About Kinetic Construction (KCL)

Founded in 1984, Kinetic Construction Ltd. (KCL) is a leading construction company across British Columbia. From its humble beginnings out of a single residence in Victoria, the company today employs more than 200 people across its three locations, including Victoria, Vancouver, and Courtney. Over this period, the company has executed numerous landmark projects and continues to demonstrate the values of relationship, passion, and continuous improvement.

Lean Construction – Developing a Culture that Promotes Trust

For KCL, Lean is a deeply embedded philosophy, a culture that is an infinite part of our project delivery. KCL’s leadership fosters a Lean mindset, which enables the project teams to collaborate, build reliable schedules, be accountable, innovate to optimize resources and focus on generating value for the client.

Lean Implementation – Last Planner System® (LPS)

As a part of the corporative initiative, for the last three years, KCL has deployed the Last Planner System using a Lean implementation partner, Construction Accelerator, and the industry’s leading digital Last Planner System software, Touchplan, on a series of multi-million-dollar projects.  Some of the realized benefits are as follows:

  • Increased schedule reliability
  • Early identification and resolution of constraints
  • Increased flow and fewer surprises
  • Enhanced trust and team accountability

As a result of these benefits, the use of the “1-2 punch” of Touchplan and Construction Accelerator, KCL’s Lean adoption increased from 1 project to 20 projects in just two years.

The Learning Process – A Focus on Relationship Building 

One of the challenges of adopting Lean and implementing its supporting tools, techniques, and processes is gaining buy-in from the project teams and trade partners. To overcome this challenge, KCL took a relationship-focused approach to build trust with the project teams at all levels.

“This process of implementing LPS successfully on the projects results from establishing and fostering relationships. The relationship is nurtured from the executive level to the team in the field, including the trades. Our approach was to take time to develop solid relationships and support the teams with robust training and implementation, which brought more clarity about the initiative and use of LPS to the team members.”

Despite the collaboration challenges presented by COVID-19 pandemic, the team took the opportunity to make construction process improvements by implementing LPS in a virtual mode and on the jobsite. Implementation started with Lean and LPS training utilizing Construction Accelerator videos to get all project team members on board with the concept of building a collaborative, transparent, and safe process.

KCL continued, “When we switched to Touchplan, it allowed the project team to collaborate without having the restriction to be on site. If you are not feeling well, you can still hop on video via Touchplan. This was a byproduct of the personal relationships we formed from the beginning with the teams.”

The Value of Small Group Learning

KCL also developed a robust training program for leadership, field staff, and trades to further boost buy-in. KCL Academy’s LPS training modules and Construction Accelerator training videos created a “small group learning” environment – six to eight people in Video Action Teams – that would allow them to learn both the theoretical and practical sides of lean foundations and LPS.

Training + Implementation = Results

Since utilizing KCL’s LPS program with the Construction Accelerator/ Touchplan combination, KCL has seen some outstanding results. Some projects finished three months ahead of schedule utilizing LPS despite persistent staffing issues. The utilization of Touchplan delivered stability and an all-time project schedule visibility as the training and onboarding continued for the team members.

Meetings are now more efficient, especially the weekly constraint meeting, which brings all the team members together and helps to bridge the gap between the field and the office.

The LPS® process that KCL has created, combined with the more efficient and improved trust among the project team members, along with using Touchplan, has helped to reinforce the Lean construction principle of transparency by making the project schedule visible to the team at all times.

Continued Refinement

Thanks to the structured LPS process, teams collaborating with KCL enjoy working on Kinetic projects. The guiding principle of ‘go slow to go fast’ fosters trust and strong relationships, allowing the team to learn and adapt at a steady pace. By implementing LPS with Touchplan and Construction Accelerator, Kinetic has strengthened its connections with trade partners, clients, consultants, and internal teams, enhancing overall collaboration and project success.

“Implementing and fostering a new mindset always comes with wrinkles as some don’t want to give up information as they are giving up control,” said KCL. “However, when everybody is involved and honest in meetings, it becomes an amazing experience where the whole team shares information on what is important and what is missing. That is a result of the relationships we formed in the beginning. Everyone is now pulling together.”