Anne is predicting a bright 2021 for NAWIC.

Everyone within NAWIC is very familiar with you, but for any construction women or industry professionals who are not, can you provide some detail on your background? What motivated you to run for President of the association, and what has your time as President been like so far?
NAWIC has been an important part of my professional and personal life. Professionally, NAWIC has given me tools to not only benefit my career, but to be a better employee even with 25 years of experience in the construction/transportation industries. Currently, my daily role at Charles Construction Services, a medium-sized general contractor, is within the estimating, safety, IT, and HR departments.

In 2014, I had the opportunity to be elected as the North Central Region Director by my NAWIC peers to be their voice and support on the National Board. Serving in that capacity, I quickly discovered that the impact that was made in the Region could be continued as I moved forward on the national board as an Officer. Being elected National President reaffirmed that my voice and support for construction women in the industry was heard and will continue to be heard.

The pandemic has been the biggest challenge this year as NAWIC President. Normal is no longer normal. Each state had different rules and regulations—which did not make it easy for any NAWIC member. The NAWIC board supported the idea of meeting more frequently to continue to give our NAWIC members the tools and support to enhance their success.

The pandemic has also opened more doors for me as a leader. Being able to virtually attend chapter meetings that I may not have been able to visit physically. One of my goals this year is to attend every chapter virtually. It has been amazing connecting more with NAWIC members, industry partners/associations and companies to hear how NAWIC and our members continue to make an impact in the construction industry.

2020 was quite the year – how did you see the association and construction women in the chapters come together to overcome all of the disruptions brought on by COVID-19?
Many chapters, and those involved on the National level, have banded together to stay connected virtually to continue to strengthen and amplify the success of construction women. NAWIC members are not only fortunate to have the resource and support of other NAWIC members, we are receiving more resources and support from other companies and associations who want to be a part of construction women making an impact and influencing the direction of the construction industry.

What were the biggest issues that COVID-19 caused for the construction industry in your opinion?
The construction industry is fortunate that we are considered essential. While the country has been on lockdown, construction has been mostly continuing. The impact we are seeing right now is that companies are having to cut excess overhead to pay for the cost of implementing safety measures. My concern is that we have not really seen the impact of the economy on our industry. It could be a couple of years before we see the complete picture. What we have to do now is take measures and create contingency plans to ensure that we can continue to thrive and make a difference when the full impact affects the construction industry.

A lot of people will be happy to see 2020 end and 2021 begin – what are your expectations for NAWIC in the new year? Are there any big projects that are in the works?
In 2021, I expect that working from home will be the new normal and more technology will be integrated into our daily routines. Connecting virtually will provide considerably more opportunities both professionally and personally for many, including construction women.

NAWIC, specifically, is refocusing on our marketing and branding initiative. NAWIC will no longer be regarded as the “best-kept secret” for women in the construction industry. Our marketing and branding initiative to get the word out about NAWIC is making an impact not only with our members but within the entire construction industry.

We’ve currently welcomed 2 new chapters and are organizing several more. Refocusing our marketing and branding has made a huge impact on how NAWIC is seen, more construction women are wanting to be a part of our association that provides opportunities to grow professionally and personally.

NAWIC continuously focuses on our strategic plan. The National Board, past and current, have worked tirelessly to make necessary changes and updates to keep NAWIC relevant and impactful in today’s world and for future generations of construction women.

Now, more than ever, NAWIC members from all levels are taking part in obtaining our goals and strategies because they see how much the National Board values their insight and ideas. Some of the ways they are seeing this is through our open-door policy. This policy allows any member to submit a written proposal for the Board to consider. Our National Board is communicating more and being more transparent by holding monthly Board meetings that members can attend in audit capacity. All of our Board summary of actions are given monthly and are more detailed, and periodic townhalls are held for members to have more communication with the National Board.

There are several NAWIC annual events that are near and dear to all members – WIC week being one of them and the Annual Conference being another. Do you foresee these events being mostly virtual again this year? Are there any details you can tell members about events in 2021?
NAWIC annual events are being looked at day by day with the different state regulations that are in place. Women in Construction week (March 7-13, 2021) celebrations are being planned virtually and in person depending on each local area’s situation.

