2020Case14CollenConstruction

Contents Lean Construction Ireland Annual Book of Cases 2020 55 Case 14 The culture of continuous improvement within our day- to-day operations at Collen Construction means that our organisation continuously strives to exceed our clients’ expectations through the adoption of new and innovative Lean practices. The successful delivery of large and complex builds depends largely on the rigorous and systematic approach to scheduling – a tactic that Collen embraces from project initiation stage right through to project handover. This culture empowers our project delivery teams to challenge the status quo and make the best plans even better. The first area of focus for planning improvements centres on the implementation of a RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) log at our weekly LLP (Lean Last Planner) sessions. The volume of critical information being shared by all project stakeholders at these planning workshops was proving to be very beneficial, but we needed a platform to capture and analyse these constraints to drive confidence with our decision-making. Additionally, the decision to enhance our Project Controls procedures through the adoption of the PDCA model further strengthened our ability to deliver these complex projects on time every time. Over the last number of years, Collen has been implementing the LLP tool on a high percentage of our fast-track projects with great success. Our commitment to the Kaizen philosophy means that we are constantly in pursuit of operational excellence, striving to find possible areas of improvement to further enhance our embedded Lean Construction tools. One area that we decided to focus on over the last 12 months was to further enhance our Last Planner® System (LPS). Typically, we would hold a full day LLP session with all project stakeholders at the start of a project to build-out the master schedule through open collaboration in an environment of trust and support. At these events, the exchange of crucial information between the project stakeholders was proving to be a valuable source of information and the open engagement fostered a platform for discussions on project specific risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies. As useful as these sessions were for validating and enhancing the project schedule, we identified through a plus-delta exercise that the opportunity to capture other key project nuances was being missed. It is only after the completion of a typical LLP session that the project team ‘deep dive’ the information gathered and sieve through the swarm of challenges that each stakeholder presented on the day. The ensuing question related to how all of that information was going to be managed. We needed to incorporate a method of capturing and tracking these project constraint items along with the strategies and action plans to fix them. Instinctively, we decided to implement the RAID log as a parallel tool for the project manager to track the following: Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies. Identifying these early in the project was going to help us to assess all of these RAID components and act accordingly. Avoiding them could Company Overview Collen Construction collen.com Overview & Background to the Lean Initiative Willie Loughnane Author Lean Initiative Undertaken – Lean Thinking, Tools, Techniques Established in 1810, and trading as “Collen Bros.” until 1984, Collen Construction is one of the leading construction firms in Ireland, and we are extremely proud of our history and reputation for building quality and excellence. The company offers a full range of construction services, including management contracting, design and build, joint venture/partnering, and turnkey contracts. We have experience in a variety of project types, including residential, commercial, educational, retail, data centres, leisure, health, pharmaceutical, industrial, and conservation, and ranging in value from under € 1Million to in excess of € 300Million. We have longstanding relationships with numerous Clients and Consultants built up over the years, ensuring the company has remained at the forefront of Irish construction for two centuries. Our Client list is testament to the excellent service the company provides on every project.