Simplifying a System to Meet Actual Facilities Needs
Any real property owner can develop and deploy a robust Framework for Integrated Facilities Planning, Procurement, and LEAN Project Delivery. The only prerequisites are minimum thresholds of leadership and competency and the support of the associated organization. The benefits of LEAN process adoption consistent include the optimized delivery of quality repair, renovation, maintenance, sustainability, and new construction projects.
People, Process, Information, and Technology are central components to optimally planning, planning, funding, maintaining, and managing facilities and other forms of physical infrastructure. Participants and stakeholders affected by facilities related decision… building users, builders, architects, engineers, oversight groups, and the community at large… are best served through the availability of current, accurate, actionable information, and associated decision-support and execution processes.
Locally Researched Actionable Information
The critical functions of facility planning, acquisition, construction, alteration, maintenance, and operations (including decommissioning and disposal) are impossible to execute efficiently without sharing locally researched, transparent information presented in a common, easily understood format. On example of share information within a LEAN common data environment (CDE) is a locally researched detailed line item unit price book (UPB). The later enables all participants and stakeholders to easily view detailed, verifiable costs for labor, material, and equipment for all relevant construction tasks. A UPB eliminates the sole reliance upon contractor and subcontractor quotes or “back of the envelope” estimates. Furthermore, a locally researched UPB virtually assures a detailed scope of work for each work requirement. One that can be easily documented, understood, and shared with all participants and stakeholders.
Others examples of actionable data include current information that contributes to any or all of the following:
- Measures of Facility Condition
- Factors That Measure Facility Adequacy
- Factors That Measure Facility Utilization
- Factors That Measure the Environmental Impact of Facilities
- Factors That Measure Facility Impact on Health and Wellness
- Factors that Measure Costs and Define Budgets
LEAN Processes Embedded with Enabling Technology
All LEAN processes share certain fundamentals, all of which can be embedded within collaborative information technology to assure consistent, lower cost, deployment and ongoing monitoring and management.
Policy goals, objectives, indicators, as well as projects and workflows are all supported within the LEAN information management system.
Core Elements of LEAN Construction Planning, Procurement, and Project Delivery
Sample listing of LEAN components specific to physical asset management:
- Owner LEADERSHIP
- Focus upon BEST VALUE outcomes
- Early and Ongoing COLLABORATION among all participants and stakeholders
- Mutual TRUST and RESPECT
- Shared RISK/REWARD
- PERFORMANCE-BASED reward system
- Planning and DECISION-SUPPORT based upon inter-dependencies
- COMMON DATA ENVIRONMENT (CDE) – example: locally researched unit price book (UPB) using common terms and definitions in plain English and standard data architectures (for example CSI Uniformat, Masterformat, Omniclass)
- Supporting Technology – Modular technology that supports, rather than restricts, robust yet flexible business processes and workflows
- Long term, mutually BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIPS
- Global oversight that takes advantage of local knowledge and capabilities
- Required initial and ongoing training for all participants
- Continuous monitoring and improvement
- Clear, written definition of roles, responsibilities, requirements, and deliverables in the form of a Operations Manual or Execution Guide
Collaborative LEAN Construction Planning, Procurement, and Project Delivery Information Management System
While technology should never be a driver, it can be leveraged to speed and lower the cost of deployment, and significantly aid in improving information sharing and associated accelerated learning, on ongoing monitoring, as well as aiding in gaining overall productivity gains. Core elements of a LEAN Construction Planning, Procurement, and Project Delivery System include…
- Program Management
- Project Management
- Estimate Management
- Document Management
- Workflow Management
- Task and Issue Management
- Reporting
- Collaborative Information Sharing
- Standardized Data Architectures and Data Formats
The goals of LEAN Construction Planning, Procurement, and Project Delivery can easily be achieved if proper care is given to organization-specific design and appropriate phased implementation. These goals of LEAN can simply be stated as …
- “Solve the customer’s problem completely by ensuring that all the goods and services work, and work together.
- Don’t waste the customer’s time.
- Provide exactly what the customer wants.
- Provide what’s wanted exactly where it’s wanted.
- Continually aggregate solutions to reduce the customer’s time and hassle.”