The Art and Philosophy of Lean Construction

By Doanh Do
Preface

If you apply Lean Construction long enough you will eventually become a philosopher. Your success
with Lean Construction is directly dependent on the quality of the questions that you ask and how
deeply you are able to think about your problems. It has taken me more than a decade of exploration
and years of learning LC from Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, the godfathers of the field to develop
these insights. These ideas have been empirically tested by me on over 10 billion USD of design and
construction projects.

I am sharing my thoughts with you so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel. You can use these
ideas to improve your understanding and implementation.

With this guide, you will have the right foundation to build upon your Lean Construction knowledge.
Rather than spending a decade to acquire this knowledge, I have shared what I have learned so that
you can rapidly accelerate your understanding and implementation.

The guide is designed to help you see the field holistically, to think in terms of philosophies and
principles. It is meant to be a reference and a companion for you to navigate the Lean Construction
landscape and make concepts more comprehensible and approachable. As a beginner, most people
are focused on tools and methods. This is because most instructors teach and focus on the surface
level of Lean Construction. We will go deeper into the fundamentals and get to the root of LC. This will
help you have a better grasp of the field, demystify the key concepts,and significantly improve your
implementation. With these ideas, you can develop better experiments and be able to teach it more
effectively to others.

Doanh Do
February 13, 2022
Chapter 1. Why Start With Lean Construction Philosophy 7
Chapter 2. The Difference Between Philosophies, Principles, Methods, Tools, and
Implementation 11
Chapter 3. Principles of Lean Construction 17
Chapter 4. Lean Construction Methods Explained In Plain English 25
Chapter 5. Lean Tools and Implementation 37
Chapter 6. Why Lean Construction Is A Paradigm Shift For The Industry 41
Chapter 7. Why Is It Important to Understand Human Psychology 49
Chapter 8. How To Start Your Lean Journey 53
Chapter 9. How To Scale Your Lean Organization 59
Chapter 10. Common Misconceptions of Lean Construction 66
Chapter 11. Common Pitfalls To Avoid 69
Chapter 12. What Should Success Look Like 75
Chapter 13. How to Continue Your Lean Journey 77
Chapter 14. Learning and Reflection 82
Chapter 15. Integrating Lean with VDC, BIM, and Contech 84
Conclusion 86
Chapter 1. Why Start With Lean Construction Philosophy

Here is how I organize what I learned from Lean Construction. There are four levels.

1. Philosophies
2. Principles
3. Methods
4. Tools and Implementation

The Lean philosophies are simple: 1) respect for people, 2) maximizing value while minimizing
waste, and 3) continuous improvement.

The philosophy is what we strive for and should NEVER change. We actively pursue the philosophies
but can never fully achieve them. They exist as guiding North Stars for every lean organization to make
decisions and provide a path towards better lean construction implementation. Your lean
implementation cannot be sustainable if you do not align it with these three philosophies.

Before you start your lean journey, you should spend some time aligning the philosophies with
the core values of your organization. If there is no alignment, there is no path forward.

Respect for people is the most important and most poorly understood Lean philosophy. When we talk
about respect for people, we need to consider the whole person. We can’t respect them at work while
making them take months of overtime, which deteriorates their personal lives and relationships outside
of work. Respect for people extends beyond our organization. It includes suppliers, vendors, owners,
architects, etc. The people that we work with on a regular basis as well as the end customer.

How many times have you had a conversation within your team about making the lives of your vendors,
suppliers, etc. better? These conversations rarely ever happen. Have you considered that your
procurement process is putting unnecessary strain on your supplier? How do your net 30, net 60, or net
90 payment terms affect the small business that is working on your project?

Respect for people also extends to the environment. Thinking about the long term environment,
sustainability, and our impact on the planet should be part of respect for people. Our future generations
will have to deal with the problems that we leave them. It is important to consider these hidden
stakeholders.

These are all vital conversations that we need to have throughout our lean journey. There are many
ways to cheat and cut corners when it comes to lean implementation. Without a grounded base to start
with, you will end up cutting corners when times get difficult. And in a similar manner, your lean
implementation can start to crumble if too many shortcuts are taken. It is more important to do it right
the first time than to rush it and have to fix things later on.

The second Lean philosophy is “maximizing value while minimizing waste”. We pursue this ideal
through the application of lean construction principles, methods, and tools. We understand that the
achievement of this philosophy is impossible. All we can do is strive to move closer and closer to
perfection each and every day. We move toward perfection with the understanding that we can never
truly reach perfection. If we reach perfection, there is nothing left to improve. So it is a directional guide,
not a true destination that can be reached.

The third Lean philosophy is continuous improvement. Although continuous improvement is implied
when we take into consideration “respect for people” and “maximizing value while minimizing waste”,
we have to be explicit about this philosophy. The main reason is that most companies that implement
lean stagnant. They may understand the first two philosophies and apply several Lean Construction
methods. But they do not make any measurable improvements over time. Once all the easy wins and
visible waste can be eliminated, they become complacent. They stop training and developing their
people while expecting them to carry on their lean program. Over time, this becomes unsustainable and
leads to a reversal of progress.

Once you have implemented the easy wins and quick fixes of Lean Construction, you will have a much
more stable and predictable working environment. You should not stop when you have achieved
stability. The stability should give us the means to push further and improve. All improvements will
have some level of chaos, and the rate of improvement should match the rate at which our teams
and systems can assimilate the change.

All three philosophies are important, and they have a synergistic relationship with each other.

You can’t respect people if you don’t continuously improve and actively help people get better because
you are wasting human potential. You can’t “maximize value while minimizing waste” without
continuous improvement. And you can’t continuously improve without taking into consideration your
team, customers, suppliers, the entire value chain, and the ecosystem.

The principles are concepts that help us achieve the philosophies and include: continuous flow, single
piece flow, pull, small batch size, fast switch over, visual management, etc. There are many Lean
principles that we know of and there are many that come up over time. We will talk briefly about the
lean principles that we are aware of. These principles exist in nature and are there for us to uncover.
We do not and cannot invent any of these principles. Similar to mathematical proofs, they have always
existed. It just takes us time and a bit of wisdom to realize them and be able to document them in a way
that others can use.

There are several Lean Construction methods that we have developed to formalize the principles.
These include the Last Planner System, Takt Planning and Control, Choosing By Advantages, Target
Value Delivery, Integrated Project Delivery, etc. The methods are important because they create
prescriptive processes that allow us to achieve the Lean principles. They are clear enough for us to
understand how to apply them BUT are general enough that they can be adapted to different situations.

The goal of lean construction is to create a practical path for achieving ALL three philosophies.
Although most people would agree that the philosophies of lean are important for personal and
organizational development, they do not have a concrete process for achieving them. Through lean
principles, methods, and tools; we can make these philosophies a reality. Through rigorous empirical
research, we can separate ideas that contribute to better project performance from those that do not.
Through this iterative process and scientific inquiry, we can create a solid foundation for understanding
how the design and construction projects actually work and be able to improve them.

We will unravel the mysteries and mystique of lean construction slowly and in a logical manner so that
everything makes sense and clicks together. Only through a simple and logical process can we
turn the philosophies into actionable processes that everyone in this industry can use.

Some people ask the question: which came first, the principles or the methods? The answer is it
depends. Sometimes you can use lean principles to find gaps in current practices and use them to
create methods. Sometimes, you create methods that just work very effectively. You break them down
and try to uncover the principles behind them. Both ways are acceptable and as you can see, by
understanding the philosophy and principles, you can enhance the methods that you are currently
using. Or even create new ones.

It is really that powerful once you grasp this idea. No matter where you start, there needs to be
alignment between all 4 levels. When you spot a misalignment or something missing, this is an
opportunity to rethink your approach.

Finally, there are tools such as software, analog (aka stickies), and hybrid implementations that allow us
to actually use the methods within our project or organization. Every project will implement Lean slightly
differently based on the team’s experience, preferences, and unique project conditions. As long as the
implementation is aligned with the method, principles, and philosophies, you will get good results. We
will talk more about the forms of lean implementation in a later chapter. When should you go digital
versus analog versus hybrid?

To the beginners, I teach tools and practices.

To the intermediate-level students, I teach methods.
To the advanced students, I teach principles.
To expert level-students, I teach philosophies and belief systems.

The further you move along your lean construction proficiency, the more you need to focus on first
principles, philosophies, and ways of thinking. In the beginning, tools and implementations are
important because they can help you move very far with templates and tried-and-true practices. They
give you practical examples and inspiration to get started right away.

But over time, these tools and templates can become too rigid for you to make further progress. The
only way to get better is to increase your understanding and become more flexible in your thinking and
implementation. Know when to use the prescriptions and when to go in a different direction.
Many people approach Lean Construction by simply copying other people’s implementation. If you don’t
understand Lean Construction holistically, then there will be a hard ceiling that you will reach with your
progress.

The goal of this book is to introduce you to a deeper understanding of Lean Construction. To explore
topics and areas that are hidden to most practitioners, but once you understand them, they can have a
profound impact on your own lean construction implementations.

We will focus mostly on the philosophy, principles, and ways of thinking about Lean Construction. There
are many excellent books, blogs, and resources available on the Lean methodology and
implementation that I recommend you read as a supplement to this book. This is NOT a how to DO
book. It is a HOW TO THINK book. This book in addition to all the blog posts and materials from the
Lean Construction Blog can help you along your entire lean journey.

Although the exploration of a philosophy seems theoretical, there is nothing more practical than a good
theory. Let’s get started.
Chapter 2. The Difference Between Philosophies, Principles, Methods, Tools, and
Implementation

In this chapter, I will ask and answer a few fundamental questions.

1. What is Lean Construction?

2. Where did Lean Construction come from?
3. What is the difference between philosophy and principles?
4. What is the difference between principles and methods?
5. What is the difference between implementation and methods?
6. Why do you need to understand the entire stack to be effective with your implementation?

What is Lean Construction and where did it come from?

The origin of Lean Construction started in 1992. The four people credited for creating the field of Lean
Construction are: Glenn Ballard, Greg Howell, Mike Casten, and Lauri Koskela. Although many more
people, such as Iris Tommelein, Rafael Sacks, Luis Alarcon, Todd Zabelle, and Carlos Formoso, etc.,
joined early on and were instrumental in its development, these four are the godfathers of the field.

Glenn and Greg have been working together since 1979 to improve productivity. Prior to their research
on Lean Construction, Greg Howell had a timelapse photography business. Using cameras, he was
able to capture “how work” took place on construction projects. From this data, Greg and Glenn
realized that there was a big gap between how work was actually done and what managers thought
was happening. They also found massive productivity inefficiencies that were only found through
capturing reality through video. From this starting point, they were able to devise experiments and test,
in a scientific manner, ideas that would improve productivity.

They found that productivity was directly correlated with the reliability of the work plan versus the work
completed. Most of the inefficiency in construction was not in the work itself. It was the hand-off
between the work. The gap in time between when one trade completed their work and when the next
trade started. The “empty” space where most people don’t think about. Additionally, many
problems were not technical. Most problems that they found were rooted in poor communication of
assignments, unclear conditions of satisfaction, work out of sequence, not preparing ahead of time,
rework, etc.

They created a metric called Percent Planned Completed (PPC). It is simply a measure of the number
of activities completed at the end of the week divided by the number of activities planned for that week
(how reliable the production plan was). During their collaboration in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Glenn and Greg laid the foundations for the first Lean Construction method, which we now know as the
Last Planner System.

The Last Planner System did not come all at once. It was developed over a decade, and components of
it were added through careful consideration and research. Through action research, Glenn and Greg
were able to identify what worked and develop a systematic framework that others can use and
replicate.

In the early 1990s, Glenn was a lecturer at both UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Glenn met a
visiting scholar by the name of Lauri Koskela. Lauri was working on revolutionary research at the time.
Lauri asked the questions, “Is there a production theory for construction?”, “What would that theory look
like?”, “How would construction be improved if there is a foundation theory to build upon?”.

Lauri’s research provided the theoretical foundation for Lean Construction1. The Last Planner System
provided an empirical framework for systematically improving construction through production planning
and control. Together the idea of using production theory for construction and the ability to
improve productivity by increasing PPC sparked the Lean Construction movement.

The first official meeting of the minds happened in 1993 at the first International Group for Lean
Construction organized by Lauri, Glenn, and Luis Alarcón. At the conference, the group used the term
Lean Construction to describe their work. At the time the book “The Machine That Changed the World''
was published by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. Glenn, Greg, and Lauri saw
many similarities with the Toyota Production System (TPS) and what they were working on in order to
improve the construction industry and thus the term Lean Construction was coined and used ever
since. IGLC is an international research organization that meets once a year during the summer at a
different location each year. If you want to see how the field of LC evolved over time and the current
research that is taking place, you should explore the IGLC’s website and read some of the past papers.

I have been fortunate enough to spend several years studying LC from Glenn, Greg, and to a lesser
extent Lauri. Most people do not have this opportunity, and one of the reasons I wrote this book is to
distill some of the lessons from the godfathers of the field for more people. As more people practice
Lean Construction, the field can deviate from the original teachings and ideas. People can form
different groups with different focuses, and some may invent their own practices that are not consistent
with the original ideas. It is important to document original ideas and preserve the proper form and
techniques so that even if people decide to deviate, there is still a baseline to compare to.

What is the difference between philosophy and principles?

The philosophy is the bedrock foundation for Lean Construction. There are only 3 philosophies of Lean
and they are the same regardless of whether you are applying Lean in manufacturing, healthcare, etc.
The three philosophies are: 1) respect for people, 2) maximizing value while minimizing waste, and 3)
continuous improvement.

Learning what the philosophies are is very simple, but truly understanding them and putting
them into practice takes a lifetime. The main reason why we focus first on the philosophies is that

1
You can read Lauri’s technical report and dissertation here:
https://lean-construction-gcs.storage.googleapis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/08222320/Koskela-TR72.pdf
http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2000/isbn951385566X/isbn951385566X.pdf
they form the WHY of our lean journey. We undergo a Lean journey and apply Lean methods and tools
in order to achieve these philosophies. Without an understanding of the philosophies, most companies’
lean implementation stagnates at a certain point. Once the low-hanging fruit in terms of the obvious
wastes has been eliminated, they revert back to business as usual.

The longer your lean journey is, the harder it is to find and make improvements. All the easy
improvements have already been found. What is left is much harder to find and implement.

The philosophies are short and simple. They should NEVER change.

If the philosophies are the WHY, then the principles are the HOW. Just because we know WHY we want
to apply Lean, we still need to know HOW to do it. The principles are a set of timeless ideas which can
guide your implementation. They include such concepts as: continuous flow, one piece flow, fast switch
over (SMED), built in quality, poka yoke, kanban, takt, buffers, queues, visual management, etc.

Unlike philosophies, in which there are only three, there are dozens of Lean principles. Perhaps
hundreds depending upon your definition and I am sure that more principles will pop up over time. This
book will speak briefly about the Lean Principles but we will not be able to create an exhaustive list.
Creating an exhaustive list of all the Lean principles is in of itself a long enough journey that deserves
its own book.

