GA 378 | Lean in Construction with Robert Penney

Because as mentioned before, respect for people first and foremost. So we really have to create that culture on our project teams with our partners and have that belief that we really are working towards the same mission.

Today I'm excited to welcome Robert Penny to the show. Now, Robert works in the construction industry and has been practicing lean for many years. And so today we bas to sort of talk about how his company is applying Lean and, and how they're using it to, you know, really improve all aspects of their business. We get into some specific examples where, you know, this last planner system is a pretty, pretty common tool within the lean construction industry. So we talk a little bit about that, but then we get into some, some, some basics, man, some Lean basics like value stream mapping and how they were able to cut. Cut the time to do some internal processing down from like, I think it down to hours or something like that, or a day or two or something. But it was a massive improvement and just really interesting to hear how Lean's being applied in that industry. Robert also gives some really good advice and some tips for folks who might be in the construction industry and how they might want to get started. So we're going to link to several things that Robert mentioned. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 378. Again, Gemba podcast.com and look for episode 378. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Robert, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Oh, it's going great. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Ron. Looking forward to it.

Yeah, likewise, likewise. All right, well, Robert, I know you've listened to the show and as you know, we like to begin with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yep, I do. I had to think of all the quotes I really love, and I picked out one that has actually been with me since before I started my lean and continuous improvement journey. And that's. If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution. And that's from Steve Jobs. And that quote, I feel it just rings so true about clarity and transparency and understanding of a process and a situation really can provides so much value.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's one of my. I say probably the thing that I see the most is, you know, folks just jumping to countermeasures, you know, and. And they don't even really know what they're trying to fix. They just, they want to go fix something and so they just immediately rush to countermeasures. And then I'm like, well, let's say that you do actually make it better. Will he even know? Do you have a system in place to tell the score of how you're doing? You know, and, and yeah, it's, it's not the fun part of continu. Continuous improvement. Right. Understanding the current condition, but man, it's so important. So important.

Right? Yep. You gotta know what you're measuring.

That's it. That's it. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about your background, Robert. Tell us how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Sure, sure. So I work in the industry of construction industry and specifically construction management and general contracting. So work for a company called Skanska and we're a large commercial contractor. And yeah, so I got into. My background is I spent time as a project engineer and project manager working on construction projects across the US So I'm originally from New Jersey and Pennsylvania area and building data centers, pharmaceutical plants, hospitals, and moved around to California and the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco and Seattle specifically. And that's where I really started getting to exposed to a lot of the ideas about lean and continuous improvement while working on projects. So, yeah, my first introduction was something called last planner system, if you're familiar.

Yep.

And it's a lean scheduling technique we use. So I was running that on a project in Silicon Valley and really just using it to try and understand the work of the crews I was managing, understanding the handoffs, making reliable promises between the trades. And all of a sudden I realized that A, wow, this works so well and B, there's some deeper methodology here and thought behind this. So I just really dove in.

Yeah, yeah, that last planter system that's been around for a while and it's. I've had a few other construction folks on the podcast in the past and, and it always comes up. So yeah, that's some really good stuff. Let's just, let's jump in just a little bit deeper, Robert. I'm just curious to hear, you know, how lean and, and continuous improvement, you know, really just what is it? What does it mean specific to construction, to the construction industry? Yeah, just, let's, let's just hone in on that a little bit.

Sure. So I mean, when we're talking lean, we're really talking first and foremost the respect for people. And I believe and believe this rings true. Most people agree construction is such a people business. So not saying that manufacturing and other types of businesses aren't in theirselves people centric. But in construction we have an interesting framework where you have multiple different parties that aren't necessarily working for the same company. So if you were to look at each construction project, I'll give you an example. We worked on a project for the University of Washington up in Seattle and it was what we call a progressive design build contract, which is sort of an integrated project delivery, which is a very lean centric delivery method. And in this particular project we have over 10 different parties who work for 10 different companies. So you're talking, you have the owner, Skanska, the contractor, you have designer, you have consultants, you have subcontractors, you have inspectors. So you really creating an environment on this specific project to develop collaboration and communication between parties that may have never even worked together before. So I see lean as just such a, such a benefit to providing a framework for people to work together and collaborate efficiently.

