2020Case14CollenConstruction

Contents Lean Construction Ireland Annual Book of Cases 2020 56 Ca e 14 Figure 1. Master Project RAID Log could cost us or even derail our projects completely. The opportunity to implement our RAID methodology evolved when we held our first day-long LLP session for a new € 50M commercial project in South Dublin that we had recently been appointed as Main Contractor. This complex build was at its initiation stage, providing the perfect time for this Lean implementation. This holistic approach to project planning together with the project stakeholders was held off-site in a conference room in a nearby hotel, providing a comfortable and distraction-free environment for problem solving and open collaboration. The partnership approach with our supply chain enabled a seamless introduction of the RAID log and empowered all teams to contribute to the continuous improvement of our LPS. The objective of this RAID was to essentially capture all Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies that arose during the LLP session, with specific emphasis at the interface zone of the various subcontractor packages. As the various discussions on task sequencing and execution plans played- out, the resultant RAID components were recorded on a shared Master Log (Figure 1) and categorised as follows: • Risks – Any discussion item that had a level of uncertain- ty, which if materialised, could have impacted the project deliverables or outcomes negatively. • Assumptions – Factors that were assumed to be true were categorised here. These included items whereby sub- contractors based their planning on previous experience and historical situations. However, it was vital that the critical as- sumptions were captured for if they turned out to be invalid, they could have a detrimental impact on the project outcome. • Issues – Items that needed to be resolved and an agreed strategy to get there as soon as possible. We needed to track and monitor these items to mitigate against any roadblocks and/or delays in the workflows. • Dependencies – These were the tasks that were depen- dent on the completion of other tasks (make-ready) by other trades, ensuring a smoother workflow at the coal-face for task execution. Our project team’s experience and expertise enabled us to identify the correct category for each RAID component, prompting the next step of evaluating their criticality, actions to reduce their likelihood/impact, and assignment of respon- sibility along with due dates. Project Controls In recent years, Collen has successfully carried out a significant number of fast-track, multi-million euro projects across Ireland and Europe. The schedules associated with these complex builds have become more and more demanding, highlighting the need for further enhancements to an already robust project controls mechanism within the organisation. With a strong continuous improvement culture embedded, Collen looked towards the PDCA (Plan- Do-Check-Act) cycle (Figure 2.) to augment our schedule management procedure with the aim of mitigating against schedule slippage and to de-risk all projects from costly delays. Using the PDCA model, we incorporated a step- by-step process at project management level, providing a platform as a single source of truth for Schedule monitoring. This tracking tool incorporates: • Plan – Enhancements made through identifying the key project milestones and detailed six-week look-aheads incor- porating a mechanism for forecasting the start and finish dates for critical activities. • Do – Follow through on the critical requests for further information (RFI), submittals, package procurement, and execution of construction tasks.