By understanding Lean at its core first principles, you will be able to adapt your thinking and be
able to more easily adjust your implementation from project to project, from one environment to
another.

Without learning the philosophy, you may be applying lean on shaky ground. You may be building your
skyscraper on clay. If you want your implementation to last and if you want your gains to be
compounded, you have to start by driving your piles to bedrock.

You should build solid foundations from the ground up. Do the hard work that is invisible but
lays the groundwork for everything else to come.

I focus on the lean philosophy and principles because they are hidden. Invisible to all but those who
seek them. Not easily found by most. Most people are impressed by nice photos, pleasing visuals, and
the surface level that they can see. Very few venture deep down to truly explore and understand. This
book is for those who want to learn lean construction properly. You want to learn how to think in the
lean way. You want to make a long-lasting change and create a truly sustainable lean culture.

What is the difference between principles and methods?

Principles in and of themselves are just descriptive concepts. They are not prescriptive enough for
you to apply. By combining one or more principles together into a prescriptive HOW TO framework, you
will end up with a Lean methodology. A good analogy is that principles are vocabulary words. Methods
are full sentences and paragraphs constructed by putting words together. Words are important because
they are the building blocks of sentences. But sentences and paragraphs are necessary in order to
communicate ideas.

Some of the Lean Construction methods that we use include: 1) The Last Planner System, 2) Target
Value Delivery, 3) Choosing By Advantages, 4) Set Based Design, 5) Reliable Promises, 6) Takt
Planning, 7) SCRUM, etc.

More methods will be developed over time, but since developing a methodology takes more than a
decade, these seven are the current foundational methods of Lean Construction. Many of the methods
that we use in Lean Construction were not developed within the construction industry. Choosing By
Advantages, Reliable Promises, and SCRUM are such examples. Set Based Design came from the
Toyota Production System. Reliable Promises were developed by Fernando Flores based on the
language action theory. Most people, such as Jim Suhr, take an entire lifetime to develop and refine one
method: Choosing By Advantages.

The two methodologies that were developed and are unique to the construction industry are the Last
Planner System and Target Value Delivery. Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell played an important role in
the development and research of both methods.

For more information on these methods, you can read more than 400 free articles at the Lean
Construction Blog. We will not be able to go deeply into each of the methods in this book. Our goal here
is to provide a map of the landscape so that you can productively explore it on your own.

What is the difference between tools and methods?

A method provides a recipe and guidelines for applying Lean Construction. The actual application of the
methods in the real world takes the form of Lean tools or implementations. You can think about a
method like a cookbook with recipes, a list of ingredients, and a step-by-step guide. You can’t actually
eat the cookbook. You use the cookbook to bake your cake. Even though you will be working with real
ingredients to bake your cake, you can’t do it well or consistently without a recipe. And you can only
make so much progress if you don’t understand the “physics” and chemistry behind baking, aka the
principles behind the art.

A Lean Construction method should be agnostic about how to apply them. This is because the
actual application will need to be adaptive to your particular project, team, and constraints. In terms of
tools, there are only three types of tools: 1) analog, 2) digital, and 3) hybrid. We will touch on these
three types in a later section. There are advantages to each of these depending on your situation.

Why do you need to understand the entire stack to be effective with your implementation?

In software engineering, there is this concept of a software stack. There are many different layers of
interconnected hardware and software that work together in order to run your computer. At the lowest
level is hardware (RAM, CPU, Memory). Above that are operating systems (MAC OS, Linux, Windows),
the code that runs your computer. On top of the operating system are middleware such as databases,
memory management, etc. And finally, the applications that we use on a daily basis sit on top. Without
a full technology stack, your computer, phone, and devices will not work. All the layers in the stack need
to work harmoniously together.

The stack allows software engineers to focus on one layer at a time. As long as they manage the
interdependencies between the layers, they can use code from other developers. The layers allow
software to be specific, interchangeable, and port to different devices. Without all of the layers, your
computer will not be able to function. Much of the complexity of the modern world is hidden below the
surface.

Using this analogy, your Lean Construction implementation is also a stack. The different layers need to
be in alignment with each other. When you visit a jobsite, you may see just surface-level
implementation in the form of stickies, a SCRUM board, or other visual signs of Lean Construction
implementation. The project may look impressive on the surface, but the real work and the real
mechanisms are happening below the surface.
People new to Lean Construction look at the impressive tools and then immediately try to copy what
they have seen. This approach will yield some but limited success. You can’t copy your way to
excellence. There is no way to properly apply the Lean tools and methods without a strong
understanding of the principles and philosophy behind them.

The only way to have a truly sustainable lean implementation is to align all four layers of the
stack. As you are implementing Lean Construction, a search up and down the Lean Construction stack
will help you uncover a vast wealth of knowledge and ideas to apply.​

The best way to improve your implementation is to look at it holistically.

1. Look for principles, methods, or tools that you are missing.

2. Develop a series of experiments to incorporate them into your implementation.
3. Use the Plan Do Check Act cycle to test your hypotheses.
4. Use what works for your project and your team.
5. Discard the ideas that do not work.

The more cycles of hypothesis and experimentation that you do, the better your implementation
becomes.
Chapter 3. Principles of Lean Construction

The Lean principles are the mental building blocks of your lean thinking. This is where you should be
spending most of your time thinking in order to devise ideas to test and implement.

The Lean principles are broken down into four sources: 1) Concepts from the
Transformation-Flow-Value Theory of Production (Lauri Koskela)2, 2) Concepts from Factory Physics
and Operations Science, 3) Concepts from the Toyota Production System, and 4) Concepts from Lean
Construction which have been developed empirically. These concepts were discovered in order to solve
the unique problems that the AEC industry faces. They are there to provide ideas and inspiration for
your lean deployment. They can help you see more clearly the “ideal state” so you can steer
towards it.

1. Transformation, Flow, Value theory of production

Since 1992, Lauri Koskela has been working on a comprehensive theory for Lean Construction. In his
research, he identified three interdependent perspectives to production: transformation, flow, and
value.

The dominant theory of production in the 20th century is the transformation view. Production is the
transformation of one set of resources into a second set. Turning less valuable inputs into more
valuable outputs.

Under this theory:

● Total transformation can be decomposed into smaller transformations

● Cost of production can be minimized by minimizing the cost of each component
● It is advantageous to to buffer production

The second perspective is to see production as a flow process. Some new concepts are introduced
through this view.

● Understanding of waste
● Reduce non-value added activities (waste)
● Reduce lead time
● Reduce variability
● Minimize number of steps, linkage, parts, etc.
● Increase flexibility
● Increase transparency

2
http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2000/isbn951385566X/isbn951385566X.pdf
The third perspective is the value view of production. The value of a product can be determined only
in reference to the customer, and the goal of production is satisfying customer needs. From this
perspective we have:

● Production based on the voice of the customer

● Ensure that all customer requirements, both explicit and latent, have been captured
● No value can be generated without an end customer.

The TFV theory of production states that all three perspectives of production are valid. By looking at
just one or two of the perspectives, we will be missing out on an important part of the system. The goal
is to integrate all three perspectives and simultaneously look at the three points of view: transformation,
flow, and value. Broadly viewed, there are three suggestions on how to proceed:

● Balancing the prescriptions from all three viewpoints

● Taking care of interactions between phenomena covered by the three viewpoints
● Using the three viewpoints at the same time as a lens into our production processes

2. Factory Physics and the Science of Production (Industrial Engineering / Operational

Research)

One of the biggest misconceptions about production is that work occurs through a series of steps or
processes. When you finish one step, work is moved to the next step.

A more realistic view of production is that in between each step or workstation, there are queues. Our
work in progress (WIPs) are stored in the queues between the work stations. If one station is faster
than the other, there will be an accumulation of WIP. Unevenness in the rate of production will lead to
an accumulation of WIP, waste, and potential defects. So the goal is not to move as fast as possible.
The goal is to level out the work so that all the stations move at roughly the same rate. We also want to
minimize the WIP through a pull system so that we do not accumulate unnecessary inventory and
costs.
Factory physics3 and operations science, takes this view of production and expands upon it. In the
diagram below, you can see how inventory, WIP, stock, and queues are part of a production system.

In addition to this view of production, factory physics also have several key concepts:

Capacity: max units/tasks that can be done per unit time

Throughput: units/tasks completed per unit time

3
The best book on this topic is Factory Physics by Hopp and Spearman. A very long book but well worth the read.
4
Courtesy of the Project Production Institute (PPI). The PPI is a leading research organization on production
planning and control.
Utilization: fraction of capacity that is used

Cycle Time: time from start to finish of a unit/task

WIP : the number of incomplete units/tasks

Little’s Law: WIP = TH * CT

Inventory—units or tasks wait on demand

Stock - Completed or semi-completed products

Queues - Units waiting in between workstations

Buffer - excess inventory, time, or capacity to absorb variability

Bottleneck: The production unit with the lowest throughput (longest cycle time) of all production units
in a system (the choke point) that is linear, sequential, and deterministic.

Variability - unevenness in demand or production

Regardless of how well you designed your production system, demand and production are never
synchronized. There is always variability! Variability in a production system will be buffered with some
combination of:

1. Inventory
2. Time
3. Capacity

Every project is a production system. In order to improve your production system, you must map
out the processes and adjust the parameters such as capacity, queues, inventory, flow, WIPs,
buffers, throughput, etc.

Some implications of this view of the world is that:

1. We can use mathematics, algorithms, and calculations to understand precisely how long it will
take for work to be completed.
2. Each state of the production system can be modeled, tested, and ideas can be simulated with
precision.
3. We can use computer science concepts such as data structures, algorithms, discrete event
simulations, and IOT to improve production.
4. There is such a thing as a mathematical optimal production schedule. Once we develop it, we
do need to verify with the workers and get their commitments to make it a reality.
The systemic view of the project will reveal that many of the things people do when a project is behind
schedule does not actually improve performance. For example:

1. The project doesn’t get faster just because you want it to.
2. Throwing extra labor at the problem doesn’t make it better. Sometimes this can make things
worse. It is better to slow down the fastest trade then keep increasing their speed. The fastest
production is a leveled production.
3. If you want to change the outcomes of your project, you have to understand the
production system parameters and be able to tweak them. Everything else that you try to do
would be “random” and not have the same effect as influencing the parameters that drive
system level performance.
4. By understanding this framework, you can use simulations and software to map out your
production and find ways to optimize. If you have enough experience, you can simulate the
system in your mind. You don’t even need to have a computer model once you can “see” the
system.
5. Takt and the Last Planner System rely on the science of production as the mathematical
foundation.

Lean Principles from The Toyota Production System (TPS)

1. Define Value
To better understand the first principle of defining customer value, it is important to understand what
value is. Value is what the customer is willing to pay for. It is paramount to discover the actual or latent
needs of the customer. Sometimes customers may not know what they want or are unable to articulate
it.
2. Map the Value Stream
The second Lean principle is identifying and mapping the value stream. In this step, the goal is to use
the customer’s value as a reference point and identify all the activities that contribute to these values.
Activities that do not add value to the end customer are considered waste. The waste can be broken
into two categories: non-valued added but necessary and non-value & unnecessary. The latter is pure
waste and should be eliminated while the former should be reduced as much as possible. By reducing
and eliminating unnecessary processes or steps, you can ensure that customers are getting exactly
what they want while at the same time reducing the cost of producing that product or service.

3. Create Flow
After removing the wastes from the value stream, the following action is to ensure that the flow of the
remaining steps run smoothly without interruptions or delays. Some strategies for ensuring that
value-adding activities flow smoothly include: breaking down steps, reconfiguring the production steps,
leveling out the workload, creating cross-functional departments, and training employees to be
multi-skilled and adaptive.

4. Establish Pull
Inventory is considered one of the biggest wastes in any production system. The goal of a pull-based
system is to limit inventory and work in process (WIP) items while ensuring that the requisite materials
and information are available for a smooth flow of work. In other words, a pull-based system allows for
Just-in-time delivery and manufacturing where products are created at the time that they are needed
and in just the quantities needed. Pull-based systems are always created from the needs of the end
customers. By following the value stream and working backwards through the production system, you
can ensure that the products produced will be able to satisfy the needs of customers.

5. Pursue Perfection
Wastes are prevented through the achievement of the first four steps: 1) identifying value, 2) mapping
value stream, 3) creating flow, and 4) adopting a pull system. However, the fifth step of pursuing
perfection is the most important among them all. It makes Lean thinking and continuous process
improvement a part of the organizational culture. Every employee should strive towards perfection while
delivering products based on the customer needs. The company should be a learning organization and
always find ways to get a little better each and every day.

In addition to these principles, TPS has introduced several important concepts for us to use. I will not
cover these principles in depth since there are already many good books on them. Work on TPS has
shown to the Western world that there is a more efficient and effective way of running a production
system. Although TPS is heavily based on what Toyota uses for their manufacturing, some of the ideas
can be applied to construction. You will need to experiment and figure out which methods work for your
project and how to adopt them to a construction context. You should not just copy and paste TPS
methods and implementation because merely copying and pasting can result in waste. Some principles
to be aware of include:
Gemba

Heijunka

Hoshin Kanri

Jidoka

Just-In-Time

Pull Versus Push

Single Piece Flow

Continuous Flow

Kanban

Poka Yoke

Last responsible moment

Muda (Waste)

Mura

Muri

Lowering the river to reveal the rocks.

Stopping the line rather than letting defects pass through (pulling the andon cord).

Quality control as part of every work station rather than quality control at the end.

Going to Gemba and investigating problems at the root cause.

The emphasis on problem solving.

Problems need to be actively uncovered rather than swept under the rug.

Leadership’s role is to challenge and develop people.

Extending respect and training to suppliers.

Make small incremental changes every day rather than large changes once in a while.

The need to have standardized work. Standardize work is the foundation of continuous improvement.
Without stability there can not be room for improvement.

Other Lean Construction Principles

Projects are a network of commitments5 / Reliable promises6 - projects are delivered by people and
people work through making and keeping promises. Reliable promises is a set of language tools to
improve communication and the reliability of commitments.

Optimize for the whole

Collaborate really collaborate

Tightly couple learning with action

Increase relatedness

Conditions of Satisfaction

Make ready and constraint removal - unless an activity has been made ready and the constraints has
been removed, you cannot start the work. The goal is to prepare work before you start it so that there
will be limited stop and go instances.

Collaborative planning - with lean, the project schedule is developed collaboratively with the people
doing the work. Most of the industry has a scheduler which creates a plan in their office and without
communicating with the people onsite. These schedules are often unrealistic and cannot be executed
by the field.

Collaborative decision-making - project delays occur not because problems come up. Delays occur
because it takes the team a long time to make decisions. If you can make better group decisions, more
collaborative decisions, and faster decisions; you will be able to create more resiliency in your project.

Early involvement of trade partners in the design phase.

Spend money when it is cheap during the validation and design phase rather than making changes
when it becomes more expensive during construction.

Aligning the business model and financial incentives of the project with the business model and
financial incentives of the people involved.

5
These are part of Sutter Health’s 5 Big Ideas. The 5 Big Ideas were developed by Hal Macomber.
6
Reliable promises are based on the works of Fernando Flores.
Decreasing cost through collaboration. Cost can decrease as more of the project is designed and
proceeds in construction. The current convention is that costs always increase over time.