Now obviously you talked about like last planner system, so that's sort of, you know, I know it's more than scheduling but you know, in the end it seems at the heart of it is who's doing what and how are we communicating with, with, with, with one another. What other kind of lean tools and concepts are you guys using within the construction industry?

Oh sure. So I mean one that we use on our construction projects is big room and that's fantastic. And that's just the co location of all of those different parties. I was just listing into one environment. So you're able to reach out and touch the person next to you? Well, with modifications now given our social distancing. But yeah, you're able to collaborate and throw those ideas off each other much faster. In addition, now this is one specifically I feel not just Skanska, but a number of the large contractor uses value stream mapping. Wow, has value stream mapping been really powerful? So you mentioned last planner specifically scheduling and we talk about project specific, but we've started to adapt value stream mapping, setup reduction and identifying waste within our own internal processes. So for example, for Scanska, when we go to set up a new construction project, you get a signed contract and then generally Speaking it took 30 days of entering a form into a computer, that computer going to accounting, logging the number, et cetera, et cetera. And we were able to value stream map out that process, create a whole new form that's fillable online in Adobe and we cut that time down from 30 days to three days. Wow. So it's just. Yeah, right. Talk about a time savings. So yeah, really beneficial. So I would say that's kind of where Skanska and myself are with the journey is realizing, okay, we see value time and money and just relationships in the field. And now we're seeing, wow, this could really transform the entire back end of the business as well.

That VSM exercise there where you ultimately improved the form. How did you guys facilitate that? Was it like just paper on a wall or did you use software to kind of facilitate the VSM or how did it work?

Oh, great question. So I mean I really gotta give a shout out to Virginia Mason, which is a hospital and healthcare company in Seattle who we worked very closely with. I'm sure you know, in Lean Journey they're quite well known. So we actually worked on a project with them in I believe, wanna say it was 2011 and we learned value stream mapping and rapid process improvement from them and we took those value stream mapping and that framework and that's what we adopted our, that's how we adopted practice. So to answer your question, we're talking. My first value stream map is butcher paper on the wall, sticky notes using string to identify where handoffs work well, where a process is broken. So very manual touch and feel on a wall work.

Yeah, I love it. And that's so cool how you know, you got a healthcare organization teaching in a construction organization about lean. How, how awesome? How awesome is that? Right? So, yeah, very, very cool. Very cool.

Fantastic. And that's. And they're actually where I went to get my first Lean certification. I got the Virginia Mason advanced Lean certification.

Nice.

And that just started a snowball effect.

Yeah, yeah, very good. So obviously construction is not going to be your, your typical environment to practice lean. Well, I don't know if there is a typical environment, but let's construction isn't it. So what kind of challenges are you guys up against when you're, when you're trying to apply continuous improvement to your industry?

I imagine as in many industries there's a number of challenges, but I think the ones that would be specific construction are interesting. Talk about is the just going back to it, the people and the organizational structure of a project. When you have a company culture like I'll use scansy for example, we have a deep lean culture now where we have a 17 person national continuous improvement team embedded in the organization. So we have a belief and a knowledge base and skill set of our own. When we're talking construction on each new project we partner with it's new team, new trades, a new end goal which is the project. So we're not always working towards the same mission. So we really have to create our own culture and environment and then really gain that level of trust. Because as mentioned before, respect for people first and foremost. So we really have to create that culture on our project teams with our partners, and have that belief that we really are working towards the same mission. So for me, that first and foremost is creating that sense of transparency, trust, communication, and behavior. Those are the four things I establish on our projects when we kick them off.

So if you got a new project starting next week and there's a new subcontractor that you've not really worked with a lot or something like that, you know, do you say, hey, by the way, we're into this lean stuff? Or like, how do you introduce it to. To a new group?

