2018Case3DPSGroup

19 L EAN C ONSTRUCTION I RELAND A NNUAL B OOK OF C ASES 2018 value to the owner of that activity – that person is a ‘customer’ of the trade or organisation performing the predecessor activity. The introduction of LPS on a project promotes cross-trade collaboration deep inside and this was exactly the type of behaviour and interaction that was required to ensure that an environment existed where EPCM&V could cooperate and engage to ensure that best efforts at realising the aggressive fast-track schedule could be achieved. Figure 1. The Last Planner® System @ DPS As LPS had already been used in construction with this Cl ient i t was decided to embed two members of the construction team within the engineering disciplines to coordinate the running of the morning huddles and to bring across the concepts and principles of LPS to the designers. Going forward, this was also going to be beneficial as the construction management team would contribute to the constructability of the design and would also gain a head start on the site construction works arising from the prior knowledge of the specific design. Introductory training on LPS and Pul l Planning was carried out with al l team members across engineering and procurement. More specific and focused training was conducted with team leaders and supervisors as these were the persons who were going to drive and sustain the momentum around LPS implementation. An open-plan big room environment was created where engineering and procurement were co-located, and at that early stage it was also determined that the core validation and commissioning expertise would be supported by members of the engineering team who had been involved in the design of the project from the outset. The Client’s Project Manager was also co-located in this big room environment. The common thread that would bind this collaboration, integration, and communication together was LPS and its various functions. An important aspect of the LPS implementation was the success of the integrated Pull Planning sessions involving team members from across the EPCM&V functions, while also having Client attendance and interaction. This lead to a greater level of common understanding across the teams and encouraged behaviours that broke down the existing siloed practices thus enabling greater collaboration, especially when identifying constraints and obstacles along the schedule workflow. The next-customer clarification of its Conditions of Satisfaction (CoS) by the EPCM&V teams, plus the Client-ensured minimisation of wasteful design iterations, enabled better alignment of handoffs between all parties when next-customer expectations were made explicit. The Lean Construction Institute states that “CoS are the criteria that the team uses to make decisions, develop a common language for col laboration, define expected behaviours, drive team culture, and work together to achieve positive outcomes. Well-designed CoS ensure that all participants are fully engaged with their labour, talents, and experience. With CoS, everybody wins”. Client support and involvement in the Pull Planning sessions and in the constraint removal process was critical to maintaining the flow of information between engineering and vendors during the procurement process. All aspects of the LPS functions were supported by the Client, including participation in the Pull Planning sessions, the constraint process, the development of the WWP, the morning huddles, and during the learning review of the previous week’s progress reports. To assist in the implementation of the coordinated workflow and the inclusion of the desired next-customer awareness, commissioning and validation (the customer of construction) organised the end of its WWP meeting to overlap and run into the start of the constructiin WW P meeting. This was to ensure that any information transfer or requests were immediate and not at risk of misinterpretation. Similarly, construction (the customer of design) scheduled its WWP meeting to run into the start of the design team WWP meeting. The DPS Senior Project Manager and the Client Project Manager attended all planning sessions to visibly support and offer commitment to the process. Progress was communicated to the Last Planners at the weekly coordinat ion meet ing and the focus was on emphasising the positive aspects of project planning while also noting the focus points that could be improved going forward. Such learning, development, and refinement of the process on a week-to-week basis was a crucial aspect of LPS on the project. Tasks completed as planned, tasks missed, and tasks completed early are recorded and presented back to the Last Planners. A summary of the volume of work undertaken on the week (total tasks planned) is shown and the top three categories of variance (reasons for non-completion) is discussed amongst the team with countermeasures suggested to eliminate or minimise reoccurrence of such negative impacts. A week-to-week trend of percent plan (promise) complete (PPC) is an important KPI of LPS and is an indicator of the team’s planning performance. C&Q produced their own weekly PPC report. A Variance Trend Analysis illustrates the categories of missed tasks that were impacting on the completion of work when measured against the original planned tasks on the WWP. This was trended over a five-week period and as this is a visual presentat ion one could see how the ‘Cl ient-dr iven changes/delays’ that impacted WW-30 were brought under control, as was the issue around ‘qualified staff availability’ which impacted WW-29, WW-31, and WW-32. Engineering/Design suite teams each produced their own WWP and weekly PPC reports. For weekly and monthly governance meetings, Design, C&Q, and Construction PPC were collated into a single report. If there was any major abnormality to discuss, the specific report could be shown and the countermeasure to the issue could be agreed. By presenting a combined report, the major issues that were impacting the project could be easily identified. Figure 2. LPS Overview ‘Pre-requisite work by others’ was having a major negative impact in WW-31. When this received focus its impact was reduced for WW-32, and almost eliminated in WW-33.