Principles are discovered all the time. If there is a principle that is missing from this list, please let me
know. Send your suggestions to doanh@leanconstrutionblog.com.
Chapter 4. Lean Construction Methods Explained In Plain English

In this chapter, I will give the simplest explanations of the Lean Construction Methods. I will start with a
definition of each method, the goal of the method, and the principles behind them. For more detailed
information on each method, you should visit the Lean Construction Blog. The blog is the knowledge
repository for LC and has hundreds of articles from other lean practitioners on these methods in greater
detail.

What is the Last Planner System?

The collaborative, commitment-based planning system that integrates should-can-will-did planning. It

includes master scheduling and phase planning to define what SHOULD be done, lookahead planning
based on constraints identification and removal (the make-ready process) to establish what CAN be
done, weekly work planning based on reliable promises reflecting what WILL be done, and learning
based upon analysis of PPC (comparing DID against WILL) and reasons for variance7.

What is the goal of the Last Planner System?

The goal of the Last Planner System is to improve PPC. PPC is the measure of the reliability of the
work completed versus the work planned. Every step of the Last Planner System has been to improve
PPC. PPC is directly correlated with productivity so if we can increase PPC we will get better
productivity and safety.

A misunderstanding amongst lean practitioners is the target for PPC. Many people set the target at
80% or 90% because they believe that if PPC is 100% then the team’s targets are undereaching. Glenn
Ballard spoke out about this several times. According to Glenn, the target for PPC should be 100%.
The goal is to plan collaboratively and have a reliable workflow. You shouldn’t put any work on the
weekly work plan unless you are certain that the constraints have been removed and that it is possible
to complete the work within the week.

What are the principles behind the Last Planner System?

All plans are forecasts; all forecasts are wrong8.

The longer the forecast, the more wrong it gets.

The more detailed the forecast, the wronger it is (first formulated by Ballard ca. 1991).

7
Definition of the Last Planner System from P2SL’s Glossary developed by Iris Tommelein and Glenn Ballard.
8
Last Planner principles are based on the work from Glenn Ballard.
The implication of these principles are that it is important to:

● Plan in greater detail as you get closer to doing the work.

● Produce plans collaboratively with those who will do the work.
● Reveal and remove constraints on planned tasks as a team.
● Make and secure reliable promises.
● Learn from breakdowns.

In addition, it is important to:

● Measure promises kept and improve by learning from early, late or incomplete deliveries and
workflow disruptions.
● Improve workflow as a team based on what has been learned.

Fundamentally the Last Planner System is a way of thinking and a well developed methodology for
improving the reliability of project planning.

Most construction plans/schedules are not developed with the people doing the work onsite. The plans
are often pushed to workers. This leads to plans that are unrealistic, overly optimistic, and missing in
hand offs between the different trades. With the LPS, we are doing some small things differently.

1. Plan the work with the foreman and superintendents

2. Have trades commit to their work by making reliable promises
3. Plan the whole project backwards in order to not miss any details
4. Remove constraints before we put an activity on the weekly work plan
5. Measure how much of the planned activities did we actually complete at the end of the week. This
allows us to learn and improve.
6. Use location based or Takt time to optimize production flows and space allocations.
7. Do short 15 minute meetings with the trades to go over the plan and keep everyone on the same
page.

What is Target Value Delivery?

Target Value Delivery (TVD) is “a management practice that drives the design [and construction] to
deliver customer values within project constraints” (Ballard, 2009). It is an application of Taiichi Ohno’s
practice of self-imposing necessity as a means for continuous improvement (Ballard, 2009). Using TVD,
the design and construction is steered towards the target cost. A continuous and pro-active value
engineering process is utilized during the design phase to quickly evaluate the cost implications of
design options. Cost is a [one of many] constraint rather than an output of the design process.

What is the goal of Target Value Delivery?

The main objective of TVD is to achieve the “holy grail” of construction management - to have reliable
cost, schedule, and scope9. The Last Planner System has helped countless projects deliver to a reliable
schedule. The goal of TVD is to address cost reliability, value delivery, and continuous improvement on
projects. With TVD, projects have lower likelihood of cost overruns, better cost predictability, and a
more predictable investment for owners.

What are the principles behind Target Value Delivery?

1. Early involvement of the builders in the design phase

2. Alignment of commercial incentives of the project delivery team (owner, contractor, architects, etc.).
There needs to be an incentive for cost savings.
3. Continuous cost estimating throughout the project (BIM & VDC)
4. Breaking down the total cost into cross-functional clusters (MEP, core and shell, etc.)
5. Co-location and Big Room Meeting
6. The ability to move money and scope between the team. Reallocate scope, responsibility for scope,
and work sequence (process design)
7. A risk and opportunity log, cost tracking, spending to date, and profit tracking
8. A collaborative decision-making process
9. A focus on product, process, and organizational design
10. Using positive iterations and multiple cycles of re-design to eliminate waste

What is Choosing By Advantages?

“Choosing By Advantages (CBA) is not an individual tool or technique. CBA is a decision-making

system. It is also a decision making process, not just a step in the process. The CBA system includes
definitions, models, and principles, in addition to tools, techniques, and methods of decision-making.
The principles are central. The definitions and models help explain the principles, and the methods
apply the principles. The CBA system includes methods for virtually all types of money and non-money
decisions, from the simplest to the most complex. Sound decision making is the foundation of the CBA
system.” Jim Suhr10

What is the goal of Choosing By Advantages?

The goal of CBA is to improve the quality, speed, and effectiveness of our decisions. CBA can be used
by individuals or as a group.

9
For more information on TVD, you can read the Lean Construction Blog articles on this topic.
10
For more information on CBA, you can read the blog posts by Rebecca Snelling on the Lean Construction Blog.
This is the cause and effect model of CBA. The model shows that our outcomes are largely caused by
the actions we take. Our actions, of course, are largely caused by the decisions we make. We make the
decisions we do based on the methods we use. If we want to improve our outcomes, we need to
change our actions. In order to do that effectively, we’ll want to change the decisions we make, and in
order to do that, we’ll want to improve our methods.

What are the principles behind Choosing By Advantages?

Sound decision making has four cornerstone principles:

● The Pivotal Principle – decision-makers must learn and skillfully use sound methods
● The Fundamental Rule of Sound Decision-Making – decisions must be based on the
importance of advantages
● The Anchoring Principle – decisions must be anchored to relevant facts
● The Methods Principle – different types of decisions call for different sound methods of
decision-making

What is Set Based Design?

Set-based Design (SBD) is a design methodology that has many applications in the architecture,
engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. It was discovered when researchers studied the
engineering and design process at Toyota. Known as the “second Toyota paradox”, the researchers
were surprised to find that Toyota considered a broader range of possible decisions, produced more
physical models, delayed key decisions longer, and yet they had the fastest and most efficient vehicle
development cycle in the industry.

In order to better understand SBD, we need to first consider the traditional design process. Most design
professionals (and most people in general) who have not been exposed to SBD follow a linear process.
Known as point-based design, this linear process starts with an initial concept and then progresses
towards greater and greater detail of the concept. At first, this process seems very efficient since you
are only working on one concept from start to finish. In an ideal world, this would be the perfect design
process.

Unfortunately, the world isn’t linear and is often more complex. With point-based design, if at any point
in the design process a new constraint comes up or a new customer requirement is added; you have to
start all over again. Sometimes you move all the way back to square 1.
Rather than selecting one promising option and working on it further, set-based design looks at a wide
range of possible options. The sets of possible solutions are gradually narrowed down until it converges
on a final solution. Along the design process, some options are eliminated due to hard constraints,
infeasibility, or lack of fitness. Ideation can also be used to generate more options. At the Last
Responsible Moment (LRM), the decision needs to be made and one of the options is selected.

By starting with a wide set and gradually eliminating weaker solutions, more options can be evaluated
and better solutions can be found. In the event of an unexpected or a new constraint, there is a less
likelihood of having to start from scratch since one or more of the options will already meet the new
requirements. If necessary, you move back one or two paces. This is much better than starting again
from the beginning.

What is the goal of Set Based Design?

The goal of SBD is to improve the quality of design work by reducing the impact of negative iterations
and later changes. SBD allows for the team to consider more options, detail them as they go, and lock
in decisions at the last responsible moment.
What are the principles behind Set Based Design?

For those that want to apply Set-based design, here are few principles of the process11:
1. Define feasible regions.
2. Explore trade-offs by designing multiple alternatives.
3. Communicate sets of possibilities.
4. Look for intersections of feasible sets.
5. Impose minimum constraint.
6. Narrow sets gradually while increasing detail.
7. Stay within sets once committed.
8. Make decision / selection at the Last Responsible Moment

What are Reliable Promises? 12

Routinely, projects are late, over-budget, or fail in some way to satisfy the client. And all this in spite of
the training and tools deployed on projects. However, there is a practice for increasing the reliability of
completion of project tasks. This practice is the securing of reliable promises.

Most of us are so interested in getting our requests satisfied that we latch on to the first utterances of a
would-be performer, thinking we got the promise we were looking for. All too often we receive just the
opposite. The individual is trying not to promise, but doing a very bad job even of that.

A promise is made in response to a request. In the absence of a request, a promise can also be made
in the form of an offer. Either way, our everyday promises generally take the form:

I (the performer) will deliver “X” for you (the customer) by a specific time in the future.

What is the goal of Reliable Promises?

Projects are performed by people. Projects are performed through a network of commitments between
the people involved. In order to increase the reliability of the workflow, you need to have reliable
promises with the people doing the work.

What are the principles behind Reliable Promises?

According to well-respected work in linguistics only five coherent replies can be provided to any
request.

11
Introduction to Set Based Design - https://leanconstructionblog.com/introduction-to-set-based-design.html
12
Reliable Promise By Hal Macomber -
https://iglcstorage.blob.core.windows.net/papers/attachment-626dae17-e95e-48ba-b135-5dcbd4b79308.pdf
 1. The promise, “Yes.”
2. The Promise,“No.”
3. The Promise That The Speaker Will Promise Later,i.e.,the ubiquitous parental“We’ll see...”
4. The request for more information about what’s been asked–with the (only implied) commitment
to promise when the speaker has the information.
5. A counteroffer to the request.

The following five points are the additional characteristics of a reliable promise:

1. The conditions of satisfaction are clear – mutually understood – and agreed to by both
performer and customer.
2. The performer (promissor) is assessed as competent to perform or has access to that
competence (materials, tools, instructions, etc).
3. The performer has estimated the time to perform the action for completing the promise and has
allocated (blocked) that capacity on the schedule (calendar).
4. The performer is sincere in making the promise. In the moment the promise is made, the
performer is not having a private, unspoken conversation which contradicts fulfillment.
5. Regardless of what the future holds, the performer will make good on the promise – particularly
if the promise cannot be performed, taking responsibility for whatever consequences that may
ensue.

What is Takt Planning?13

Takt time planning is a work structuring method. ‘Takt time’ is a term used in manufacturing to describe
pacing work to match the customer’s demand rate. ‘Work structuring’ is the practice of scheduling out
work and is a part of designing a production system. Takt time planning then, is one method for work
structuring around a set pace of work. The goal of Takt time planning is to create a reliable plan, with
the input of the entire team, which balances workflows for specific phases of work.

Setting the paces of work is an iterative design problem with several related questions.

What work should be paced?

What should the pace be?
How big are the spaces to work through?
How should different sets of work be paced?

What is the goal of Takt Planning?

Simply put, we need a systematic way of improving production if we are to improve over the long term.
When activities are all moving at different paces, then projects naturally become more chaotic. Stable
flows help reveal bottlenecks, which are the areas to improve upon. This is not a new idea. Liker and

13
Dissertation on Takt Planning by Adam Frandson https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dp4n4fz
Meierdescribe this as part of the continuous improvement spiral. The spiral shows the relationship for
how improvement can occur in an iterative fashion through creating stability, pacing work, and
standardizing.

What are the principles behind Takt Planning?

Some principles of Takt Planning include14:

● A visual location-based schedule showing time and space15
● A plan that can usually be shown on a single page.
● Scheduled on a rhythm, targeting continuous work in each area, with the intent to plan and level
consistent work.
● Visualize the sequence of the trades. Showing work, trade, and logistical flow (when, what,
where, who, how)
● Must include three types of flow; workflow, trade flow, & logistical flow.
● Optimize with the appropriate buffers. There must be buffers in the plan. There are three types
of buffers that can be used within Takt plans which include material inventory, capacity, and
time.
● That stabilizes the pace of work with one-process flow and limiting work in process
● Avoid batching
● Lowering the river to reveal the rocks
● It is a system that creates stability in the field which enables16
○ Additional team and builder capacity
○ Consistent crew sizes
○ Consistent material inventory levels

14
Takt Planning Blog Posts from the Lean Construction Blog. https://leanconstructionblog.com/takt-time.html
15
What is a Takt Plan https://leanconstructionblog.com/What-is-a-Takt-plan.html
16
Creating a Takt Plan https://leanconstructionblog.com/Creating-a-Takt-Plan.html
 ○ The ability to find and remove roadblocks ahead of the work

What is SCRUM?

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through
adaptive solutions for complex problems.17

In a nutshell, Scrum requires a Scrum Master to foster an environment where:

1. A Product Owner orders the work for a complex problem into a Product Backlog.
2. The Scrum Team turns a selection of the work into an increment of value during a Sprint.
3. The Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint.
4. Repeat

Scrum is simple. Try it as is and determine if its philosophy, theory, and structure help to achieve goals
and create value. The Scrum framework is purposefully incomplete, only defining the parts required to
implement Scrum theory. Scrum is built upon by the collective intelligence of the people using it. Rather
than provide people with detailed instructions, the rules of Scrum guide their relationships and
interactions.

Various processes, techniques and methods can be employed within the framework. Scrum wraps
around existing practices or renders them unnecessary. Scrum makes visible the relative efficacy of
current management, environment, and work techniques, so that improvements can be made.

What is the goal of SCRUM?18

Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on delivering the highest business value in the
shortest time. It allows us to rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual working software (every two weeks to
one month). The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to determine the best way to deliver
the highest priority features. Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real working software and
decide to release it as is or continue to enhance it for another sprint.

What are the principles behind SCRUM?

Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from
experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and
focuses on the essentials.

17
SCRUM definition from https://www.michaelvizdos.com/interactive-scrum-guide#scrum_definition
18
SCRUM explained in 100 words
https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/resources/a-reusable-scrum-presentation
Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and to control risk. Scrum
engages groups of people who collectively have all the skills and expertise to do the work and share or
acquire such skills as needed.

There are four formal events: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective.

Some of the principles behind SCRUM include:19

● Transparency - the SCRUM framework is designed to maximize transparency of key

information
● Inspection -sprints can be inspected in order to understand progress and make improvements
● Adaptation - SCRUM provides the flexibility for teams to make adjustments as changes are
made
● Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage
● Incremental delivery - work in incremental sprints, small batch size
● Cross-functional teams - the members have all the skills necessary to create value each
Sprint.
● Sprint - Working in Sprints at a sustainable pace improves the Scrum Team’s focus and
consistency. They are fixed length events of one month or less to create consistency.