That's great. I have a couple examples for this in the Northwest, I would say is really where I started cutting my teeth on implementing this on projects. And really, as I imagine many lean practitioners can relate, just kind of shooting from the hip at first. And I found that doing partnering sessions, partnering workshops, or collaboration sessions, however you'd like to call them, been really effective. So we do a four to eight hour workshop in person. And I have this, a practice I like, called the house of high performing project environments. So we run the workshops through a bunch of exercises that focus on collaboration, communication, transparency, and trust as a foundation. So I'll do some lean practices with my own adaptations of fears and expectations exercises, conditions of satisfaction. Another great lean practice, what you can expect from me and what I can expect from you exercise, which is a very creating alignment and empathy between our teams. So we have this full framework of creating that collaborative environment and then we jump into a lean 101.

Okay, so you're actually doing training with these folks before you even begin the project?

Yeah, yeah. 100%. Personally, I feel that it's creating the relationship first and understanding why we're here, why everyone else is there, and what we're mutually trying to achieve together. You create that alignment and then you reinforce it with the training and say, here's how this is going to help us get to the end goal. That combination is just super powerful. Then we can start the project and we don't, you know, we're already on the same page.

Yeah. So what about, I'm curious, like, how is continuous improvement lean, whatever you want to call it, how is it recognized just within the construction industry? Is it pretty prevalent now or is it still in its infancy?

I would certainly not say its Infancy. So it's been around for a little over two decades now. And you know, the lci, Lean Construction Institute, I mean they do a fantastic job of really providing that organization framework that our industry can bond around. And I would say among the major contractors, most of the Skanska and our competitors, we have a deep knowledge. We've been slowly training experts over the past 10 to 15 years to really spread the body of knowledge. And we're now beginning to really implement and see, reap the results of the implementation on a project because as you know, you have to get to completion, you know, plan, do check, act, understand what's working and, and what's valuable. So I would say we're, we're well on our journey, but I really believe that the true implementation is going to come when we can fully spread it down through our, through our project partners.

Well, I was just going to say that I, I have a good friend here in the Dallas Fort Worth area and he's been in the construction industry for, for many, many years. And, and I wouldn't say he's a lean expert by any means. I mean he knows about it and he knows last planar system, that sort of thing. But he was actually asked by a very large, I won't use their name, but a very large, you know, construction company who was about to, was asked to work on a sort of like a mega church type deal here in the area. And, and this Appare megachurch kind of part of their deal was they wanted it to be, they had heard about Lean or something like that and they wanted to be, to be part of their, you know, of the project kind of thing or they wanted the folks working on it to be, you know, using it and aware of it. And anyhow, they, this big mega company, they I guess maybe knew enough to be dangerous so to speak, but they weren't, they weren't experts in it by any means. And so you know, they were sort of frantically running around trying to, you know, get, get some folks on their, on their team, so to speak, to give them a little bit more credibility, you know. And I thought it was interesting, you know, that, that, well, the, the client was sort of requesting it now. It was almost like the cart and the horse, it was all messed up, you know, it's like typically, you know, but that's why I asked. I was just curious like, you know, where you thought it was just overall.

