1. business and industrial
2. construction

Crew Centered Construction
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“The%work%at%the%crew%level%is%the%final%expression%of%the%leadership%of%the%project%and%the%
management%of%the%company.”%%Mike%Casten,%1980%
What is Crew Centered Construction in a lean project environment, you ask? It is a production
management system built on fundamental lean construction concepts with an emphasis on the work at
the crew level. One of the most pervasive tenants of the lean construction movement is to downplay
the maximization of the local (individual operations) in favor of maximizing the global (overall project
throughput). Thus predictable flow, pull and planning reliability are all areas of focus within a lean
environment with the promise that, as they are improved, the work at the crew level will come along for
the ride. Clearly this has proven to be a valid assumption and these concepts should be part of any
project production system, regardless of the project type.
However, there are projects out there in which focusing primarily or exclusively on the handoffs
between crews does not get at major waste and excess capacity that resides within individual
operations and the work of those crews doing that work. In fact, our experience indicates that on many
projects the waste, excess capacity and contingency within individual operations (the local) significantly
outweighs the attendant waste associated with poor handoffs between crews (the global). And, this
waste is almost always going unnoticed because of a lack of attention being paid to it and because it is
built into the accepted and predicted production rates on which daily and weekly production goals are
based.
Thus, by not being more focused on the effectiveness and the efficiency of the work at the crew level
on those projects, lean construction adopters may well be in compliance with nearly all the lean
concepts they have been taught but still experiencing huge amounts of undetected waste that
precludes them from becoming truly “lean”. (One will win few mile relays with overweight, out of shape
runners who have spent nearly all their training in the handoff zone and have perfected the handoff of
the baton.) Additionally, there are many self performing contractors that, because of their dependence
on traditional cost reporting regimes will likely only begin to adopt lean when that adoption starts with
proven cost savings among key operations at the crew level and eventually works up to overall
improvement of project planning systems, workflow and pull. Consequently there appears to be a need
within many construction organizations for a more crew-centric focus as they adopt lean practices. We
call that Crew Centered Construction within a lean project environment. Let me explain.
The construction industry is experiencing a renaissance that is changing the very nature of our
business for the better. With all the lean construction concepts and enthusiasm for new contracting
methods and project relationships it is easy to sometimes forget that ultimately our projects get built by
crews of five or six craftsmen down in the bowels of our projects. Admittedly it has been this work at
the crew level that has always been my passion and my love of it often distorts my objectivity as I
attempt to understand it. Regardless of all the new performance metrics within our industry today, I still
believe the predictability, effectiveness and efficiency of that work are still the ultimate measures as to
how the project production management system is performing. Currently there is laser-like focus on the
predictability of workflow and the reliability of planning in terms of how well activities are being
completed as planned. Project performance around the world is better as a result of that focus. But we
still have a lot of opportunity in front of us, particularly when it comes to the effectiveness and efficiency
of the work itself.
Many years ago Greg Howell and Glenn Ballard determined only 54% of scheduled weekly crew
assignments were completed as planned (Percent of Planned Complete). This revelation led to the
development of the Last Planner, a new project production management and control model that
focused on planning reliability and the predictability of workflow as opposed to contract management
and point improvements. Soon after they went on to found the Lean Construction Institute.
Several years later, while working with a large infrastructure contractor, Jason Plattenberger and I
were part of a company-wide effort to examine the relationship between the potential production
capacity of a crew and their current or estimated production. We participated in a detailed study of over
one hundred operations involving traditional operations involving concrete, dirt, pipe and asphalt paving
operations. The operations were spread over five states and four business units. Each operation was
subjected to an intense regimen of detailed operation engineering, calculation of a potential production
rate, work area preparation and immediate follow through and process improvement upon work
starting; a experiential learning event we call “Potential Zones”.