Lean Methods from Toyota

In addition to the Lean Construction Methods, there are also several methods from the Toyota
Production System that have translated well into design and construction. We typically can only apply
these methods once we have stability in our production system. So it is generally recommended to start
with either the Last Planner System, Takt, or SCRUM first to create a baseline stability and then
incorporate TPS methods.

A good exercise to truly understand these methods is to write down what they are, the goal behind
each of them, and how these methods connect with the lean principles and philosophies that we went
over in the previous chapter.

● 5 Whys
● 5S
● A3 Problem Solving
● PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)
● Poka-Yoke (Error Proofing)
● Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)
● Standardized Work
● Value Stream Mapping
● Visual Management

19
SCRUM guide https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#adaptation
As you can see, there are a lot of lean methods that you can use. Rather than try to apply as many
as you can, it is better to start with the problem that you are currently facing. From that problem,
you can determine which method would help solve your problem. You should deploy only ONE
method at a time so that you don’t lose focus and burn out your team. Skillfully applying each of
the methods takes time so there is no reason to rush it. There is also no reason to multi-task and end
up with a lukewarm implementation.
Chapter 5. Lean Tools and Implementation

There are three ways of implementing Lean Construction: Digital, Analog, or Hybrid. Digital applications
are software products. They can be single purpose applications such as Paramount Decisions for
Choosing By Advantages.

Digital applications can take the form of general purpose applications such as using Mural for Last
Planner System or Trello for SCRUM.

Single purpose applications are more straightforward and the developers are using their own
interpretation of the Lean methods in the software workflow. General purpose software is more flexible
but requires that the user understands the principles and steps in applying the Lean methods. The most
general software is a spreadsheet or whiteboard.

Analog implementations are physical implementations using whiteboards, stickies, pen and paper, etc.
The analog implementations are the most flexible but they require the users to have the most
knowledge about the method.

Why should you use analog?

Analog is the easiest to use as an expert practitioner. You have complete freedom when using stickies,
a whiteboard, and paper. You can experiment and make changes very quickly.

The downside is that you need to know what you are doing. You can be making mistakes that are hard
to realize. If you choose to go analog, be sure to have a good mentor or coach to validate your
implementation.

Even if you plan on using digital, you should spend some time learning how to use analog methods.
You can simulate any digital workflow in an analog manner. And in doing so, you can better understand
the methods and discover shortcomings with digital tools. Analog pull planning incorporates a more
social element to making commitments. Many superintendents are more hands-on and so they prefer to
start with analog first.

Why should you use digital?

With digital, you are relying on the vendor of the software to understand and implement the software
based on the lean methods and principles. There will be different interpretations and no software
vendor or product is perfect. Critical features may be missing and workflows that are incongruent with
the lean methodology. For example, Procore and Oracle P6 may claim to support the Last Planner
System but do not have many of the elements that are necessary to apply to it.
For larger organizations, I would recommend a digital approach. The main upside of digital is the data.
Data, machine learning, and automation; can have a profound impact on your organization’s
productivity. The larger your organization, the more data you can generate and be able to mine. Many
AEC companies are starting to hire data scientists to mine their data. I see that this will be a continuing
trend as your data becomes more and more valuable.

For larger sized organizations, a digital workflow can standardize your processes across thousands of
employees.

As a rule of thumb, I always start with analog first for a few months. Once I understand the analog way
of working, I will choose a digital tool that best aligns with my interpretation of the lean method as well
as the particular context and requirements of my team and project. Without starting from the analog,
you will not know the methodology deeply. Don’t rely on a software vendor to get the methodology
correct. Validate the methodology yourself and then use the vendor which aligns best with your
interpretation and team’s requirements.

Why should you use a hybrid approach?

Sometimes digital products are good but they do not fully encapsulate your entire workflow. A hybrid
approach combines the best of both worlds. The flexibility of analog and the data and consistency of
digital.

For the Last Planner System, I usually recommend teams use a hybrid approach. Master Planning and
Pulling Planning can be done in an analog manner. These activities occur infrequently enough that you
can get together and apply them in an analog manner.

Once you have the data on the board, you can input them into your digital software and use it for
weekly workplan, tracking PPC, etc.

Having people physically put stickies on the board and talking about their requirements and sequences
is important. Digital solutions for the LPS haven’t been able to capture the “magic” of this interaction
just yet. If your jobsite does have enough room, a hybrid system can help you apply the best of both
worlds. Many software vendors miss important workflows that the hybrid method can fill the gap of. If
your jobsite has no space for planning and your team is distributed, a digital workflow can be more
effective.

All three implementations are valid and depending upon your situation you can use one or more of
them. Over time, we expect to see more digital implementations as the cost and quality of software
improves. We also expect more VR, AR, and digital collaboration technologies to enhance lean
deployment.

When to be flexible and when to be rigid

As with everything, sometimes you need to be rigid and sometimes you need to be flexible. Knowing
when to use which one is a skill that will boost your lean implementation.

Here is a general guideline.

When we divide the lean construction stack into the four levels we now have a more modular way of
organizing our knowledge.

From this organization, you can see that the lean philosophies are rigid. They do not change.

The lean principles are somewhat rigid. Unlike the philosophies, more principles can be discovered
over time. And some principles are contradictory to other principles (stable production versus
minimizing inventory). So we have to use some judgment in determining which ones to use and when.

The lean methods and tools should be flexible. They should be changed and adapted to the project that
you are working on.

If you are continuously improving, by definition your lean tools and methods should also change.

The lesson here is to not be rigid when you should be flexible and not be flexible when you should be
rigid.
Don’t lock down one way of implementing lean. You shouldn’t have a standardized Last Planner, Takt,
Target Value Delivery implementation. You should have a collection of viable options to use depending
upon your situation.

So as you can see. Too many companies waste time “standardizing” lean methods and lean tools. They
should keep these flexible and standardize lean thinking in respects to the principles and philosophies.

Doing the wrong thing probably won’t kill you. You can still make quite a bit of progress doing the wrong
things. But you will never be able to realize your true potential if you do things incorrectly.
Chapter 6. Why Lean Construction Is A Paradigm Shift For The Industry

What is a paradigm and why are paradigms so important?

Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept of paradigms in his seminal book “The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions”. According to Kuhn, science and advancements are not achieved in an additive manner,
rather through scientific revolutions. Within a given field, there are fundamental assumptions that
we hold true. We build our thinking and practices around these assumptions.

A summary of Kuhn’s ideas include:

1. A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of beliefs.
2. Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the
world is like". Scientists take great pains to defend these assumptions.
3. Normal science often suppresses novelties that do not agree with its paradigm.
4. A Scientific Revolution occurs when there are enough anomalies that contradict the existing
tradition.
5. New assumptions (paradigms/theories) require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and
the reevaluation of prior facts.

In the time of Galileo, most people believed that the sun orbited around the Earth. All of the astronomy
and mathematical models of the sky were built based on this assumption. As telescopes became more
available, there were more and more discrepancies between the observations and the theory that the
sun orbited around the Earth. People started to question the paradigm and discovered that a better
model of the solar system is that of the Earth and all the planets orbiting around the sun.

The transition from a Geocentric (Earth at the center) to a Heliocentric (Sun at the center) was met with
great resistance and violence. The Catholic Church’s teachings were rooted in the Geocentric model
and they went to great lengths to defend their paradigm.
The history and progress of Lean Construction follow in the same manner as Galileo’s discoveries. In
fact, most of the greatest discoveries of science such as Einstein’s theory of relativity forced us to
rethink our understanding of physics. In Einstein’s case, it was a transition away from Newtonian
mechanics which had been the prevailing way of thinking since the 17th century. Although Newtonian
mechanics worked well in most places, it breaks down at certain points when we go deeper within the
subatomic level and as we approach the speed of light.

Our mental models affect us because

● They influence what we can and cannot see.

● They influence what we look for and what we ignore.
● They influence the questions that we ask and the answers that we are able to find.

Lean Construction was invented because there were many discrepancies between how we
thought projects were supposed to be managed and the processes that gave better results.
Many of the things that people do in order to improve project performance do not work. Many of the
ideas that people put in place are not rigorously tested with data.
Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell found that the key to productivity was the reliability of the weekly work
plan (PPC). They worked on this problem to discover practices that helped increase PPC and
maintained high PPC throughout the project. By “shielding” workers from the uncertainties of the
project through a make ready process, constraint removal, and successive levels of planning,
they were able to create stability in the workflow. This led to the invention of the Last Planner
System, a system of production planning and control. In developing the Last Planner System, the
discrepancies between how people were taught to run projects versus what was optimal became wider
and wider.

Lauri Koskela discovered that there was no theory for construction. People made assumptions about
how to run a project based on past experiences and heuristics. The dominant thinking at the time was
that projects can be broken down into small pieces and each can be managed independently. There
was no flow in between the processes, no involvement of the people doing the work, and social
communication was not an area of interest.

Rather, most projects were run via a combination of critical path method (CPM) schedules that were
pushed from the office, a financial model based on cost plus profit, and contractual language that binds
the parties together. Most projects are delivered late and over budget because people do not have
the means to control costs and schedules.

In Lean Construction, we have found that optimizing for value, flow, customer, eliminating waste,
improving transparency, and involving the key stakeholders all lead to better project outcomes.
Many of the concepts in this book, including the Lean Philosophies, Principles, Methods, and Tools; are
not part of traditional project management. Even if you attend a top-tier University, are a certified project
manager; you most likely have never heard about these concepts before.

The paradigm that you live in becomes your environment. Fish live in water. After long enough,
they don’t question what water is. They are no longer aware of the concept of water because they have
been so immersed in it. In the same way, schedulers can use CPM for 30 years. They can’t imagine a
world without CPM and do not realize that CPM is a recent invention. If it is not in P6 or Microsoft
Projects, they don’t think that it exists.

Remember that CPM was only adopted in the 1950s with the invention of computers. This is a very
short timeline given how old design and construction is. Yet there are people who believe that CPM has
existed for centuries. In an ironic twist of faith, location-based planning and takt methods for planning
actually predate CPM. In fact, the Empire State Building used location-based planning in the 1920s.
Prior to CPM, managing projects through zones and flow was the norm.

For people with pets, you might know that dogs are color blind. Imagine being the only dog that can see
color and trying to explain a rainbow to other color-blind dogs. The concept of color is literally not part of
the vocabulary or imagination of dogs. Technically you are correct when you see color, but all the
other dogs will still think that you are crazy. I was one of the few people who saw this in 2010, but it
has taken me many years to be able to communicate it with others.
Lean Construction concepts, while simple and straightforward to understand, are alien to most
people working in the AEC industry. Lean Construction is not a cosmetic enhancement of the
construction industry. It is a totally different paradigm and a transformative way of doing work.

Many companies start their lean journey assuming that they just need to go through a week of training
and adopt a few techniques, and then they would be complete with their “lean” efforts. They could fulfill
the checkboxes that their clients are asking for and move on with their lives.

In reality, the LC is a different paradigm than traditional construction management. The longer you are
on your lean journey, the more you understand the differences paradigms. You will realize that many of
the software and processes that you are using to manage your organization were not built for the lean
paradigm. Many of the processes that you use on a daily basis were designed for the traditional
paradigm.

Why Lean Construction? Why Now?

Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. For most of the construction industry,
delivering projects is an adversarial process. They have to fight each other in order to get work
done. People end up working long hours and weekends to compensate for all the waste that has
happened on the project. In the field, long hours, overtime, acceleration, and the inability to make
personal commitments are the norm in the industry.

These types of behaviors lead to poor performance, mental health issues, and deter people from
entering the AEC industry. Waste adds up. We all end up paying for it. In one way or another. It might
not be immediate, but the impact ends up being absorbed by the people working in the field.

Although we have a housing crisis and our infrastructure needs to be updated, the availability and
quality of our labor force keep shrinking.

With Lean Construction, we are seeking collaboration. We are seeking involvement and better
communication. By empowering people to eliminate waste, find new value, and continuously improve;
we are giving control back to the people in this industry.

Better planned projects, higher-quality products, and greater efficiencies mean that people earn more
money while being able to keep a healthy personal life. They can keep commitments to their family,
attend their kid’s soccer game, and be a happier and more productive individual.

If you have read this far, you will notice that Lean Construction allows for a deeper way of thinking
about projects. The wider industry does not talk about flow, buffers, capacity, pull, work in progress,
continuous improvement, etc. Lean Construction provides an actionable prescription to solve many of
the industry’s problems. We talk about problems openly rather than sweep them under a rug.

Many of the complexities of construction are rooted in people

Construction is complex. There is complexity in building a high-performing structure that accomplishes

the goals of multiple stakeholders. But contrary to what most people think, the complexity is not due to
math, science, or engineering. We know how to build complex buildings, and most projects do not push
the boundaries of science and technology.

The biggest source of complexity comes from the people involved. Oftentimes, a group of strangers
come together to design and build together. People’s trust in each other needs to be developed,
communication and coordination processes need to be formalized, and the project’s culture needs to be
built and maintained.

If you want to increase the reliability of your project delivery, focus on the source of complexity. Focus
on the people on site. The team’s culture, morale, and happiness directly affect your project’s outcome.
This is an area that has been underappreciated and underinvested in construction projects.

Traditional management measures tasks and compliance. Lean measures improvement.

Traditional companies measure tasks, activities, and compliance with those activities (how fast you
complete a task, how many tasks you complete in a shift, etc.). Lean companies measure improvement
(how much waste you remove, how much faster you can make a process, how much higher in quality,
etc).

The thing is that if you just measure tasks and compliance you will in the best-case scenario get the
best results for that particular system. In this way of thinking, every day is the same. There is little or no
change to the process. Your goal is to produce as much as you can without altering the assembly line.

With lean, you focus on continuous improvement. If you work on continuous improvement every day,
within a month you should be many times better than you started. Continuous improvement allows you
to change the system, reorganize how work gets done, reconfigure, or eliminate unnecessary
processes.

Both systems have a standard procedure that an employee should follow. Lean allows for fast iterations
and changes to standards. Traditional systems make changes very difficult. Lean empowers front-line
workers to make improvements. Traditional management relies on smart managers to design a system
that workers should follow. Workers are not encouraged to think. They are encouraged to follow orders.
Deviations from the plan are not encouraged.

My question is, “Does your organization measure improvements or just compliance?”.

What is wrong with the existing construction paradigm?

We chase cash flow and resource utilization rather than material, process, and product flow.

Many of the tasks are performed out of sequence because, when the project is behind schedule, the
different parties are looking for work packages that can be completed as soon as possible to get cash
flow and stay afloat.

The only way to fix this problem is to collaboratively plan the work, align financial incentives, and focus
on creating REAL flow in the work. You can use the Last Planner System, Takt Time, Location-Based
Management, or a combination of these methods to create the flow of material and work that will lead to
better project results.

If you focus on optimizing for cash flow, you will create waste and get lower margins at the end of the
project. It might sound obvious, but project management should be performed by project managers and
superintendents. Not by the accounting department.

Remember that cash flow is not the same as REAL flow.