Yeah, I mean, great example and I can absolutely run with that in terms of the owners and clients. So a lot of the Say government organizations, larger private sector companies, the owners are now educated and they either have Lean in their own organization or they're absolutely requesting it from the contractors. And the contractors as well. The larger ones have a deep implementation and knowledge within their history and their work experience. And then some of the larger subcontractors as well, specifically our mechanical, electrical and plumbing companies, they do a fantastic job as well. But to the point in your example, it's really interesting when you have the owner or client will have a need which is say we want Lean and, or we'd like, you know, a culture of Lean on our project. And if, even if you are experienced or you're not experienced, you have to say, okay, what value? Because when we talk about Lean, we're talking about value to the end user, the client. What does value look like on this specific project and then what Lean tools and practices will specifically provide that value. And you know, given the timeframe of a job, is it six months or is it, you know, five years? And in this evaluation of each of our new projects in construction, I think that is where the challenge, but also the opportunity is to pick and choose what specific Lean tools are going to add value on this new project or challenge we're going towards. And yeah, it's that, that's what I find exciting about it, is that each one is different and unique in its own implementation of Lean tools.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, there's a great book I love. It's called the Lean Builder. Anyone can look it up. And it's specifically about using Lean tools on construction projects and in the field. And if you really were to look at it as kind of, you know, a menu of services, like you sit down at a restaurant, you can pick and choose which Lean aspects will work for whatever your need is on a project.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, it's the irony of it. So we, we, Gemba Academy has our own building here in Texas that we, that we work out of. And we're actually in the process of. It's an 8,000 square foot building and we originally built 4,000 of it out. And that's where, you know, we all kind of work, you know, our studios here and all the rest of it. Well, the other 4,000 we just left as an empty shell and we had planned to finish it out about a year ago, but then you may have heard a few things happen in the world. So we decided to not do anything for a year. And so anyhow, we just started, started it up. And in fact, the crews are over there as I speak. They're, they're finishing out this second side and it got an email last night from our contractor and they're great. Our contractor is fantastic. So nothing but, but great, great, great words for them. But they were basically telling us that, you know, they were ahead of schedule and it was pretty obvious that they were ahead of schedule. Everything was going great. And then he, they said that, wow, gosh, you know, we're, we've. We've basically outrun our materials, you know. And you know, due to the pandemic and all the rest of it, there was just a shortage on, I can't remember, it was like door frames or something like that. I don't know. And, and you know, basically was just letting us know that things are going to slow down a little bit here until we get materials in. So I was like, man, it's all about, you know, planning and orchestration and, and they're doing great as far as they're still going to probably beat the, you know, the original timeline. But, but I thought it was just interesting. You know, here you go, man. You just don't have the, the parts to put everything together. You're not going to be able to put it together. Right.

So. Right. It's that, it's that flow and, and flow and pull are two of the biggest things in construction that we, we really try to focus on. Yeah. You know, you telling that story just, just makes me think of. This is one of my, one of my favorite ones is delays in construction. Historically, they're a thing we tend to expect and permits and you know, getting approval from local municipalities. We had a case for a museum we're building in the Northwest and we actually ended up having, I believe it was a six week delay to the beginning construction. And you know, on a major project, that's a huge deal. Yeah, you know, time and money. And we were able to use a phased pull plan which is essentially a localized lean scheduling process. So not entire last planner, but on one specific task which was well, we have six months to kind of sit and wait or six weeks, my apologies to sit and wait. Why don't we see if we can restructure the way we're going to hang the steel structure of the building in a more efficient manner. And we actually were able to end up recovering those six weeks on this museum project and saved all of the general conditions impact of running those additional six weeks for the client as well. So that was when you talk, when you talk about earlier the challenges of implementation a Little bit of the trust and belief that Lean works on that project specifically. We were able early on to prove proof of concept early and it was just really such a huge win.

Yeah.

Still brings a smile to my face.

Yeah. That reminds me of, you know, Toyota, when you know, certain things happen in the factory and you're like, well, let's just train everybody. If we're not going to be building cars, let's train, let's get better.

Right.

Let's use this opportunity to, to improve. So. Yeah, good. So what about COVID So how did Covid impact, you know, really your, your industry and, and really maybe the way that you've been practicing Lean.

Wow. Well, it was a very large impact and it was from a number of his, from a number of sides. I guess the first I could start off with was I mentioned earlier, we do a lot of value stream mapping and we look into our processes. So whether it's how delivered material is delivered to a site, how the crews enter through a project gate, how we have our safety meetings to orientate people when they're joining, when they're coming on board the project. So all of those are processes that we have as an international organization, really detailed and standardized. And Covid comes along and if you look at it value stream map wise, we have all these new steps, talking resources of people who perform each steps. Well, we can't do that in person anymore. So it really, it caused us to have to take a step back and say, okay, how can we analyze these processes again, input the new steps that Covid is bringing in, which you know, is temperature checks, social distancing, Sanit, you know, sanitation. And we were able to, with some, with some time and some stepping back and some distance from it, we're able to put in new processes and get our jobs back up and running. So I would say that Covid hit our processes particularly hard. But having this continuous improvement culture of let's take a step back, look at it and not just start throwing solutions at it, that really gave us a first line of defense. I would say next was really created a need. Let me kind of explain that if I can. So different municipalities across the country or states are closing down work on projects altogether. Unless we can prove that we have means to work safely, we can provide social distancing, we have the temperature checks, health and safety protocol in place, all of a sudden it's okay. So we can work if we can find a way to do it safely. So this created this. God, it was really great to see a banding Together of everyone who worked and said, let's share ideas and let's share our knowledge across the country, you know, Florida to Washington, California to New Jersey, and figure out how can we get our projects up and running again. So we had a, almost a renaissance of knowledge sharing within, within Skanska that resulted from the pandemic. So it was a little bit of a silver lining for us. Yeah.

