In construction.,. especially when it involves the numerous renovation, repair, maintenance, and sustainability projects required to support a building portfolio… things can and do go wrong:
- Wrong scope of work
- Inaccurate cost estimate
- Delays in sourcing professional contractors
- Poor quality assurance or quality control
- ….. (long list)
Most of us… owners, AEs, contractors, subs, and oversight groups, know why things go wrong. We can easily limit the number of times it happens, as well as, optimize required solutions. So the question is why don’t we?
We know that “best value procurement”, “working collaboratively”, “using common terms, definitions, and data environments”, “longer term relationships”, “ongoing training”, “key performance indicators”, “continuous improvement” would greatly improve outcomes in terms of quality on-time and on-budget delivery of exactly what was needed.
Real property owners and facility managers/operates must communicate:
- What they want in terms of outcomes and deliverables (including information),
- How they want it,
- When they want it,
- How much they will pay for it, and
- What happens if they don’t get it.
These things can’t be done ‘ad hoc’, or ‘on the back of a napkin’, in spreadsheets, with disparate formats of the same information, or without written contracts inclusive of operations or execution manuals.
Put another way, all of the above… and the associated “life-cycle” of the renovation, repair, sustainability, or new construction projects, must be conceptualized, procured, executed, and warranted within a PROJECT DELIVERY METHOD.
It is the PROJECT DELIVERY METHOD that sets the tone of the overall “construction” activity, assigns roles, responsibilities, risk, rules, processes, benefits, timelines, and overall determines positive or negative outcomes more than any other single element.
LEAN collaborative construction delivery methods greatly increase the likelihood of positive construction outcomes from the typically 2% to well over 90%. They assure that information is provided earlier in the overall process, shared in common, easily understood formats, and is not overlooked.
Technically they are really construction project conceptualization, procurement, and execution methods, but that is a much longer name. Examples of robust LEAN construction delivery methods include Integrated Project Delivery, IPD, for major new construction, and Job Order Contracting, JOC, for renovation, repair, and minor new construction projects. Both assure that the right information is available at the right time to enable enhanced decision-support and associated project execution.
Job Order Contracting, for example, can delivery 96%+ overall satisfaction levels, and well over 90% of projects on-time and on-budget.
Understanding, promoting, and implementing LEAN construction delivery helps to assure that the team can make repair, renovate, or build what the owner wants and supply all required information for ongoing life-cycle management of the asset. In short, when complete, money, time, or quality problems will not lead to dissatisfaction, lawsuits, and unhappy campers!