For a project team to save money and reduce costs, they must be incentivized to reduce costs. Most
project contracts are not aligned, and the incentives are for spending more money.
For a team to reduce waste, they must be paid more to reduce the waste than to carry on with wasteful
activities. The enemy of waste is not people’s inability to see waste. It is the incentives that work
against removing that waste.

The best LC practitioners are also the most skeptical of it at first.

This may sound counterintuitive, but all the top advocates for lean today had to work within a broken
paradigm for years.

They see that what they were doing was not working. Projects were behind schedule and over budget
despite the team working 60 to 80 hours per week. Delays were a consistent problem and designs were
riddled with errors.

There has to be a better way. This is what they thought and as they wander around looking for a better
way, they are introduced to lean construction. At first they couldn't believe this would work. It sounds so
simple. It is completely different from what they were taught. How can adding trust, planning
collaboratively, and letting go of command and control result in better project outcomes?

They have tried everything else and this is the last thing to try. Mind as well. What is the worst that can
happen? Things are already pretty bad as is.

After trying a few concepts from lean construction, the project started getting better. People start
collaborating more. There is less yelling and curse words at the weekly meetings. People weren’t
sending emails with RFIs as a means to cover their butt. With initial success comes further
experimentation and learning.

And then one day, it suddenly hits them. Lean is so obvious. This is how the whole industry should
operate. They make it their mission to improve their project and tell others about it.

This is a typical journey from a skeptic to an advocate. Tens of thousands of people have taken this
journey.

Because this is a recurring part of people’s lean journey. I am super, super patient with everyone. No
matter how skeptical or how against lean someone is, I am always patient. The reason is that the most
resistant person will end up being the biggest advocate. It just takes people time to learn, try for
themselves, and change. We can’t rush it. We just have to be there and provide the resources for
people to make up their own mind.

Two paradigms can’t coexist

In the long run, it is impossible for two paradigms to coexist within the same team. One will prevail, and
you will need to make the hard decision of which one to pursue.

In the long run, two paradigms can’t coexist within the same company. You will need to make a difficult
decision on which direction to take.

By transitioning, you will leave some people behind. Some of your BEST people will not survive the
change.

What are the official knowledge bases of LC?

The three organizations that contain the body of knowledge on LC are: 1) The IGLC, 2) Lean
Construction Blog, and 3) your country's LCI.
These three resources contain 99% of the entire knowledge base of LC and they are for the most part
consistent with each other. The main difference is how the material is presented, the balance between
theory and practice, and how deeply the ideas are communicated.

The most "technical" and scientific is the IGLC. The IGLC has been around for more than 30 years and
thousands of researchers, professors, and PhDs have contributed to the research and there is a
summer conference each year.

The LCB contains blog posts which makes the scientific findings of the IGLC more accessible. The LCB
contains a 50/50 balance between the theoretical and scientific inquiry with practical ideas that can be
used right away.

Most countries have a local LCI chapter. Each LCI chapter is independent, with the Lean Construction
Institute (US) being the oldest. The LCI focuses on disseminating practical knowledge of LC. The LCI is
designed for sharing prescriptive ideas with the industry. Most of the theory and scientific inquiries are
removed to make the content more understandable for the layperson.

If you want to learn LCI properly, you need to explore the knowledge of all three.

The IGLC contains over 2000 research articles.

https://iglc.net/Papers

The LCB contains over 400 blog posts, hundreds of hours in webinars and conference recordings. The
LCB also has affordable online courses and virtual conferences.
https://leanconstructionblog.com/

Your local LCI has a rich variety of in-person events and industry focused content.
https://lnkd.in/gXhthPpd
Chapter 7. Why Is It Important to Understand Human Psychology

I believe that if you want to be successful in the design and construction industry, it is more important to
understand people and the psychology behind how humans operate than to be the best in engineering
and technology. Although LC does involve many technical aspects that we have covered in the earlier
chapters, just knowing what the ideal system looks like does not yield any results. You have to be able
to put those ideas into practice, and one of the biggest challenges is with people.

Rarely do our projects hit the cutting edge of science and technology.

The main reason for this is that 99% of the design and construction projects do not hit the technical
boundaries. If you are building a pharmaceutical plant, hospital, or nuclear power then this would be the
1% where technical is more important that the people skills.

The rules of human nature are from the field of psychology. Design and construction projects are
undertaken by humans. There is no such thing as an automatic and autopilot project. And so the basis
of any successful Lean transformation program needs to start with the findings of psychology and
human behavior.
Here are a few psychological concepts that you should be aware of:

Prospect Theory
https://lnkd.in/gPQwMb4t

The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less

https://lnkd.in/ghqVcnhv

Positive Psychology
https://lnkd.in/gbgqyiWR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M

Cognitive Biases
https://lnkd.in/ghZp3QTn

● Confirmation bias - Tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's
preconceptions, and discredit information that does not support the initial opinion.

● Anchoring bias - The inability of people to make appropriate adjustments from a starting point
in response to a final answer. It can lead people to make suboptimal decisions.

● Availability heuristic - The availability heuristic (also known as the availability bias) is the
tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which
can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they
may be.

● Recency bias - a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones; a memory bias.
Recency bias gives "greater importance to the most recent event”.

● Survivorship bias, which is concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process
and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility.

● Halo effect - The name halo effect is based on the concept wherein positive sentiments in one
area cause questionable or unknown characteristics to be seen positively. If the observer likes
one aspect of something, they will have a positive predisposition toward everything about it.

● Groupthink - the psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the
desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional
decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus
decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting
viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

It is important to be aware of the most common cognitive biases that people have. Since people rarely
use the most efficient method. They tend to use what is familiar. Not what is efficient and gives the best
performance. This is because people are rarely fully rewarded for performance. And so they try to cover
their downside rather than optimize for the upside or for the best overall median.

This is the basis for prospect theory. The implication of this is that most people are not rational. They
do what is familiar rather than what is the optimal. The perception of risk and reward is not linear
and skews more towards avoiding losses than trying to maximize gains.

Human Nature

Human nature is quite interesting and sometimes the rules are counter each other. Here are a few to
consider.

1. Humans prefer comfort.

2. No one is fully rational. 95% of people’s daily activities are subconscious and emotionally driven.
Only 5% are conscious and rational.
3. People optimize more to reduce downside than for the expected outcome or upside.
4. Without progress, people are not happy. And yet too much change too quickly can burn people out.
So having the perfect balance is important.
5. Each person has a limit to how much change they can incorporate and how willing they are for
change.

Any change / improvement program must take into account these human nature characteristics. You
can’t move too fast because it will trigger resistance. You can’t not make progress because
people don’t like being stagnant. The goal of any lean development program is to find the balance at
“flow state”. The right amount of challenge that people are excited about, but not too difficult that
frustrates them. There should be just the right amount of struggle and frustration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Chapter 8. How To Start Your Lean Journey

The most important thing to understand about a lean journey is that it is actually two lean journeys.

The first journey is the one that you take for yourself. This includes learning the lean landscape, putting
some lean concepts into action, and improving your effectiveness with lean.

The second journey is the journey with your team. The second journey is the most important because
no one can sustainably implement lean on their own. They need their team to be bought in and want to
do it themselves.

In this chapter, we will talk about both journeys and how to get started. In the next chapter, we will focus
on the second journey and how to scale up your lean implementation.

The First Journey

For your first journey, here are some of my recommendations. This is a practical guide to learning
anything in a new field:

1. Do a survey of the landscape - before you get started, you should try to understand the landscape.
Attend a few events & conferences, speak with people, and read up on Lean Construction, etc. You will
not understand everything, but you should get a good understanding about what LC can and cannot do
for you. This should take 3 to 6 months. Once you are confident that this is the direction that you want
to head towards, you can proceed with the next step.

2. Start small - whatever you decide to implement, the next step is to start small. This can be a small
pilot project or applying a LC method with a small team. You want to go for low-risk opportunities in
order to learn and experiment. Rather than doing something NEW and making a bold change, look at
your own work and the things that you are already doing. Start with something that you can improve
with your new knowledge of LC.

3. Seek out a mentor - If you are just getting started, you should realize that there are many people
within the LC community who have been active for more than a decade. You should find the best
mentor you can and one that aligns with your values and mission.

After a few months you should be able to get some positive results. You will learn that not everything
that you read will work for your situation and you will need to adapt the Lean principles to your own
specific business model.

Here are some tips for implementing lean today:

1. Create flow
2. Make work visible
3. Create plans with doers (the people doing the work)
4. Try to get better every day.

From these foundations, you can add-on more as you go. You can start practically anywhere and
continue to build up your competency over time.

Simple ideas you can start today

In order to simplify Lean Construction in a manner that everyone can understand, I have devised a few
rules. I hang these rules in my office and on the jobsite. If you follow these rules, you will move your
company closer to lean. Here is my list of rules. You can modify these rules and develop your own list
from them.

1. If you work with a team, do a 15 to 30 minute stand up meeting with them each morning.

2. Spend time learning every day. Learning and improving is part of the job.

3. Focus on delivering QUALITY. If you don’t know how to do something, STOP. Ask for help and make
sure that you are doing it correctly. Prioritize QUALITY over speed.
4. If you are doing work for someone else to receive, you need to ask them what they want, how they
want it, and how they will use your work. If you don’t have a customer to deliver to, STOP. You are not
actually doing any real work.

5. When you receive work from someone else, INSPECT it for quality first before proceeding. Always
double check. Don’t assume that it is correct without verification.

6. COMMUNICATE. When working with a team or on something with many steps involved, talk with
everyone involved so that you know the game plan. If you don’t look at the whole process from
beginning to end, you will optimize only for the portion that you see.

7. Go out and SEE. Go to where the work is done to understand how it is done. Work problems need to
be solved at the work site, not in the office.

8. Never do work just because you have free time. Only do work if there is a CUSTOMER that requests
it. If you have no customers, it is your job to find customers.

9. Never do work out of order. You should have a process map of all the activities that you do on a
regular basis.

10. Focus on one thing at a time. No multitasking.

The Second Journey

Once you have started your own lean implementation and can reliably get results from it, you will need
to involve your team and company to get the full benefits of it. At first, they might seem resistant or do
not care which is to be expected because lean construction is something new to most people. They
have never heard of it before or they had a bad experience with it in the past. Either way, your first job
is to get a shared understanding and develop buy-in over time.

Here are some practical steps for the second journey.

1. Exposure - For your team to want to use LC, they need to be exposed to it. They need to be
aware that it exists and can help them. The easiest thing to do is to share content on social
media and email useful materials to your team. It usually takes 20 to 50 exposures before
someone is curious enough to dive in and take a look for themselves.
2. Share Useful Content - Every week share useful content with your team. It can be a blog post,
a podcast, a Youtube video, etc. As long as it is short, engaging, and easy to understand; you
will bring value to them. This helps increase their exposure to lean and lowers their resistance to
it. When they are ready, you can even share this ebook with them.
3. Pull, don't push - Let people build up their own interest towards lean. At first, all you can do
and all you need to do is give them exposure to the field and what it can do for them. You can’t
force it on them. You can’t push lean. You can’t make someone do it if they do not want to. Lean
 is a personal journey. Some people aren’t ready for it and some people decide that it is not for
them. We should respect them and focus our attention only on those that are ready and willing.
4. Learn by doing and in small bite size chunks - start small and learn as you go. You will not
be able to apply everything that you see in one week, one month, or one year. And that is okay.
Lean is a continuous learning process where the journey never ends. So there is no need to
rush it and make overly ambitious goals at the very beginning.
5. Make learning a weekly process and fun - For you to have continuous improvement, you also
need to have continuous learning. The best companies train every week. Some exceptional
companies train every single day. You should train the people that have bought in. You should
make learning fun and engaging.
6. Get a mentor / expert help - For most people, this is the first time they have been on a journey
like this. The second journey is especially difficult since it does not map well with most people’s
experiences. As you get more results and your company believes in the benefits of lean
construction, you should seek out a mentor and get expert help. There are many people in the
LC community who have been on this journey for more than a decade. You can leverage their
knowledge and expertise in order to accelerate your progress and avoid time-wasting mistakes.

If #leanconstruction makes logical sense, why is it so hard to deploy?

Although lean construction looks simple, straightforward, and logical; it is very difficult to deploy across
an entire project or an organization. Here are two reasons why:

1) People vastly underestimate how long it takes to learn and understand LC before they can START
deploying it. They also vastly underestimate how long it takes to be good at it.

2) With all change there will be RESISTANCE. Applying lean is a behavioral change in the same way
as quitting smoking, exercising, and eating healthier. We all know what is good for us but to do so isn't
always as straightforward.

Lean Construction is a skill. We get better the more we practice it.

Lean Construction is a “skill”. It is a skill in the same way as playing a violin is a skill.
1) It takes time and deliberate practice to have enough knowledge, skill, and confidence to perform.

2) Your outcomes aka “results” are based on your skill level. The efficiency gains that you can get will
be based on your skill level.

3) It is not binary. It is not whether you are doing it or not. It is how well you are doing it.

4) You can only go so far on your own. If you want to reach the highest level of excellence you will need
coaching and mentorship.

5) You can’t say that you know how to do it. In order to get continual benefits you have to continue to
practice it.

6) Learning requires unlearning bad habits and correcting poor forms.

Many people believe that they can do LC after taking one class or attend one conference. And then
they give up too early. If you understand that #leanconstruction is a skill in the same way as playing a
violin, you will have more realistic expectations and be able to more meaningful progress.

The truth is that it takes people a minimum of 50 hours of training to be able to start their
implementation. It takes between 100 to 200 hours of training and self study to be able to apply the Last
Planner System. Most people take 1-2 years to be proficient in the Last Planner System.

So don't expect to be able to do it after one week, one month, or one conference. You have the wrong
expectations which will lead to failure.

As a complex skill, I recommend studying as much as you can on your own. If you are the first person
in your company to look into it, start small and then expand as you get better. If you have an internal
coach that can help you, seek out guidance to shorten the learning curve.

When you have overcome the 100 hour mark, you will be ready to use what you have learned to
transform your organization. If you need lean certification, consider the internationally recognized
LCB-100 certification. For scaling up lean in your organization, you can use the Lean Hyperscale
program to assist you.

How long does it take to be good at Lean Construction?

0-25 hours - Optimism and hope 😁 . "It looks so easy. We are already doing this long before we know
the word lean."

25-50 hours - Helpness baby 👶 and frustration 😰 . "I don't understand. Why is it so difficult?"
50-100 hours - Steady progress 🙋‍♂️ and the first Ah Ha phase. "It is making sense now. Oh, I get it."

100-200 hours - Intermediate level practitioner and rapid results 📈 .

>200 hours - Advanced practitioner 💪 that learns with the community 👨‍👧‍👧 .

So the key lesson here is that people vastly underestimate the amount of time it takes to learn and get
good at lean construction. Just like watching gymnastics at the Olympics, we admire what the athletes
can do. But we often forget that they are just humans like us. It took them years to get to where they
are. So if you are on the lean journey and frustrated in how far you have gone, take a look at the
timeline above and see where you are. You can't expect to be an expert right away.
Chapter 9. How To Scale Your Lean Organization

If you can’t scale your lean implementation, you can’t sustain it.

