2019Case5Ardmac

26 L EAN C ONSTRUCTION I RELAND A NNUAL B OOK OF C ASES 2019 project leaders contribute to the business. Leadership Development Program A critical element of Lean deployment centres around the consistent behaviours of leaders in the business. Alignment of consistent behaviours support the business both internally and externally. From a client perspective, and regardless of who is managing the project, the client will experience a standardised approach to managing a project. As a team member within Ardmac, consistent behaviours internally will also drive consistent behaviours within each team, thereby supporting our vision to be “the contractor of choice for clients and the workplace of choice for great people”. To ensure that Lean will be successful in the future, Ardmac has supported 17 leaders in undertaking a leadership development program at Trinity College Dublin. The program focuses on a number of areas including Operational Excellence, Strategy, Design Thinking, People Management, Integrated Project Management, and Benchmarking visits. The outcome of the program is the delivery of five strategic projects that will support the delivery of Ardmac’s strategic goals. Each member of the Lean Governance team has completed this program, which provides a deeper knowledge and understanding of Ardmac’s Lean journey. Figure 3. Graduates from the Ardmac “Building Better Leaders” Program 2019 Constructive Conversations Program To further support leaders as people managers, Ardmac has also launched a “constructive conversations” program. This program has trained leaders to perform 2-way constructive conversations with employees, thus transitioning managers from a directive to a coaching and mentoring role. Do Your BIT Program Lean involves a transition to all employees thinking about continuous improvement. To support this continuous improvement mindset, Ardmac has developed and deployed the “Do Your BIT” (“Building Ideas Together”) program. The purpose of this program is to support employees to have a voice in continuous improvement. Employees are supported in submitting ideas for review and execution. The Do Your BIT team review ideas submitted monthly and then provide employees with feedback on their suggestions. The program considers all ideas, from a 10-minute small improvement to large-scale capital investment ideas. Ideas can be submitted electronically or can be managed via the Visual Management Boards or during Toolbox Talks. On site in particular, the daily huddle boards are a good opportunity to ensure that craft can participate in the program. This approach not only promotes continuous improvement, but also engages employees in our Lean journey and provides leadership with an opportunity to recognise an employee’s innovation that they may not otherwise be exposed to in the business. Visual Management A key aspect to Lean deployment is the management of metrics. From 2018, Ardmac has engaged craft within projects through the application of Visual Management Boards to manage the metrics that matter daily. Each of our projects across Ireland, the UK, and Europe utilise, as part of our daily huddles, a review of key metrics including Safety, Quality, and Schedule. This Visual Management board complements the LPS to ensure that the metrics that matter are reviewed and managed daily. The review of the visual boards involves the entire team, thereby ensuring that everyone is aware and accountable to the metrics that matter. Figure 4 outlines an example of a visual management board in action, including the Daily Huddle and our Safety Program. The Visual Management process in Figure 4 is replicated across all our projects in Ireland, the UK, and Europe. The key to the success is the involvement of the right people in this short stand up review (15-minutes max) as these are the people that can constructively action the status of each metric. Figure 4. Visual Management at Project Level Project Management Platform From an analysis of the workload of site management in 2018, up to 20% of site management time was absorbed around data collection and reporting. This time included activities such as printing forms, filling in by hand, scanning, and emailing results or typing results in spreadsheets. There were also large amounts of time spent walking between the site office and the work zone collecting drawings and the latest information. A project was set up to identify a solution to minimise this non-value-added (NVA) time. A number of software solutions were identified to manage documentation in a Lean manner. In early 2019, a software solution named “Procore” was selected and implemented to streamline project process on any mobile device. A significant project plan was developed to manage the integration of Procore into the business, starting with a pilot and identifying lessons learned around the program before full deployment. To support deployment, a significant training plan was developed and executed to minimise impact of change from a paper based system to an