When people are asked what they remember about the year 2020, the first thoughts will most likely be about the COVID pandemic and how it affected their lives. For the PC project team at the Martin’s Point Health Care (MPHC) Brunswick Clinic project, they will also recall using Lean construction practices to deliver a facility dedicated to the health of the Brunswick community.

Adapting: During “normal” times, we gather with our trade partners, roll up our sleeves, and collaboratively create phase plans to effectively hit milestones. COVID-19 certainly complicated this process and required a greater emphasis on virtual collaboration. PC worked with the MPHC Clinic team to adapt by using Microsoft Teams for phase planning sessions. People could be miles apart, but still see the faces and hear the thoughts of everyone else. With this, everyone stayed safely distanced from one another but collaborative communication between trades was maintained.

Flowing: On a recent visit to the jobsite, I saw how those virtually created phase plans were coming together in the real world. As I walked the job, it was exciting to see the flow of work from area to area matching the team’s phase plans. Those plans, and the color-coded batch plans, were posted on boards inside the building for everyone to see and follow. It is obvious that everyone is on the same page and collaborating.

Continuously Improving: Back in the field office, I was also pleased to see the results of continuous improvement. Obtaining sufficiently detailed Weekly Work Plans from all foremen is a consistent challenge, and it was no different early in this project. That may sound like a small piece of the overall puzzle, but it is a crucial one. The better the foremen plan, the greater the collaboration, all leading to a smoother and more efficient project process. Our project team recognized this, kept coaching the foremen from week to week, and brought up everyone’s game!

By maintaining a commitment to Lean practices, even during unprecedented times, this project maintained the schedule and executed work in an efficient manner that was embraced by and coordinated among all trade partners.

Images: These images, all taken on the same day, clearly illustrate the Lean flow of work going from one batch area to next.

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Take the third floor Intensive Care Unit at the Central Vermont Medical Center, relocate all the staff and patients in the unit to other areas of the hospital, renovate the entire 14-bed unit without disrupting the Mother-Baby Unit located directly below, pass all inspections and reintroduce the same staff and patients to their new restored environment – all in 10 days!

The Solution

Use the talent and knowledge of everyone on the team to create a highly coordinated plan, identify and remove constraints, and develop strategies to help the work flow. To that end, PC Construction’s project team held a full-day planning session with our trade partners and the owner’s representative.

The day started with an introduction to Lean. The team then spent several hours discussing the overall approach, including how to break the project into areas, the best sequence between areas and trades, how many shifts to run, material management, safety and minimizing impacts to the hospital. The day culminated in a pull planning session with the team creating a plan where the work could flow 24 hours per day in two shifts in all areas without tradespeople working on top of each other (See Figure 1). In addition, having a member of the owner’s team participate ensured that questions and logistics could be addressed immediately, allowing for uninterrupted planning.

As the work began, the team put strategies in play to help the work flow:

• Huddles were held twice a day between shifts, allowing opportunities for updating and adjusting the pull plan, and making a smooth handoff between shift foremen.
• Wheeled trash hoppers in each work area were constantly filled and emptied by all parties, and were also used to bring materials up to the third floor work area.
• Sequenced checklists of work activities were updated in each room as the work progressed.
• The patient room headwalls were prefabricated, saving time and enhancing quality and safety.

In the middle of the project, we received a major electrical change request. Because of the time spent planning together at the all-day session, the team did not miss a beat with a revised plan to minimize the impact of the change.

With the help of a lean culture that respected everyone’s talent and expertise, the team delivered a completely renovated ICU to the owner in just 14 days despite the major change, and did it with positive attitudes and more than a few laughs along the way!

The post Lean in Action: Small Timeframe, Big Project Plan appeared first on PC Construction.

From the onset of the project, the project team – including PC Construction and our trade partners – have been fully dedicated to Lean principles. They use pull planning to collaboratively create Phase Plans for each area and stage of the work, develop Weekly Work Plans based on the Phase Plans and hold Daily Huddles, all while identifying constraints that could prevent work from progressing. This has allowed the team to quickly identify if course corrections are needed.

Color-coded batch drawings were also leveraged on this project. During the pull plan sessions, the team broke the building into smaller working areas, otherwise known as batches. During the pull plan sessions, the work was pulled from one batch to another. The color-coded batch drawings are hung at the project so all team members can understand the planned flow of work.

The project team also used Building Information Modeling for MEP coordination. While not technically a Lean tool, BIM is integral to creating an efficient plan. BIM helps eliminate constraints that could disrupt the flow of work by finding those issues in the virtual world so they can be planned for or mitigated before construction even begins. On this project, BIM was also used to help with the prefabrication of the bathroom plumbing stands. Prefabbing off-site was safer and more productive, reduced the number of people and stored materials on site, and increased the overall speed and flow of the work, resulting in shaving weeks off the schedule.

Having everyone involved and every voice heard through the Lean process built trust and respect on this project, and you can feel it the second you walk onto the job site. They talk and act on a level different than what you see on most projects. For Lean to be a success, trust and respect needs to be a foundation for everything else. From there, the work becomes easier, and it’s smooth sailing.

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