The most important number for creating a sustainable lean culture is understanding your churn rate /
retention rate - how long do people stay with your company on average. For your lean culture to be
sustainable, you MUST train more people than your natural churn.

If your company has 1000 employees and the average person stays for 5 years, every year 200 people
leave and 200 new people join. If you train less than 200 people per year, you will NEVER be able
to scale out your lean program. You have a leaky bucket.

A common mistake that many people make is spending years on their lean deployment and only have
pockets of practitioners, not a company wide adoption. This is mostly due to underinvesting in their
implementation and not realizing that the real problem of LC is NOT the acquisition of knowledge. The
real problem is how to put that knowledge into practice at scale in a way that is sustainable and
does not trigger resistance. The key is scalability and zero resistance.

If you underinvest in your program and train too few people, you may feel like you are winning the
battle but are actually losing the war. Upper management will be dissatisfied with the outcomes and
may even decide to kill the program. I have seen this happen with several lean implementations that
were successful but understaffed. They were never able to move out of the local successes and
translated those practices and culture into the rest of the organization. And eventually the organization
got frustrated or greedy which led to people turning against them and ending their lean program.
Yes, it is possible to deploy lean at scale at any organization in a way that people actively participate. It
is possible to change an organization in a way that creates continuous improvement while not
triggering resistance. We have already solved this problem and I am going to share with you the
battle tested solution. These are lessons from our Lean Hyperscale program.

Using Study Action Teams (SATs), you can easily scale out your training to thousands of people within
one year. Even organizations with tens of thousands of people can be fully trained in 3 to 5
years. It sounds crazy but it is true. This has already been done several times. Our goal is to allow
every person to cross the 100 hour lean learning threshold in a scalable and economical way.

This is only POSSIBLE because we are NOT using the training model that everyone else is
using.

Most organizations approach lean training through: 1) lecture based training (similar to a college class),
2) a multi-day bootcamp (these are quite popular but not very effective in the long run without follow up
and supplemental training), and 3) a game or simulation.

The third approach is usually part of the lecture or bootcamp. The lecture style is a legacy training
method based on when Lean Construction was first taught at Universities. This training style follows the
typical school schedule and curriculum. The bootcamp model is quite popular because it is easy to
monetize bootcamps and one day training seminars.

What are some problems with the current training model?

The legacy models were created at an earlier time which are not as effective now. They cram far too
much information in such a short time frame that the students have a hard time absorbing it,
processing it, and putting it into action. With games and simulations, most people do not have the
ability to translate abstract ideas into their projects. Lessons are forced instead of emerging organically.
Rather than solving REAL PROBLEMS that people are currently facing on their projects, the
games devote time on invented problems that may not have a basis in reality.

The training model used by most companies takes far too long and requires too much time from the
Lean Champion. And they train in “large batches” which makes it hard for people to absorb. There are
also a few more problems including:

1. Lean champions spend a large amount of their time creating content and giving the same
presentations over and over again.
2. This model is based more on lecturing and less on hands-on learning.
3. This can be boring for some people, especially for people who work in the field that do not like
lecture based education.
4. This puts a lot of pressure and time demand on lean champions who already have a limited
amount of time. Before each lecture, they spend far too much time preparing and optimizing
their slide deck.
5. After the training, people “believe” that they have understood Lean Construction while
never having to put their training into action.
6. Since the large batch training requires a lot of time and money investment, most people do not
have the time nor budget for additional training to reinforce what they have learned.
7. Knowledge from the training quickly degrades over time. If there is no additional training,
the person’s understanding of LC can go back to zero.
8. It is hard to go into deeper and more nuanced topics with this model. So people end up being
trained on just the entry level / surface level concepts.
9. With traditional training, it is hard to cross the 100 hour threshold required to understand LC.

What does an effective SAT model look like?

1. Get a commitment from a team of 20 to 100 people. Typical commitment is 4-6 months. You
want to involve as many people as you can from various different roles in your organization
(field staff, management, office staff, etc.).

2. Have a qualified instructor facilitate 1 hour every week. Put this time slot in the calendar at the
very beginning. Use the same meeting time for all your sessions.
○ One hour gives just enough learning each week so that people can progress while
not being overwhelmed by the program.
○ The key to sustainability is to have balance between too easy (boredom) and too difficult
(frustration). Progress occurs in between these two states.
○ As long as people make steady progress and don’t give up, you will have
sustainable gains over time without much resistance.
 3. Before each meeting, the whole team reads one article from the Lean Construction Blog.
Articles take 10 to 15 minutes to read. The instructor can select the article for the team to read
and can change the articles based on the interest/problems of the group.

4. First 30 minutes is devoted to summarizing the article and key takeaways.

○ What are some of the key ideas from the article?
○ Do we agree with them or disagree with them?
○ What are some ideas that we can try?

5. Next 30 minutes is devoted to discussing how the team can use these ideas on their project and
within the company.

6. Every 6 weeks, spend a day reflecting and summarizing key lessons learned.

7. After 4 months, adjust the learning to project and team implementation. The emphasis
should shift towards application and learning by doing. The role of the instructor is to help each
team with their implementation and provide feedback and materials to help each team become
more successful. Each team would do a presentation and the instructor and other participants
are there to ask questions and help improve the implementation.

Why are SATs superior to lecturing?

1. One instructor can train hundreds of people at a time while requiring less than 20 hours
per month. Technology can be used to help scale up the teaching to thousands of students.
Using this metric, SATs is the most efficient method available. It is far more efficient than
one-on-one mentoring or lecture based classrooms.

2. SATs allow the group to learn complex topics and learn ideas that they are actually
interested in. Everyone gets a say in the articles to read. The articles and topics of discussion
are flexible and can accommodate the problems that people are facing on their project today.

3. Everyone understands the same lean concepts and vocabulary so they can more easily work
together.

4. SATs allow people to be self-sufficient and give them the means to continue their training
and education AFTER the program ends.

5. SATs allows for any company to rapidly scale their training and deployment of Lean
Construction. Any company committed to a lean transformation and has a qualified
instructor can change and educate their entire company within 2-3 years rather than
taking decades with other methods.

6. SATs promote learning in bite-size chunks rather than in big batches. They encourage
discussion, build trust within a team, and help the team have a shared vocabulary and
understanding of LC.
 7. By going slower and focusing on only one blog post every week, you can get people to
think more deeply about each topic and you can get people to actually think of how they
can apply what they are learning.

8. People learn by doing. They find their own ways of putting the lean principles and methods
into practice. The instructor is there to give feedback and guidance on the implementation. After
the program, there is little regression because the students were involved in the work the entire
time.

9. This is the only method that is truly aligned with the lean principles of continuous improvement
and small batch learning. If you want continuous improvement, you must provide
continuous learning.

The SAT is a process that I have seen to have the most success with by far. To learn more about this
process, you can look into the Lean Hyperscale program and see how it works.

Remember that the real problem of lean construction is not how to apply it for a project or a team. The
real problem is how to apply it at scale and without resistance. If you don’t have scale, your
problems will eventually catch up to you. If your training methods do not teach people at a faster rate
than your churn rate, by definition you do not have a sustainable lean implementation. The only way for
lean to be sustainable is through scale. Because without scale you would be building a sand castle on
the beach and fighting the waves that come by. No matter how hard you work, your efforts can be
washed away.

Even if you win every battle and everyone that you work with are successful, you can still lose the war if
you don’t pay enough attention to the rest of your organization. Lean Construction is a paradigm
shift and in the long run, two paradigms can’t coexist within the same company.

Why do people want to apply LC?

LC solves the root cause problems of design and construction projects.

By focusing on transparency, collaborative planning, make ready, and visual display of information;
projects are run more efficiently and there is less fire fighting.

The current way the industry is organized has considerable amounts of waste. A LC project can be
delivered 10% to 25% faster and less expensive without compromising quality and scope.

Lean projects are safer projects because preplanning avoids many of the unsafe conditions that people
find themselves in.

Preplanning with make ready, constraint removal, and daily huddles gives projects more robustness to
absorb uncertainties.

Why don’t people want to apply LC?

Some people don’t want to be transparent. The current model is every man and woman for themselves
rather than working as a team.

The transparent nature of the project can reveal people’s weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and lack of
capabilities. Not everyone is willing to reveal what they know and do not know.

Some people enjoy firefighting and being called the “hero” when they swoop in and save a project. This
reward and recognition can be addicting.

Regardless of how LC can benefit their company, some senior executives are reluctant to change
because they were promoted based on their skills with the existing paradigm. Changing can reveal their
vulnerabilities and undermine their position of authority.

Some people disagree with the lean philosophies: 1) respect for people, 2) maximizing value while
minimizing waste, and 3) continuous improvement. If someone doesn’t agree with these three
philosophies then they would not be able to apply LC since it disagrees with their belief systems.

Some people are only willing to apply LC if a client requests it. It is done on an as needed basis rather
than something long term.

For better or worse the world is divided into three groups.

1/3 of people believe in the lean philosophies and are willing to learn and apply it.

1/3 of people are skeptical but are willing to change if it makes their lives easier. They are going “wait
and see” how it turns out before diving in.

1/3 of people do not believe in the lean philosophies and are resistant to it no matter how much
information or examples you show them. Their belief system is simply incompatible with the lean
philosophies. Some will do lean as a very last resort. Some will flee to another organization if lean takes
off in your organization.
So the key lesson here is for lean construction to stick, it has to be the majority not the minority of your
organization. A scale training and deployment system can make it easy to train everyone so that the 1/3
that are interested can make progress. Over time the 1/3 skeptical can see it in action and dive in.

Once lean becomes a majority, your organization will move towards making it a super majority. If your
lean program is a minority, it will be crushed over time as resistance mounts.
Chapter 10. Common Misconceptions of Lean Construction
There are many misconceptions about Lean Construction.

Misconception #1: Lean Construction is basically Lean manufacturing applied to the AEC
industry.

This is incorrect. Lean Construction as a field developed independently from Lean manufacturing. The
founders of Lean Construction (Glenn Ballard, Greg Howell, and Lauri Koskela) started investigating
methods for making the construction projects more efficient in the early 1990s. They started the field by
developing a theory of production for the construction industry.

Unlike manufacturing where the production system is long-lasting, a construction project is by definition
temporary. As a result, Lean Construction has its own methods and solutions for problems unique to the
AEC industry. Although we do borrow some of the try and true methods from Toyota such as VSM, 5
Whys, etc., these are not the entirety of Lean Construction. The methods that are unique to Lean
Construction include the Last Planner® System of Production Control, Target Value Delivery, Choosing
By Advantages, and Location-based Planning.

Misconception #2: Lean Construction is about being more efficient.

There are many mistakes that people make. The most common and worst mistake is believing that
Lean Construction is only about making things more EFFICIENT. The goal of Lean Construction is to
deliver greater VALUE to all project stakeholders (owners, end user, architects, GC, trades, etc.). Value
is contextual and depends on the situation, stakeholders, etc.

The Lean methods, philosophy, and principles that we apply are geared towards increasing VALUE
generation. In some cases, the value is clear and increasing production efficiency is the best way to
deliver the intended VALUE. Although most people spend their time working on EFFICIENCY, it is a
means to delivering VALUE, not the end goal. There is nothing more wasteful than being efficient at
something that does not matter. When you start your project, you need to think about the customer and
their value. Only once value is understood and well-defined you can work on efficiency.

To become more efficient, don't focus on SPEED. Focus on QUALITY. With QUALITY in place, SPEED
will come naturally. When you focus on SPEED and neglect QUALITY, you will create more rework, pile
up more work in progress (WIP), do work out of order, and create more waste.

At the end of the day, you will have to deliver QUALITY. The question is whether your processes are
designed to deliver it in the first place or require additional efforts later on to fix issues to meet that
QUALITY standard. By the end of the project, you will need QUALITY. Do you prioritize it first or last?

"First do it right then do it faster."

Misconception #3: FOCUS on FLOW or reducing WASTE rather than VALUE

Lean is about creating and delivering VALUE. FLOW is a means of ensuring that the VALUE delivery
system aka the production system is efficient. FLOW in of itself without prioritizing VALUE will lead to
super efficient production. However, you will not be producing what the customer wants or needs.

In the developed world, most things are in abundance. High quality and valuable things are scarce.
When customers have lots of choice, VALUE is what makes your offer stand out from the crowd.

Another misconception about Lean is that it is about eliminating or reducing waste. While this is true to
some extent, the key driver is still VALUE. The reason why we are eliminating waste is NOT just to
remove waste. The reason we do this is to separate VALUE from WASTE.

Lean forces us to ask hard questions. What is VALUE? What does the CUSTOMER want? What does
the customer NEED but cannot articulate?

I have seen several organizations that have implemented the 5S process and after a few months when
everything LOOKS clean and efficient, they stagnate. The reason why they stagnate is that they were
only focused on finding the 8 wastes and eliminating / reducing them. They did not go deep enough to
uncover VALUE. They did not ask the right questions and started a discussion around VALUE.

The key idea is that once you have eliminated the visible waste, you really need to FOCUS on value.
You can't implement Lean without focusing on value.

If you talk about VALUE, your lean journey will be completely different than if you just talk about
WASTE.

Misconception #4: It takes many years of applying Lean Construction to get results.

This is FALSE. If you know what you are doing, you should be able to get results within the same day
or same week. The only way to measure the effectiveness of your Lean implementation is to measure
your PROGRESS. If you are not making PROGRESS then you are not doing it right.

Misconception #5: You can learn everything about Lean Construction in a few weeks or months.

Lean is a multi-year journey where there is no end. As you progress in your journey, you see more of
the landscape, your team is generally more productive, and you realize how much more there is to
learn. A Lean practitioner is by definition a continuous learner. There is always more to learn and more
ways to do things better.

Misconception #6: Knowing the concepts and the terminology is enough.

Lean only works if you actively apply it. Think about eating healthy and exercising. Just because you
know what to do and have the right knowledge; if you do not apply what you know, you will not get any
results. If you want to gauge someone's Lean understanding, don't ask them what they know. Ask them
what they have done. Only through real-world experience can you truly get the benefits of and know
how to use Lean.

Misconception #7: A Lean Construction expert should know everything about the field.

Lean Construction as a field is very wide. It is impossible for a single person to know everything. Most
Lean experts specialize in a few areas such Last Planner, Pull Planning, Takt-Time, Choosing By
Advantages, Target Value Delivery, Lean in Design, etc. There are a handful of people that know the
extended landscape and how to apply the full system. They are the exception and not the norm.

Doesn’t standardization work hurt creativity?

No it does not. Standards are designed to streamline work, remove inefficiencies, and encourage
learning.

When you go camping, you don’t have any of the convenience and standards of modern life. Everything
that you want to do takes longer, is harder, and requires more time and thinking to achieve. Standards
are everywhere in the modern world and allow you to get value quickly with minimal effort.

Imagine entering a well run conference room where your computer just works. You don’t have to look
around for wires and log in to the WiFi. This can only happen because of standards.

