Lean Construction Ireland Annual Book of Cases 2021 31 Case 8 Mercury is a European contractor that builds and manages complex engineering projects that reimagine how people work and live in the built environment.Mercury believes that real innovation happens if you’re willing to be brave. Its determination and sharp focus enable Mercury to deliver leading-edge construction solutions across a range of key sectors, taking its clients to new territories they never thought possible. Mercury’s purpose is to deliver its clients vision through leadingedge construction solutions, going beyond their duty which turns clients into partners and builds relationships that thrive across the following sectors: Enterprise Data Centres, AdvancedTechnology & Life Sciences, Hyperscale Data Centres, Fire Protection,Technical Support Services (TSS), Data Centre Facility Management, Healthcare & Building Services. Mercury employs over 6,000 people, including sub-contractors, across over 15 locations in Europe and had an overall turnover of €1bn in 2020. Mercury employs the best people, invests heavily in training and education, and ensures that the highest standards of health, safety, and governance are applied throughout the organisation Mercury has long been an advocate of Lean and has been implementing its principles into work practices for many years. Lean has always been something Mercury strives for. Mercury’s default position is if there is an activity or a task that we’re going to perform for our client, safely, we will always make it happen – better, faster, and smarter. In recent years, the construction sector has started to see the benefits of modular construction and Mercury senior management made a strategic decision to embrace this new way of building all projects that we are involved in. Off-Site Assembly (OSA) is redefining our industry. Across the Group, Mercury’s teams are implementing OSA across all services, including:Electrical,Mechanical, CSA, Information CommunicationTechnology (ICT), and Fire Protection. Modular construction can be considered as a hybrid of manufacturing and construction, and in many ways lends itself to Lean Production, which permits significant improvements in terms of productivity, reduction in waste, schedule certainty, and improved quality. The latest challenge of Lean Production is its implementation in the modular building industry,where the full potential in terms of productivity is yet to be achieved. Company Overview MERCURY mercuryeng.com Overview & Background to the Lean Initiative Jason Toomey Author This case study is centred on a large data centre project recently completed by Mercury. Several Lean tools and techniques were used to successfully complete the project. Just InTime (JIT) JIT is a technique developed byTaiichi Ohno and his fellowworkers at Toyota. It was developed as a method of pulling work forward fromone process to the next just in time.The goal of JIT is to reduce, and eventually eliminate, variations and waste from a process. On construction projects, this waste is normally waiting, storing inventory, and moving materials. As the construction sector has tried to become more productive over the years, it has adapted the JIT technique to suit the needs of its sector.The application of JIT in construction differs greatly from the manufacturing industry because of the complexity and schedule uncertainty of large construction projects.With construction adopting the OSAmodule, JIT is now becoming an essential tool in today’s construction sector. On this particular data centre project, JIT delivery was implemented for the fabrication and delivery of the cable containment modules. We were fabricating the modules in Mercury’s off-site fabrication workshop in sequence of install on-site, and the project engineer was calling down the modules as the workface opened up on-site. The project engineer used a digital pull plan on Mercury’s project management tool to request the delivery of the modules he required. When the request was made on the pull plan, the module would be delivered to site the next morning and installed the same day. The Last Planner® System (LPS) was in operation on the project, and this collaborative approach helped alleviate any trade-stacking in certain areas of the site. It also helped with the JIT process we had implemented. Lean Initiative Undertaken – Lean Thinking, Tools, Techniques
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