Imagine if you didn't have that Lean background to fall on, you know, during those hard times, you know, you may not have survived. Right.

That's a realistic. But yeah, it's a real possibility. It really is. It's the, the ability to take that step back.

Yeah.

Analyze the roadblocks we have and how we can get over those hurdles and then move forward. Yeah. It really came from those, you know, years of pull planning, rpiws, process improvement. Yeah. Really gave us a, you know, tools in the tool belt.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

No pun intended. Right. So. Hey, so. So, Robert, if someone's listening to this right now, maybe they're in the construction industry and they're just sort of. Maybe they, they don't know anything about Lean or they don't know anything about Lean construction. What advice do you have for them? I mean, you mentioned some books and different, you know, different lci, different groups like that. You know, do you have any advice for, for folks in that industry if they want to learn more?

I do. For me, I'm really big on like kind of understanding the value and like seeing a vision of how Lean could help. So for me personally, the book, the Goal was such a fantastic read. I had that. I read that really early on in my journey. And the fact that it's a fictional book telling a story and putting you in the personal feet of someone experiencing headaches, delays, poor team environments that just, it felt so real reading that book that it got me hooked. So the goal was one I really like. I would also recommend because we have a. There's a lot of newer generation and technology focused engineers and folks entering our industry. So the. I believe it's the Phoenix project. It's more of a agile methodology book and it focuses on a software development side, but also, once again, such a fantastic. Put you in the shoes of someone in that situation just looking for a better way to work. Yeah. So those two books are my favorite to kind of create that. That hunger to go, wow, there's really something here. And then I'd personally say the Lean Builder was a. Was a fantastic, very construction focused book as well.

I love it. Yeah. The goal is, is that's classic CI man, old Alex Rogo. Right? Yeah. You're like, what's he gonna do next?

And you realize the second you put it down, you're like, this is a classic for a reason.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And you know, there is one more I'd like to highlight. There's one called the because and it's very short and I actually hand it out to a lot of my field supervision. It's called the Pool Planning Playbook for Superintendents and Foremen. And it's by a company called Unified Works. And it's a, it's a really great simple. Here's a tool, one tool that can help your project and here's how you implement it. I really like how straightforward it is and a lot of value.

Well, what I'll do, Robert, I'll get you to email me links to all these books and then we'll put them in the show notes for, for folks who want to go. Go order those. So this is, this is episode 378. So folks, just go to GembaPodcast.com look for episode 378 and we'll link to all these books. Yeah, well, good stuff. So. And also we'll link to, to you, Robert. So what, what's the best place for folks to connect with you on LinkedIn or where are you at these days on the Interwebs?

I would say it's LinkedIn. LinkedIn's probably my. You can find me on there. And I do a lot of posting about continuous improvement, not just Skanska related, but industry related. So yeah, LinkedIn would be great. Great.

Got it. And it's Robert Penny. P E N A N E Y.

Right, you got it? Yep.

All right, well, good stuff man. Keep up the great work. It's. It was fun having you on and it's always amazing just talking about Lean in different industries and, and I keep coming back to the healthcare group kind of teaching the construction group about Lean. It just brings, makes my heart smile, you know.

Right.

So.

No, I appreciate you having me on, Ron. It was a pleasure.

Thank you. All right, thanks, Robert. Take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, GEMBA Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.