After sorting through the results of each operation upon its completion we found that the average
potential production rate that had been achieved and sustained within these “Potential Zones” over the
entire study exceeded estimated rates by a factor of 4.29:1! The highest, a precast soundwall panel
erection operation, was estimated at twenty six panels per day and on the third day of the operation two
hundred sixty panels were erected, a factor of 10:1! And, most startling was that virtually every
operation would have “made budget” without anyone ever knowing it was capable of an average of
4.29 times more production. We believe that is happening throughout the industry but going unnoticed
because the budgets associated with most operations are based on the results of previous operations
that were also laden with waste and excess capacity. (And, like Pi, a number in that range continues to
surface every time we have an opportunity to analyze in detail then reengineer the operation to
calculate its potential.) Just as a PPC of 54% forever changed Ballard and Howell’s understanding of
project planning reliability and workflow predictability, 4.29:1 forever changed our understanding of the
difference between acceptable and potential operation effectiveness and efficiency.
What none of us know for certain is what the relationship is between these two numbers; 54% and
4.29. For example, effectiveness, working on the right things with minimal delays, logically goes up
with a higher PPC due to more predictable workflow and “make ready” efforts, if for no other reason
than the fact that the predictable completion of prerequisite work and better prepared work areas
reduces two major causes of interruption or delay to a crew’s work. However, as crews spend less
time being interrupted by or waiting on perquisite work and their “stuff”, they will burn through assembly
inputs at a faster rate and may soon begin to experience higher delays due to outrunning assembly
input supply systems. Efficiency, maximizing the utilization of employed resources, on the other hand,
has to do with the composition and utilization of the individual resources within the resource package
(crew makeup and assigned equipment), the condition of the immediate work area, and the process
employed to do the work. We know for certain that delay-free work is not necessarily efficient work.
And, while few seem interested in discussing it, we have found that as weekly PPC becomes an ever
increasingly important project metric, it can and often does go up as “Last Planners” simply reduce the
volume of planned work for the week, sometimes at the behest of their supervisors.
Within our client project mix of infrastructure and heavy civil projects, we are convinced the best
combination of planning reliability, workflow dependability and individual operation effectiveness and
efficiency will be achieved by employing proven lean construction concepts with a heavy dose of:
•
Value Stream Production Planning with detailed operation synchronization based on
chunks, route sequence and calculated production rates,
•
Detailed individual operation and workzone engineering with significant specificity as to
crew makeup, equipment requirements and location, assembly input kitting and staging
requirements and daily production goals,
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•
Continuous (daily) improvement of workarea conditions, behavior and processes at the
crew level once work has started to ensure compliance with plan and to detect remaining
improvement opportunities, and
•
Compounding learning as to remaining waste, excess capacity, contingency and
improvement opportunities at the crew level and project production system failures in
general.
We call this package of proven lean concepts and operation engineering Crew Centered
Construction in a lean project environment. The vision of Crew Centered Construction is that of Daily
Crew Production Flow, our vision of construction project production perfection and the equivalent to
Engineer Ohno’s vision of single piece flow, where each crew is a work station, one day’s production is
the piece each crew passes on to their downstream customer, and the value stream a crew is a
member of is the production cell. Like “single piece flow”, Daily Crew Production Flow is described as a
condition of production that can be easily envisioned but never achieved. The following statement
describes this vision:
“Every%day%every%crew%will%complete%its%daily%crew%assignment%and%
production%goal%effectively%and%efficiently%without%incident%or%defect,%all%
within%a%safe%working%environment.”%
This project production vision is the North Star by which a pursuit of operation perfection is charted.
By comparing the current condition of a company’s production system to this production vision, the gap
between the two defines the size of the adaptive challenge a company assumes as it pursues this
vision. Closing that gap takes time, visionary leadership and strategy. It also requires a production
system designed to provide the means with which the gap can be incrementally closed.
For the last ten years we have been designing and helping clients implement a production system
built specifically to balance the need for reliable production planning and predictable workflow with
highly effective and efficient operations that we call the Construction Project Production Management
System or CP2Ms. Throughout the development of the CP2Ms our focus has been to balance
predictable workflow with highly effective and efficient at the crew level. The production system we
have developed is not an alternative to lean construction; rather it is lean construction with an added
emphasis on the effectiveness and efficiency of the work at the crew level and is specifically designed
to meet the needs of self performing constructors building infrastructure and heavy civil projects.
