The construction industry is dealing with a lot right now — from skyrocketing materials costs to a shortage of skilled workers. With such difficult challenges, how can builders possibly deliver projects on time and on budget? It's definitely tough, but it's not impossible.
One solution is to adopt lean construction principles. These focus on eliminating waste, improving processes, and maximizing efficiency. When combined with cloud-based construction management software, teams can stay on track, make faster decisions, and keep projects moving efficiently.
Read on to learn more about lean construction, how it works, and how adding tech to the equation can take your operational results to the next level.
What is Lean?
First developed by Toyota in the 1950s, lean is a combination of philosophies, principles, methods and tools. Lean principles focus on continuous improvement (also known as "kaizen"): eliminating waste, increasing efficiency, and maximizing customer satisfaction. The Lean Enterprise Institute points to two key principles of kaizen:
- Flow — organizing and performing work so that it moves efficiently and smoothly from one step to the next.
- Pull — only doing work when there's a demand for it to reduce inventory and avoid waste from overproduction.
Ultimately, these lean principles can help organizations improve their processes and systems and increase efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction.
Understanding Lean Construction
Every builder is familiar with the usual project pain points — material delays, rough site conditions, labor shortages, scheduling headaches, and managing all the priorities of different trade partners. And let's not forget the sheer amount of data that needs to be handled along the way.
Traditionally, construction companies have solved pain points by making small adjustments — like sourcing materials locally, cutting transportation costs, or relying on more emails, spreadsheets, and documents. However, many of these fixes are still done manually, which can lead to Gray Work, mistakes, miscommunication, cost overruns, and delays. It's a tough cycle to break.
In lean construction, respect is the foundation, and collaboration is everything. It's about building strong, stable processes that help everyone continuously improve. According to the Lean Construction Institute, applying core lean principles to construction isn't just about getting the job done — it's about fostering relationships, sharing knowledge, and aligning everyone around common goals. Instead of working in isolated silos, lean breaks down those walls and reorganizes things for the benefit of the whole project, not just individuals on the team(s).
LCI's lean core construction practices include the following.
Last Planner System
Follow-through on traditional design and construction projects is low, according to LCI: only 54% of work planned for a given week is completed within the allotted schedule. The last planner system promotes predictable workflow by getting construction team members to identify problems before they interrupt the work.
Pull Planning
This approach makes sure that people, materials, information, and equipment arrive exactly when and where they're needed — kind of like a "Just-in-time" system. According to a recent study, 66% of construction businesses spend more than a quarter of their work hours waiting for work to be done. That's a huge amount of time — and money — being wasted.
Waste Identification and Elimination
Different forms of waste can pop up at every stage of the construction process. Designers might specify the wrong materials or change the plans halfway through. Carpenters can make mistakes and end up redoing their work. Materials might get ordered incorrectly, causing delays while everyone waits. And then there's the issue of excess inventory on-site, which can end up being moved around or stored while waiting for the next step. All of this adds up to wasted time, resources, and money. If teams adopt a lean mindset from the start, a lot of waste can be reduced or even eliminated altogether.
Technology to Support Lean Methods
It's easy to get on a soapbox and proclaim that the whole construction industry needs to be more efficient and improve its processes, but making that happen is a whole different story. Historically, the construction sector has hesitated to fully embrace the latest technological innovations. While software platforms such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) have gained some traction, the industry still has a long way to go. To really tackle planning and delivery issues, there's a need to adopt bigger, process-focused software solutions that can streamline everything from start to finish.
On a brighter note, even some of the most traditional construction workers have finally swapped their carpenter's pencil and a length of molding for something a bit more high-tech when it comes to calculations. It's clear that technology has made the job more precise and professional. And, the beauty of lean methods is that they don't just apply to physical systems — they also extend to your digital tools. By embracing lean principles in your software and processes, you can get a clear, holistic view of every project and other business benefits.
Effective Collaboration
Communication is key in applying lean principles in construction. Smart, cloud-based platforms allow for real-time collaboration between the field and the office, making decision-making faster and helping cut down on delays. They can also improve your customers' experience by quickly identifying problems with production, orders or supplies so your business can shift gears seamlessly and stay on schedule.
That kind of collaboration helps make workflow management much easier. With the right software, you can easily organize tasks and project schedules, making pull planning and just-in-time delivery a lot more manageable. This not only helps you keep things running on time, but it can also lower inventory holding costs, reduce the amount of working capital you need, and cut down on the risk of unsold inventory sitting around. Think lean, efficient, and cost-effective.
Streamlined Automation
Process automation is a game-changer when it comes to freeing up your team's time. It cuts down on all those repetitive tasks, like approval submissions or adding budget line items. Plus, it helps pinpoint bottlenecks and reduces the chances of human error. The right software can provide reports that pull data from across your whole organization, giving you a clear view of your processes. It will also tailor solutions to your employees' specific tasks and goals. Personalized dashboards, workflows, notifications, and integrations make it easy for everyone to stay on top of what they need to do, all in one place.
Smarter Resource Allocation
Quickbase has some great tools to help you make the most of your resources, whether labor, materials, or equipment. For example, you can streamline your trade partner selection by entering data to find those who align with your values and project goals. From there, you can track and analyze their performance.
You can also stay on top of compliance to avoid the time suck of work stoppages. Plus, by scheduling and tracking vehicle and equipment you can minimize downtime and extend their lifespan through regular maintenance.
A Combo That Packs a Productivity Punch
Construction companies are working hard to keep up with more complex projects in a fast-changing industry. In the traditional construction org chart, teams often work in silos, each focusing on different parts of the project. This can lead to communication breakdowns and missed opportunities. On top of that, many teams are juggling a bunch of disconnected tools to try to manage massive volumes of data from multiple sources.
Combining lean principles with smart construction management software can help you simplify processes, improve workflow, promote transparency, enable collaboration, reduce waste and empower teams to create more value. It's time to lean into Quickbase.