If you don’t want standards you will have to embrace the struggle and difficulties. Without standards,
everything will seem one off and there are no opportunities for learning and improving. Only with good
standardized work can you put your energy into optimizing the little things that count and making things
a lot better over time.

When I introduce Lean Construction to a new team, someone always asks me this question.
“You’re going to make us do more work right?”.

The answer is NO. We are going to do BETTER work in the same amount of time that you have used
the past. We are not asking for anyone to work extra hours or do overtime. We are asking people to
think more critically about their work, create flow in production processes, look for ways to reduce and
eliminate waste, be open to try out new ideas, and improve every day.

Lean is about doing BETTER and higher QUALITY work. It is not about doing more work or asking
people to spend more time working. It is about improving the work processes so that we can be more
efficient, make more money while spending less resources.
Chapter 11. Common Pitfalls To Avoid

Some reasons why people fail in their lean implementation

1. They focus too much on the tools

2. Pushing Lean on people rather than pulling
3. Copying without fully understanding
4. Believing that lean application is binary
5. Try to apply all Lean methods at once
6. Implement in the field and ignore the office and vice versa
7. Focus on reducing cost rather than increase value
8. Too optimistic about the timeline to implement lean
9. Stopping halfway through
10. Vastly underestimate the importance of culture
11. Teaching lean in the same way that you have learned it
12. Implementing Lean with only a focus on ROI
13. Putting an entry level person in charge of their lean program

1. They focus too much on the tools

Lean is more than just the tools. It involves understanding the philosophy, the principles, and the tools.
Unfortunately, most people focus on the wrong thing. They focus too much on the tools and not enough
on what problems the tools are meant to solve or the principles behind the tools. The goal of this book
is to help you avoid this problem. You should understand widely the Lean principles, tools, and methods
available to you. But never fall into the trap of saying that you are a practitioner of JUST the Last
Planner System, Takt, SCRUM, CBA, etc. If you do so, you are missing out of the larger and richer pool
of knowledge that you can use.

2. Pushing Lean on people rather than pulling

The hardest part of applying Lean Construction in your company is not figuring out how to teach
people. This is the second hardest part.

The hardest part is getting people to WANT to learn and improve. If you cannot get your team to want
to learn, teaching them is a waste of time.

The truth is that no one wants to change. It's easy to tell people to change but when we have to change
ourselves it is much harder. To apply Lean in your project or organization, you should focus on making
PROGRESS rather than CHANGE.

People naturally want PROGRESS and are drawn to it. They want to progress in their careers, get
recognition for the work that they do, and have more opportunities to contribute. When applying Lean, if
you ask people to change you will have a hard time. If you ask people how they can use their creativity
to make things better, more efficient; you will find more supporters for your cause. Here are some
questions that I ask my team:

1. What is our mission/objective with this project?

2. What are some of the strengths and unique capabilities of our team?
3. How can we use our unique talents, experiences, and expertise to make this project/organization
better?
4. How can we measure and ensure that we are making PROGRESS?

When applying Lean, change is inevitable. There can be no progress without changing the way that we
do work. The mistake that many people make is to lead with CHANGE rather than PROGRESS.

3. Copying without fully understanding

If you copy a process that you see from another lean practitioner without taking the time to understand
the underlying problem that it solves, you will make life harder for your team. When this happens you
will generate frustration and lose momentum in your lean implementation.

Lean is subtle and everything about it depends on the context. Advanced practitioners understand the
context and problem that needs to be solved. They use lean methods to solve them. They don’t push
methods and processes onto people. That would be wasteful.

4. Believing that lean application is binary

Lean Construction is not binary. It is not whether you are doing lean or you are not doing it. Lean
practice and implementation exists on a continuum. The real question you should be asking is “How
well are we implementing LC and living the lean philosophy? How much better can we get?”.

Again, this is a BIG mistake that beginners make about LC. They think that LC is just a series of
checkboxes, a todo list. If they check all the boxes, they can say that they are Lean, are done, and can
move on.

The truth is that Lean is a journey. Yes, it is an actual, literal journey that never ends. The longer you do
it, the better you get. The longer you do it, the more difficult it takes to progress further. Most people
give up too quickly and don’t have the endurance to stay in the race. They are content in saying that
they have “done it” which is counterproductive because this means that they cannot improve further.

5. Try to apply all Lean methods at once

The best way to fail in your lean implementation is to do everything at once. You will stretch yourself
and your team so thin that negative progress gets made. While Lean methods are effective, it takes
time to implement them properly. Don’t start with too many projects at once. Take on what you can
handle and let the results speak for themselves.
There are many lean methods and it takes decades in order to master them all. You will not be able to
apply all of them at once. Most people start with the last planner system, 2 second lean, 5S, or SCRUM
and then proceed from there. It’s better to focus on fewer methods and get results than to try everything
at once and wear out your team.

6. Implement in the field and ignore the office and vice versa

I have seen companies that implement lean in the office and ignore the field. I have also seen
companies that implement lean in the field and ignore the office. These are two sides of the same coin.

You cannot implement lean in one side of your business. When your team sees that others within the
company are not implementing it, they will become demotivated and there will be tension within your
company. It’s best to be consistent across the whole organization. It is better to implement fewer lean
methods but involve the larger organization than to just focus on a small group.

The main reasoning behind this logic is the concept of paradigms that we spoke about earlier. Lean is a
completely different paradigm than the industry. The longer you apply lean the greater the
understanding of the misalignment of the two paradigms becomes. If you implement lean in only one
part of the organization, tension and conflict will arise from the lean and non lean side. Rather than
create tension and conflict, it is better to transition the whole organization at the same time.

7. Focus on reducing cost rather than increase value and quality

With cost reduction there is a finite limit to it. With value creation, there is no ceiling.

The primary reason for going Lean is not and should not to be to reduce cost. The reduction of cost is
an outcome of the Lean processes that you implement and not the main driver of it. The primary driver
should be to increase VALUE and QUALITY. Lean is not about cutting costs. It has always been about
earning more. It is about creating MORE value and MORE revenue with FEWER resources.

By increasing QUALITY and VALUE, you will increase revenue, reduce re-work, and reduce the time it
takes to do the same work. As a result, you will see a reduction in your overall cost. This is why most
Lean practitioners focus mainly on QUALITY and VALUE.

When I say QUALITY, I am also including SAFETY into it. Most people see QUALITY from the
perspective of the end product. I see QUALITY from both the perspective of the end product and the
PEOPLE working to put the product together. QUALITY includes having a product that fits the needs of
the end user while causing no harm to the workforce that assembles it together.

8. Too optimistic about the timeline to implement lean

People who start their lean journey are too optimistic about the timeline. The main reason is that they
have never been on a transformational journey before so they have nothing to compare it to. It takes
decades for companies to adopt lean and most that have been on the journey for decades have merely
just started.

Understanding LC yourself is just the first step. Getting your team to buy-in, building the culture, and
overcoming resistance is an every day challenge. The longer you are on the lean journey, the more you
realize how far behind you and company is from the ideal state. Even with a fully committed and a fully
funded lean program, it will take years to change the culture.

9. Stopping halfway through

Most people that apply Lean only go 10-20%. You should not stop when you get results from your Lean
implementation. This is just the beginning. Unfortunately, most people apply Lean for 6 months to a
year. They get some tangible results right away but stop going further. As a result, they have some
results but their implementation stagnates and they are not able to realize their full potential.

Some people stop their lean implementation when they are able to create standards and stability.
Creating standards and stability is NOT the goal of your lean implementation. It is a means to achieving
the ACTUAL goal of creating and sustaining continuous improvement.

Continuous improvement cannot occur without stability and standards. But what people do wrong is
that they chase standards and stability and then REMAIN the same.

If you are improving, ALL your processes and procedures will break. It is just a matter of time and this is
natural. Things should BREAK if you are improving. If they are not breaking, you aren’t moving fast
enough or far enough. The key is to break them in strategic ways so that there is enough controlled
chaos.

The goal of lean is continuous improvement. Standards are nice and necessary. But don’t rest on your
laurels. Some people think that they are lean because they have standardized processes. Remember
that standardized processes can include a lot of waste. Lean only happens when you are in motion. If
you are practicing lean, you NEED to improve and get better.

10. Vastly underestimate the importance of culture

People vastly underestimate the cultural component of lean. Culture is the most important and the most
difficult thing to manage and cultivate.

Since projects are delivered by people and not robots. The promises that they make to each other and
their ability to keep those promises affect the reliability of the work on the job site. If you want to
improve project performance, focus on the people. Focus on helping them make and keep reliable
promises.
Cultural topics such as trust, psychological safety, team health assessments are an important part of
measuring your lean implementation. Culture is an important part of your lean implementation that
cannot be overlooked.

11. Teaching lean in the same way that you have learned it

The most common mistake is teaching LC in the same way that you learned it. As a Lean champion,
you are a rare breed. You are curious, you seek out knowledge, you enjoy figuring things out, and you
are willing to read books. Unfortunately, not everyone in your organization is like you. In fact, a very
small minority of people within your company thinks and learns like you.

It is a mistake to teach them LC in the same way that you learned it. Most people learn by doing. Most
people will do things if it makes their lives better regardless of what you call it. This is why when I teach
my team LC, I don't use any terminology or formal training for the first couple of months. Only after my
team starts asking questions and wants to learn more do I start with the source materials.

There are some people that are interested in learning concepts from the beginning. If you identify them
then by all means start with the formal training because they are already READY. You need to meet
them where they are at. Start your lean implementation by making their lives easier first. When they are
READY that is when the real training can BEGIN. Once your team and culture is READY, you can and
should go all in.

12. Implementing Lean with only a focus on ROI

If you are implementing LC with the sole purpose of a financial return, your lean implementation will fail.
Here is why.

There are two approaches to fixing problems. The first approach is to only fix problems that are big
enough and worth the effort. Unless there is a positive ROI, there is no need to address the problem.
This is a finance first approach.

The second approach is to fix all problems that you see, go to the root cause, and create a permanent
solution. If there is a way to improve, you do it. No questions asked. The second approach is the lean
approach and although it looks less efficient, it will yield much better results over time. The reason is
that when you solve a problem, you will end up discovering more problems and more things that can be
improved.

If you look at problems only on the surface and calculate an ROI first, you will be missing all the
opportunities below that you cannot see right away. With LC, the ROI is not obvious at first. You don’t
know the exact return on investment of each improvement. However if you continue to improve each
and every day, a positive return will pretty much be guaranteed.

You should measure your ROI retrospectively rather than before undertaking an improvement.
Measuring the financial performance of your lean program is important but it should be done AFTER
you implement improvements, rather than using the ROI as an analysis to determine which
improvements are worth the effort.

Experienced lean practitioners know practices that will yield better results; however, communicating
why and how this can happen is very difficult to those without proper lean experience. Many of the
things that we value with lean such as respect for people, etc. cannot be easily quantified.

13. Putting an entry level person in charge of their lean program

By now you have seen the full scale and scope of what it takes to put lean into action. The person that
needs to run your lean program has to have significant industry experience. You cannot expect a new
grad entry level person to be successful in this role.

Oftentimes, it should be the senior superintendent, director, or VP at your organization that assumes
the role of lean champion. If you decide to bring on an external coach, make sure that they have
significant experience and proven results. Most consultants do not have the experience to solve the
problem of how to start, sustain, and scale up a lean deployment. They should be able to articulate their
process and show their results.

Barriers that get in the way

What stops people from learning and improving?

1. Ego
2. Culture
3. Ignorance

The first barrier is ego. Not everyone wants to admit or is comfortable admitting that they don’t know
everything. As a professional, people feel that they need to defend their territory. Unless someone is
willing to let go of their ego, they cannot improve.

The second barrier is culture. Some organizations and projects do not have a collaborative culture that
facilitates learning, improving, and being open to failure. The role of upper management is to create
and nurture the right culture and working environment.

The last barrier is ignorance. Not everyone has the knowledge to improve their work. Many people are
unaware of Lean Construction and the fact that improving the process is part of their job.

Most of the gains from your LC implementation comes from the long-term cultural change in how your
team works together. The short term benefits of applying a LC method such as the Last Planner
System, Takt Time, CBA, 5s, etc, will yield significant gains but they only make up less than 10% of
your total gains.
Long-term cultural shifts and continuous improvement makes up 90% of the gains. If your company has
been applying LC for several years, have you stopped too early at just the methods and surface level
implementation? Have you put in the work to transform the culture and get the full benefits from LC?
Chapter 12. What Should Success Look Like
If you are successful in your lean construction application, you will notice that:

1. Each successive project becomes more efficient through applied lessons learned and kaizen
2. There is proactive rather than reactive problem-solving
3. Less fighting and more ‘real’ collaboration
4. Better value delivered for the money
5. More satisfied clients - designs that fit stakeholder values
6. Better work-life balance for your team and partners
7. Better questions being asked

What to look for on a Lean jobsite

Here are a few things that I look for in a jobsite.

1. Evidence of collaboration and trust. The KPIs of the project are shown, sticky notes with multiple
collaborators, desks set up for effective communication, big room, etc.

2. Transparency of the state of the project. Even if I am not part of the project, I can clearly see the
current state of the schedule, cost, and targets that the team is trying to achieve.

3. There is Flow of the work on site and a clear production strategy. The trades are sequenced
properly and everyone knows what they are expected to do for the next 6 weeks. Milestones are
understood by the team and there is a lookahead / make ready of work before it is supposed to be
performed. Material deliveries are planned and balanced to what is needed.

4. Learning, problem-solving, and growth. Evidence that the team is talking about mistakes that they
have made and are working together to improve. Evidence that the team is getting better and are
performing at a higher level.

Humility, Focus, Determination, and Curiosity

Signs that your lean implementation will be successful, you have: humility, focus, determination, and
curiosity.

Humility is the most important trait. You need to admit that there is a better way of doing things, that you
don’t know everything, and that there is always room for improvement. Without humility there can be no
lean.

A successful implementation requires FOCUS. Intense focus on what is important and ignoring what is
not. You need to focus on the customers and understand what brings them value and what does not.
Waste can only be eliminated once Value is clear. Knowing the difference between value added
activities and waste is a lifelong journey.
You will need determination because not everything you try will work out immediately. Some of your
lean implementation will be against how things have been done before and there will be skeptics,
resistance, and doubters. You need to understand why you are doing what you are doing and have the
courage to stick with it.

Lastly, I have never met a successful Lean practitioner who is not curious. Curious people seek new
knowledge, find ideas, and try to better understand the world. Without a good understanding of how the
world works, your lean implementation will have limited success.

The most powerful economic force is compound interest. All long-term growth is exponential rather than
linear.

The main problem is that few people have the courage, conviction, and vision to pursue something
where the initial return is very low or even zero in the beginning. As long as you can maintain a high
growth rate, no matter how small the initial base is, the result will be very large over a 10 to 20 year
span.

The key is to stay focused, ignore others with shiny things, and keep pressing forward.
Chapter 13. How to Continue Your Lean Journey

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick
10,000 times." - Bruce Lee

The longer you apply Lean Construction, the less you know.

You will know more as you progress but you will be humbled by how little you know relative to how
much is out there. You will be able to ask better questions, deeper questions. Which ultimately leads to
better overall outcomes.