Our region-specific Fall Conferences were virtual with one being a hybrid event where some attendees were virtual and some were there in-person. We are hoping that the Spring Forums can be conducted in person.

NAWIC Annual Conference is slated to be held in person in Charlotte, NC in August 2021. Currently we are finalizing a virtual component to have the opening and closing keynotes, general sessions, and annual business meeting live streamed and recorded. If the Annual Conference is able to happen in-person, this virtual component will provide an opportunity for some NAWIC members to attend at least part of Annual Conference if they aren’t able to attend in person.

What do you hope NAWIC members take from the lessons learned in 2020?
My hope is that everyone realizes that the pandemic affects people differently and to be cognizant of what others are going through. Also, even though we have virtual meeting fatigue, connecting virtually provides the opportunity to expand your network nationally.

How do you see NAWIC changing in 2021?
NAWIC is on the cusp of being identified as THE resource for female leadership with members being recognized for their expertise and commitment to the construction industry. The direction we are taking to be a more inclusive, transparent, professional, and relevant association will take us where we want to go in 2021 and beyond.

What is the best part about being involved with NAWIC? And what would you say to any construction women deciding whether or not to join?
The diversity and connection with members and the industry is the best part of being involved with NAWIC. I don’t know any other association that brings together women from all different careers such as trades, managers, assistants, attorneys, architects, suppliers, insurance brokers, engineers, estimators – just to name a few – to make an impact on their lives, others’ lives, and the whole construction industry.

For construction women who are considering joining NAWIC I would say, “You can do and be anything you want! If you have a dream or idea that feels a little risky; interpret the risk as an indicator that you’re on to something important, not necessarily something dangerous. Also don’t be afraid to fail because failure is another step to success. NAWIC and its members are the vehicle to obtain your dream by providing the resources, tools, and support in a safe environment to get you where you want to be.”

Now more than ever we must come continue to CONNECT and communicate COLLABORATIVELY, to have the conversations to CONSTRUCT the best course of action for NAWIC, its members, and our industry.

The National Association of Women in Construction has over 115 chapters across the United States. With membership open to all construction women, NAWIC is able to connect members with amazing resources to help them gain confidence in their abilities and develop more leadership skills. Any construction women interested in applying for members can either use the online form or downloadable application to fill out and mail in, both available on the NAWIC website. There are also several membership options available for flexible pricing and membership terms. To learn more about the unity of construction women through membership with NAWIC, contact us through our social media pages, our website, or use our “find a NAWIC chapter near you” tool.

This post originally appeared on NAWIC’s website on 1/7/21. Read it here

Revisiting The Five Big Ideas Transforming the Design and Construction Industry: Tightly Couple Learning with Action (Part 3)

(Hal Macomber, EVP, Touchplan with Terri Erickson, Principal, Kata Consulting
The productivity of the design and construction industry has been slowly decreasing for over 40 years while productivity in other industries has soared. This is in spite of the countless innovations to materials, tooling, and equipment. Consequently, construction in many sectors, particularly infrastructure and housing, is unaffordable. Nearly 30 years ago, many of us thought adopting Lean would bend the curve to a steady incline. We misunderstood our situation.

In 1990 with the publishing of The Machine that Changed the World, the word lean was first used to characterize Toyota’s approach to designing and building their cars. It merely meant there was no fat in their system. Unfortunately, it was a misunderstanding of the real nature of Toyota’s approach. The misunderstanding continued when The Toyota Way was published in 2003. Jeffrey Liker claimed, “the heart of the Toyota Production System is eliminating waste,” although he did go on to write about growing leaders and growing exceptional people.

We now know that Toyota’s key principle is to grow people’s capabilities through engagement with the work. Toyota’s system is designed and evolved for the purpose of everybody-everyday-always learning. That learning is responsible for Toyota’s unparalleled success as compared to virtually every other automotive manufacturer. This learning is what has been missing from Lean design and construction efforts.

