Just by moving the location of one parking lot, an Aecon vice president says his team shaved more than 1,000 hours off lost time on a recent, high-profile job.
At the Gordie Howe Bridge Project that connected Detroit to Ontario, Eric Lusis, vice president of continuous improvement at Toronto-based Aecon, said he observed the location of a worker parking lot in relation to the workplace. The long walk from the lot was time-consuming, so the project team relocated it, changing it from a four-minute walk to a one-minute walk.
On average, this meant that each worker saved six minutes a day getting to and from their cars. For 100 team members over 160 days of work, Lusis estimated that Aecon saved 1,600 hours that would have been spent touring the site.
“Just stopping and observing can be shocking,” he said.
Lusis noticed the inefficiency during a gemba walk, a lean construction practice designed to help contractors see in person how work is being done, identify challenges, notice inefficiencies and develop better communication.
The real place
Gemba (also spelled genba) is a Japanese term meaning “the real place”. The name refers to physically visiting workplaces and being present during a tour. The practice was pioneered by Toyota’s manufacturing leaders.
It also means being deliberate, focusing on everything that happens together and identifying how to improve, Lusis said during a recent Lean Construction Institute webinar.
“In the field, it can sometimes be a difficult thing to do,” he said, acknowledging that superintendents or project managers don’t always have time to stop and observe the work.
The LCI offers suggestions for how to do a gemba walkincluding:
- Plan ahead. Consider the questions to ask ahead of time and write them down to ensure they are varied. Let the team know you’re coming and tell them what a gemba ride is so you don’t disrupt their workflow.
- Analyze the process, not the people. A gemba walk is not the time to criticize the workers on their productivity, but to determine the efficiency of the process itself.
- Go with the flow. follow the stock current in sequential order. Doing so will make it easier to find waste. Take team members with you and talk to them as you observe.
- tracking Do a follow-up walk again after giving the team time to test the changes.
Ask the right questions
LCI recommends not doing yes or no queries. Instead, managers can use productive questions that begin with “what,” “why,” or “how?”
“It’s asking questions like, ‘Your plan for the day says this, why did you switch?'” said Tammy McConaughy, LCI’s director of education and certification. “‘What’s going on with you today? How are you going to achieve this?’”
During a gemba walk, managers ask questions to learn more about issues affecting productivity in the workplace.
Sean Anthony Eddy via Getty Images
Another way to think about it is to go and see what work is planned for the day versus what’s actually happening, and then try to connect the dots between the two, according to McConaughy.
And it’s important to come to the job site with an open mind, not looking to point fingers, but to build a relationship with people at work to better understand the obstacles that create inefficiencies, McConaughy told Construction Dive.
“A lot of times, if you think about it as a GC, when you ask a trade foreman a lot of questions, they get really tense. ‘What have I done wrong? Why all these questions?’” he said. Practicing asking questions from a place of humble learning and actively listening to those in the workplace can be a key step in building that relationship and meeting an efficient schedule.
Other benefits
And it’s not just in the workplace. McConaughy said he’s seen contractors find and fix inefficiencies in the office around practices like sending packages or important documents.
It can also work safely. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, McConaughy said he knew of companies whose leaders would walk around the workplace and see people wearing masks but no safety glasses, or vice versa, because working with both caused the glasses get dirty.
Rather than simply saying, “Put your glasses on,” McConaughy said the focus of safety at a gemba walk would be to make sure observers know why artisans aren’t following protocol and how to facilitate the safety of workers .
He said the company tried different masks, other eye protection and anti-fog wipes, but the biggest benefit was that it led to conversations with the safety manager and the foreman to understand the right solution for the crews. This meant different solutions for different jobs, such as indoors or outdoors or various weather conditions.
Isn’t it obvious?
Going to the job site to observe the work might seem like a pretty obvious way to solve problems, and McConaughy said a gemba walk is a “deceptively easy” method of doing it.
“This is such a reactive industry,” he said, saying that too often problems come up and are immediately resolved with the fastest solution instead of the best one. He used the footage of a superintendent exiting a trailer from the job site and encouraged a different approach.
“Instead of saying, ‘We’re behind, I’m going out there because I know everybody’s screwing up,’ maybe saying, ‘We’re supposed to be doing it today, I’m going to go find out what’s going on, what’s not going on, and why. “, he said.