The quality of your work is directly proportional to the quality of the questions that you ask. If you don't
wonder about an idea, it is invisible to you. It is there but you cannot see it.

The sign of an expert is not someone that knows everything in a given field. An expert knows the
boundaries of knowledge, knows how deeply the rabbit hole can go, and uses this information to help
their teams perform better.

How advanced is your lean implementation?

The simplest way to know how advanced you are in your lean implementations is to think in terms of
what/how/why/when.

1. What (beginner level)

2. How (intermediate)
3. Why (advance)
4. When (expert)

The first level of understanding is knowing WHAT the lean concepts are. This is the process of
becoming aware. The second level is understanding HOW to apply them and the step-by-step
mechanics. Understanding the fundamental principles of WHY the lean methods work will lead to
deeper understanding and better results.

The last level is knowing WHEN to use the lean methods. A construction project is a temporary
endeavor and so timing is very important. If you can understand WHEN to use each method, the
context within which they are applicable, and the level of detail needed in each implementation; you will
take your lean processes to a whole new level.

Oftentimes people make the mistake of just knowing the “what” and “how” of lean construction. They do
not see the importance of the “why” and “when”. I have seen several instances where using lean
methods at the wrong time and in the wrong context led to inefficiencies and waste.

I am beyond the basics, how do I get better?

1. Ask better questions
2. Listen carefully and gather appropriate data
3. Make informed decisions based on informed data
4. Implement your new idea and measure its effectiveness
5. Reflect on the results and do more iterative cycles starting at asking more questions
6. Question and rethink everything

Everything starts with the questions that you ask. The quality and depth of your questions will ultimately
determine the quality of your implementation. Learning how to ask better questions is difficult and I still
haven’t cracked the code on this yet. My suggestion for the time being is to deeply understand Lean
principles. Whenever you see a deviation of it from current practice, there is an opportunity to ask why it
is different and how you can improve based on this difference.

Once you have your questions, you will need to listen very carefully to the people doing the work. They
will have more knowledge and more facts than you can ever imagine. Clever people have great
imagination. For this step, do not rely on your imagination. It is 10x better to gather real facts from real
people.

The next step is to make an informed decision based on your data. This decision will determine what to
test and try out. You will need to implement your new idea before trying to scale it across your
company.

It is important that you gather data on your implementation, do a reflection, and then start all over again
with asking new and better questions.

Lean implementation is a feedback loop. It is a cycle of very simple steps but those steps will lead to
powerful results. It all starts with asking better questions.

Look around the world

Continuous improvement cannot occur if you are not willing to LOOK around the world and learn what
the best practices are.

It also cannot occur without your own HUMILITY to acknowledge that you don’t know everything.

It also cannot occur without the COURAGE to experiment, fail, learn, and try to get better.

Do spend time to travel and learn from other projects and other practitioners. They will have some
ideas or interpretations that you can use to enhance your own project.

Practice what you preach

You can’t say that you know Lean Construction or your company is Lean. You can only say that you
practice LC. As soon as you stop practicing, you will stop getting results. No matter how much you
know, how much experience you have, or how successful you were in the past.

You can’t convince everyone

No matter how good you are, you can’t convince everyone. You can only work with people that choose
to opt-in and listen. There will always be people that have found success in the traditional paradigm and
do not want to adjust to the lean paradigm.

You should focus on helping the people that want your help. There is more than enough work to do
already. Trying to convince people who aren’t convinced is not worth the time because you can be
using that time to make real progress on your implementation.

Your Lean Journey is not about learning and applying methods

Your lean construction journey is not about learning and applying as many lean methods as possible. It
is really about becoming the person that seeks improvement every day. The person that is willing to
learn from others. One that is humble about what you know and don’t know. That is willing to try new
things, experiment, fail, and learn from those experiments.

If you are not trying new things every day, you are not improving. If you are improving every day, you
will also:

● Change your character trait.

● Become more calm.
● Become more reflective.
● Let go of waste.
● Seek “true” value.
● Understanding the true nature and purpose of work.
● Have the means to improve the world around you.

What people falsely believe is that they can get better results without changing who they are and how
they operate. All improvement requires change and change can be difficult. Change is personal and
starts first with yourself.

The lean journey is a personal journey. And it is understandable that not everyone wants to embark on
this journey. Regardless of other people’s choices, we need to be respectful of their decision.

Personal growth is required for continuous improvement. In order to grow personally, you need to
expose yourself to discomfort, be willing to try new things, be willing to fail, and learn from your failures
and successes. Over enough iterations and cycles of thought, the thing that will change is yourself. You
will eventually change your mindset and belief systems. This is why we start with the philosophies
and principles first so that you understand the direction where you should be heading towards.

Your lean journey starts with an external journey where you are trying to improve your processes, your
team, and your project. Over time, it progresses into an internal journey. Where the thing that you are
trying to improve is yourself. Your personality, character trait, and wisdom increases and changes as
you progress through your lean journey. The final destination of it all is internal.

“I have traveled 10,000 miles in search of a master to learn from. After my journey, I have
discovered that the person I seek was within me all along. But I could not have understood this
without first going on the journey.” - Doanh Do
Chapter 14. Learning and Reflection

Learning requires unlearning.

The most difficult part of learning is not understanding new concepts. The most difficult part is
unlearning previously held beliefs and misconceptions.

Just as your bedroom only has room for one mattress. The only way to bring a new mattress in is to
remove the old one. Having two mattresses in one room is both weird and can lead to more problems.

In order to learn and internalize new ideas, you must be willing to admit that you don’t know everything.
You must admit that you are making mistakes every day. You must want to seek the truth and have the
flexibility to change for the better.

Learning from the wrong source is detrimental because you might take in the wrong information.
Unlearning wrong information is a lot more difficult than learning the right information the first time
around.

Over a long enough period of time, you should question everything that you have learned and put into
practice for Lean Construction. This includes everything that you have read in this book. For the only
way to reach the highest level is to transcend everything you have read and believed to be true. Accept
only conclusions that you have arrived at yourself. Accept only ideas that you have personally been
able to put into practice.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.

Knowing is not enough, we must APPLY. Willingness is not enough, we must DO. We really don't know
something until we are able to apply it consistently. Only by DOING can we verify and get VALUE from
what we know. Knowing or the illusion of knowing without doing is a form of WASTE.

Knowledge without action = waste.

The key to happiness is progress + compassion.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

There cannot be any progress without pain. To grow you must endure pain and discomfort. Although
pain is undesired, it is necessary for growth. Each time we make a mistake, we have an opportunity to
learn from it and get stronger. So you should run towards pain and discomfort rather than away from it.

The best time to reflect is when we are experiencing the greatest pain because it is when we most
strongly feel the consequences of our mistakes. Only through pain and reflection can we make
progress and get better at what we do. You will make mistakes every day. It is up to you to turn those
mistakes into valuable lessons.
There is no experience without reflection.

Most people think that experience comes with time. It does not.

Time allows you to get better data, to know when you are right and when you are wrong etc. It does not
automatically lead to experience because there are some people who keep doing the same thing over
and over again without getting better results.

If you are not improving, take some time to reflect. Avoid being too busy to think for yourself. Take
the time to reflect so that you can turn what you have seen into valuable experience.

Don’t believe everything in this book. Think for yourself. Use your own reasoning, experience, and
reflection to validate the claims. I want you to come away with your own conclusions. Based on your
own thoughts. It must be personal and absorbed into your way of thinking for it to be effective.

Knowledge is knowing what things are and how they work together. Wisdom is knowing what to
ignore. Strategy is knowing what not to do.

Without knowledge there can be no wisdom. Unfortunately most people stop learning when they have
acquired the surface level knowledge. True wisdom requires reflection, experimentation, failure,
learning, and unlearning.

As you progress in your lean journey you will be more productive because you will be able to see and
avoid time wasting, non-productive, and dead end traps that most people are unaware of. By knowing
what to avoid, what you SHOULD do becomes more obvious.

Waste can only be eliminated once VALUE is clear. “Knowing the difference between value
added activities and waste is a lifelong journey.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBLs6gRKkpU
Chapter 15. Integrating Lean with VDC, BIM, and Contech
The design and construction industry is plagued by chronic delays, budget overruns, and stakeholder
dissatisfaction. While solutions have been proposed, they often only work in very particular
circumstances. A key to improving the industry is for lean construction, VDC, and construction
technology experts to collaborate and create new value.

One of the best ways to achieve this is through the VDC Framework from Martin Fischer at Stanford
University CIFE - Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. This framework provides a unified
approach for integrating design and construction, making it approachable for any project, regardless of
size, scope, and complexity.

At the heart of any project are the objectives that drive it. At the top of the framework are the business
and client objectives, which are essential for achieving stakeholder values. Defining project objectives
and measuring them with project KPIs is the next step.

By aligning business and client objectives with project KPIs, we can ensure that when the project is
successful; the client's business is also successful. Most project teams do not understand the business
case and therefore they optimize for the wrong things.
Once the project KPIs are clear, we integrate the people, processes, and information together. We use
the combination of lean construction, BIM & Contech, and collaborative contracting methods to build an
integrated team to deliver the project.

Many projects struggle with innovation because they approach it through a siloed perspective. Some
projects are great at contech, BIM, or lean. Very few projects have a means of integrating all these
great ideas together, thus leaving potential gains on the table. The VDC Framework breaks down those
silos. It is flexible, logical, and easy to use, allowing for the use of any lean methods, technology stack,
or collaborative procurement and contracting methods. You can use this framework with any project
delivery approach from DBB, Design-Build, CM at Risk, Progressive Design Build, Integrated Project
Delivery, etc.

It's time to break out of those silos and collaborate to create new value. Let's work together to integrate
people, information, and processes and improve the industry with an integrated approach. Regardless
of what you are building, this framework can be applied to ALL design and construction projects.
Regardless of your project or contracting system, there is a way to integrate lean construction,
Contech, BIM, and other innovative approaches to make it better.
Conclusion

Lean does not occur within just one person or one company. It occurs within an ecosystem. You are not
alone in your lean implementation. One person or one company can’t fix the entire industry. You need
partners and people from different organizations. The best way to promote the practice of Lean
Construction and make it sustainable is to view it as a community. This radically expands the LC
problem from how to apply it on a project or with a team into how to apply it within an ecosystem.

Remember that your scaled up organizational deployment is just the midpoint and not the end
goal. Transforming your local industry and region is the real end goal.

For Lean to really take off in any region, you need the following:

1) Owners who are not satisfied with the way that construction projects are delivered. They seek
a better way to deliver more value with less fighting, litigation, and waste.

2) General contractors and trades that want to work collaboratively and want to find a
sustainable way to improve their profit margins.

3) Architects and engineers that want to work collaboratively with the GC and trades and view
the trades as equal.

4) Local universities that support research and education on Lean principles and methods.

5) Local community of practices (either physical or virtual) where ideas and best practices can
be exchanged.

6) Qualified consultants / service providers.

If you are trying to promote LC in your country, you cannot do it alone. You should not have to do it
alone. You need to identify the current state of your ecosystem and involve people who can help
strengthen it. Only by looking at the problem holistically and through the lens of an ecosystem can you
make a long-lasting impact.

“If you say this is mine, you have less. If you say this is ours, you have more.” These are words of
wisdom to live by.

This is why the Lean Construction community is so open to sharing their best practices, lessons
learned, struggles, and triumphs. While some people hold their practices as trade secrets, others in the
community openly share everything they know in order to improve the community, the industry, and
themselves. Over time, the LCB is actively expanding to more languages to reach the global design
and construction community. If you want to share your story or idea on the blog, reach out as we are
always accepting guest blog posts that drive the understanding and implementation of LC around the
world.
Additional Resources:

The Lean Construction Blog is committed to providing the highest quality content and making it
affordable and accessible to everyone. Here are some of our other offerings that you may be interested
in.

1. Free monthly webinar - we host a free webinar each month to introduce important lean topics.
2. Lean Construction Academy - we have low cost courses taught by the best lean construction
practitioners in the world. You can dive deep into a topic and learn hours of material on a particular
topic.
3. Free ebook - you can read the ebook to get a better understanding of lean construction, learn how to
scale up your lean implementation, and avoid pitfalls.
4. Lean Construction Blog's Podcast - listen to leading LC practitioners share their stories and thinking.
5. Virtual Conferences - every 6 months we host a virtual conference bringing together the leading lean
construction professionals.
6. Lean Hyperscale Program - enables a single lean champion to transform an entire company.

As a leading resource of accurate LC content, the LCB should be your go-to reference throughout your
lean journey. All the information that you need to start, sustain, and improve your lean construction
implementation are available. So the problem is no longer access. It is now about willingness to learn
and apply.

Why I wrote this book

We now have the knowledge to significantly improve how construction projects are designed and built.
Our limitation is no longer knowledge or information. The current limitation is the number of people who
are aware that there is a better way to do things.

The construction industry is one of the largest industries on this planet with roughly 10% of the world
population working in it. It’s a big industry and the problems of low productivity, poor quality, safety, etc.
are well known.

It is easy to keep these ideas a secret and help only a few projects while charging a high fee for each
project. This strategy would maximize revenue for a few people and help only a few projects that could
afford it.

The problem with the construction industry is a global one. We need millions of people to become
aware of the Lean Construction methods and apply them if we want to make a significant impact. By
sharing, I believe that more people can learn and use Lean practices on their project. Many people who
have never met me can benefit from my ideas.

A serious exploration of any topic will lead to more questions than answers. If you have gotten this far,
you will realize how much deeper the knowledge and thinking can get with Lean Construction. There
has been more than 30 years of research and development in this field and a few dozen PhDs awarded
in this field already.

If you are on your lean journey, you need to realize that you are not alone. There are currently hundreds
of thousands of people that have embarked on this journey. The community continues to grow because
we help and support each other. We are willing to learn from one another and we are willing to share
our project data with others. I hope that you continue this tradition of openness and generosity in
sharing what you have learned with others.

Continuous improvement is easy to say but very hard to put into practice. It requires you to
constantly study, reflect, and look forward to changing your long held beliefs. At the end of the day, the
LC methodologies are a gateway to continuous improvement. They show us that continuous
improvement is possible and that small changes can have significant results. But applying all the
available methods is not enough. We must go further to continue the path. When you reach a certain
level of experience and wisdom, your goal should be to push the boundaries of what we currently
believe is possible.

If you have made it this far, you should have a much better understanding of the field of lean
construction. You should understand that there are practical and methodological steps to making the
lean philosophies a reality. Everybody wants the lean philosophies, but few have a clear path for
realizing them.

My goal is not to convince anyone anything. I just merely present data and let people interpret it
themselves. I share with you my insights and understandings so that you understand the scale, scope,
and benefits of putting lean construction into action.

If you found value in this book, please share it with your colleagues and customers. This book
is completely FREE. For any comments, feedback or criticism, you can email me at:
doanh@leanconstructionblog.com or reach me on LinkedIn. I am happy to talk with anyone that wants
to further their lean journey and improve their own projects. Together we can significantly improve the
design and construction industry. I hope that this book inspires you to continue your lean journey and
make your projects and company better, safer, and more productive.