My 2010 Guidance on Putting “Tightly Couple Learning with Action” to Work

Toyota’s goal is single-piece flow at the signal of the customer. But why is it so important to do just one at a time? The answer is we want to learn from each action we take. Toyota sees it as the opportunity to test and re-test their hypothesis of how to do work effectively. The approach is generally known as the Deming Cycle: Plan – Do – Study – Act. Here are six ways you can begin adopting the principle “tightly couple learning with action” on your projects:

  1. Meet at the end of each day for just 5 minutes with the last planners (or frontline workers) on your project to give them the opportunity to report on the work they finished for the day as they had promised to do. Identify at that time any reasons for not finishing promised work. Re-plan as necessary.
  2. Do detailed planning for short horizons (6 weeks or less). Review the outcome, then do more detailed planning.
  3. Conduct a plus-delta review at the end of each planning meeting. Ask all attendees, (plus) “What produced value for you?” and (delta), “What could we change to produce more value for you?” Start the next meeting by referring back to the last review. Select one item from that list for focus during the meeting.
  4. Conduct a Good 5-Why™ for something that needs to be reworked, repaired or replaced. Getting to the root causes of why something occurred will lead to actions you can take to avoid recurrence of the variance or problem. (See No-Fault Problem Solving)
  5. Have a conversation with the whole team on something that needs improvement. Take action based on an 80% complete solution. Try it out. Review the results. Then create an 80% solution for the balance of the issue.
  6. Attack the delays on your project. Explore with your team what keeps them from more closely coupling one person’s work with another person’s work. Do an experiment. Learn. Re-do the experiment.

Put these to work on your project immediately. Start by discussing this with your team. You might want to create a contest with them to see who can generate the most ways for coupling learning with action.

Our New Guidance: Change Your System to Put Learning at the Center

Nearly 30 years ago, the learning organization was seen as the way the best organizations would function. Jeff Liker mentioned it in the first edition of The Toyota Way. In the second edition, he put learning at the center of what distinguishes Toyota from others. Learning – building capability at individual, group, and company levels – principally happens in action. It’s as true for learning to play the guitar as it is for doing the calcs to size a beam or for leading organizational change. Yet, too often we understand learning as what happens when taking a course, attending a webinar, or watching a Ted talk. These activities take us away from the everyday work where we are in action. Toyota doesn’t make this mistake. They use everyday work as the primary setting for building capability.

The above six earlier recommendations from Putting the Five Big Ideas to Work mostly focuses on after-action steps you can take to learn. What I missed was what you can do to learn while in action. I’m reminded about two situations. A few years ago my friend and coauthor Calayde Davey of The Pocket Sensei – Mastering Lean Leadership took gigs to play Christmas music. The music was very familiar to her. She might have been bored. Instead, Calayde made playing that music the opportunity to practice very specific violin skills. In the other situation, I challenged a summer engineering intern to get the most from the experience. I said, “When you get an assignment ask ‘what do you want me to learn while I do this?’” This is the central question each of us can ask as we begin to do whatever it is we are doing. The shift to make is to turn the work into purposeful practice. Use tasks to add or refine a skill.

The organization or project team can create the circumstances each assignment is the opportunity to practice what each person or a small group needs for growing skill or capability. It can be as simple as asking, “What is it I will practice while performing the task?” and “How will I know that I got better, or not?” Sometimes we need an observer to distinguish between doing something effectively and not effectively. Other times, self-reflection will suffice. Couple this practice with the widely used G.R.O.W. coaching approach adopted by Google and the workgroup or company will build the capability that the business or project needs.

We have to mention Toyota Kata (TK) as a significant opportunity to develop critical and creative thinking skills for individuals and groups while pursuing workgroup and company goals. It was developed by Mike Rother while studying Toyota. The approach starts with a challenge – something beyond the reach of the team. People perform experiments (for the sake of learning) in the course of doing their work to advance their way toward the challenge. Learning is consolidated as improvements to the process or product. Customers, the company, and the team members all benefit as challenges are achieved and capabilities accumulate. Check out the growing community of people practicing TK at KataCon7.

