2020Case12Jacobs

Contents Lean Construction Ireland Annual Book of Cases 2020 49 Case 12 RAID implementation Digital and General LPS Benefits As outlined earlier, the most significant and tangible benefit of LPS deployment is around workflow reliability. The PPC% metric is employed within the context of LPS to reflect the level of workflow reliability. It can be helpful to think of the metric as percentage promises completed rather than just percentage plan complete). The metric does reflect the degree to which the team is making reliable promises. A significant improvement in the PPC% level – from a baseline of less than 60% to 85% levels – was achieved from the time the team started tracking and focusing on the metric on one of the life sciences projects examined. This PPC% improvement reflects the ability of the whole team to collaborate effectively and to make reliable promises to each other. As outlined earlier, our experience is that PPC% improve- ments are brought about by changes in the underlying behaviours that LPS deployment encourages and enables. These subtle behavioural shifts underlie any PPC% im- provements realised. In the case of this project experience, these behavioural changes included: • More focused and effective collaboration between all stakeholders and contractors, brought about by all parties focusing on a single shared result, namely the PPC% level. • Clarity – The simplicity and value of the single and mem- orable result, namely PPC%, that communicates a simple, meaningful result to all stakeholders involved in delivering work should not be underestimated. • Plan ownership and accuracy – LPS enables all stakehold- ers to participate in generating short-term plans. This not only creates ownership but also accuracy as plans are based on the most recent information available. • Behaviours – Specific behaviours the LPS process unlocks include: Encouraging the making of reliable promises in a blame-free environment. Making specific requests of others to enable work to progress. Improvement focus by identifying root causes of failed commitments as opposed to allocating blame. Additionally, the team began to track the primary root causes underlying failed commitments. The purpose was to focus on the underlying reasons – the “why” as opposed to the “who”. Using this information to avoid making the same mistakes twice also contributed to the improvement. The key conclusions are: • LPS has yielded significant benefits in the Jacobs life sciences projects on which it has been deployed to date. • Where teams cannot meet and engage face-to-face due to Covid-19 restrictions, it is possible to adapt some of the elements of LPS deployment to remote working by using a variety of digital tools. • To date, the migration of elements of LPS to digital tools and remote working has not resulted in any noticeable dilution of the associated benefits. • The fact that the deployment of LPS was reasonably well-advanced prior to the onset of Covid-19 and the implementation of the associated restrictions has helped the successful migration towards digital tools and ways of working. • Covid-19 has accelerated the deployment of some digital tools that support digital working and digital LPS deployment. Lean Initiative Improvements and Impact Figure 3. Last Planner® System Behaviours and Results