Crew Centered Construction and the CP2Ms has proven to be extremely adaptable, agile and
effective on projects ranging from a $2.1 billion dam project on the Ohio River to a $300,000 foundation
job built by a single crew in a refinery outside Dallas. On the Ohio River project man-hours were cut by
half and durations by one third. On the Dallas job, margins were written up by a hundred percent and it
was completed in half the time.
With the recent addition of Construction Kata to the CP2Ms, we have provided a routine whereby
foremen and craftsmen are striving to achieve the production vision on a daily basis right at the
workface. This is no minor breakthrough. We think we finally have the means with which to fully
engage crews and their supervisors in a continuous routine (daily) of improving their workarea
conditions, participation and involvement, and their work processes. And, equally important,
Construction Kata provides a structured and consistent vehicle to routinely pierce the veil that, here to
fore, has cloaked to work at the crew level with some sort of invisible protective shield.
In simple terms Construction Kata is based on the concept of identifying the gap that exists between
a production vision and a current condition at the workface and then striving to incrementally close that
gap on a daily basis. Construction Kata is a package of three Kata (structured routines of practice
originally associated with the study of martial arts), each with a unique purpose and use. The three
Kata are:
•
A Conformance Kata, a routine of causing incremental achievement of and/or
conformance to required conditions and behavior norms throughout the project,
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•
An Improvement Kata that is designed to incrementally improve individual construction
operation processes, and
•
A Coaching Kata that is designed to provide structure and daily coaching experience to
support the use of the other two.
With the addition of Construction Kata, the CP2Ms now has the capacity to employ Crew Centered
Construction in the very early stages of project pre-construction production planning and maintain that
focus throughout the life of the project right down to a daily striving toward the vision of Daily Crew
Production Flow at the work face.
We think there is a large sector of our industry that has adopted lean construction as it is taught
through the AGC or LCI communities but have yet to penetrate the veil that prevents truly seeing and
understanding the work at the crew level and uncovering all the waste, excess capacity and
contingency built into that is simply accepted as “This is construction.” We think there is another large
group of contractors that want to “go lean” but, because of the crew centric nature of their work, are put
off by the focus on Little’s Law, alternative contracts, relationships and conversations; they want to get
the waste and excess capacity out of their operations first, see improvement in their cost reports and
then worry about predictable flow and reliable planning systems. We think Crew Centered Construction
can and will be helpful to both groups. It will enable current lean adopters to screw down into a more
crew-centric focus and begin to get the bulk of the waste and excess capacity out of their operations.
Additionally, it will encourage the second group to embrace operation engineering and improvements of
conditions, behavior and processes at the workface and then bubble up to an understanding of the
need for more reliable planning and predictable workflow.
We also feel there is much to be gained by an ongoing conversation with current or previous clients
that are practicing some form of Crew Centered Construction. Contractor members of the group of noadopters may want to participate in these conversations and eventually stick their toe in the water. To
that end we are planning a Crew Centered Construction conference in late March or early April in which
we hope to have several presenters describe specific aspects of their efforts and how they are
combining lean concepts with an old fashioned focus on the work at the crew level. Our hope is to
bring all attendees current with our progress and the current status of the CP2Ms to date and then have
five or six presenters describe their specific breakthroughs in new tools or applications. There will be
ample time for lots of feedback and roundtable discussions as well as a wrap up session in which we
will compile concerns, constraints, breakthroughs and means of continuing the conversation
That will be followed by a series of what we are calling the NEXT Workshops that are currently in
design stages but will provide small classes of select attendees a whole new and exciting learning
environment that will accommodate incremental learning and action learning through adoption of new
concepts back in their organization. These workshops will be based on previous experiences with the
Breakthrough Leadership Institute that many current and former clients supported, operation
engineering applications using Lego’s and K’Nex bridge sets that Mike Vorster and I developed at
Virginia Tech, and classic operation engineering and production management concepts that are all part
of Crew Centered Construction. We hope to use conventional workshop settings as well as virtual
conferences, workshops and adaptive learning packages to better support learning while minimizing
travel and time away from tasks at hand.
We hope you will join us as we build on what we all have learned and accelerate the learning going
forward.
All the best,
Mike Casten and Jason Plattenberger
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