The key theme throughout our guidance for putting this big idea to work is to change your system and practices to use your everyday work to grow people on projects and throughout the organization.

If you missed last week’s installment please be sure to read Collaborate, Really Collaborate

For more information on Lean Planning & Best Practice please read 4 Tips for a Zero-Punch-List-Project

If you would like to see how Lean construction delivered a hospital renovation well ahead of schedule, read our case study about Touchplan being used by Granger Construction.

If you would like to revisit any of the posts from the Revisiting the Five Big Ideas series you can find all of them below.

 

Touchplan Announces Record Growth, Executive Appointments

Boston, MA, March 2, 2021 — MOCA Systems, Inc., the parent company of the award-winning construction planning platform called Touchplan, is capitalizing on record growth in 2020 by announcing several appointments to Touchplan’s senior executive leadership team. Building on current momentum, the team will focus on global expansion.

For 21 years, MOCA Systems has been at the forefront of some of the world’s most influential, innovative, and challenging design and construction projects. Leading building owners, developers, and contractors globally continue to trust Touchplan to optimize their project costs and delivery on $47 billion worth of construction. More than 32,000 construction professionals on over 2,500 construction and infrastructure projects worldwide use Touchplan to complete work faster and more efficiently.

Despite an unprecedented global slowdown due to COVID-19, Touchplan experienced a 23% annual increase in revenue in 2020. With mandates requiring social distancing on jobsites, elimination of physical meeting spaces, and changes to how projects are scheduled, the need for seamless collaboration “anywhere and anytime” proved critical to project planning and delivery. Touchplan’s approachable and reliable platform serves as a distinct solution to these issues and thereby serves as a competitive advantage in keeping projects moving.

As further indication of this global change in construction workflow, Touchplan saw a 60% increase in total users on the platform and a 210% increase in scheduled and completed construction activities. In 2020 alone, project teams using Touchplan planned and delivered over 20 million hours of total construction job work.

To meet this ongoing market demand, Touchplan expects to expand its sales, marketing, and business development teams with several additional hires over the coming months.

Growth Leadership Appointments

Michael Sullivan is appointed general manager of Touchplan to oversee global business expansion. Michael, a principal at MOCA Systems since 2006, has served in a number of executive capacities within the Touchplan organization for seven years. In addition to his deep construction industry knowledge, Michael assumes the helm with over 30 years of product, manufacturing, and operations leadership expertise. His previous roles include management positions at Honeywell and DuPont.

Jon Purdy is appointed chief financial officer of MOCA Systems, Inc., and oversees the finance operations of MOCA’s businesses with a special focus on implementing strategies to rapidly scale Touchplan’s monthly recurring revenue at competitive margins. Jon has 25 years of finance and operations experience in the technology industry holding a variety of senior leadership roles at Fiserv, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

Dan Feldman serves as Touchplan’s chief technology officer leading all of Touchplan’s platform expansion, software design, implementation, and product development strategies. He has held several key executive leadership positions at leading technology firms that include KAYAK, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Synetic, Sybase, and Thomson Financial.

Finally, Charles Simmons is appointed Touchplan’s chief revenue officer, where he is expected to drive global sales, marketing, and partner development growth strategies. He joins the firm with 35 years of global executive sales leadership experience in enterprise software revenue growth. Most recently, Charlie served as senior partner at Force Management, a sales effectiveness management consulting firm. He has also held global senior revenue leadership positions at Harte Hanks, Experian and Dun and Bradstreet.

“I’m excited to be aligned with Jon, Dan, and Charlie on the Touchplan executive leadership team,” commented Michael Sullivan. “Their appointments, combined with our momentum over the course of the past year, will allow us to continue to partner with more owners, developers, general contractors and specialty trade contractors globally to improve construction planning processes and ultimately make people’s lives better, more balanced and less stressful.”