Adopting Lean Practices in the Architectural/Engineering Industry

David Haynes, AIA, LEED AP
Director of Consulting, Ideate Inc.

Editor’s note: At the inaugural US Revit Technology Conference last summer (see http://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2011/RTC2011_US.html), I attended a very interesting session by David Haynes on how lean processes in the manufacturing world could be translated in the AEC industry through BIM. In this article, he shares more details about the Lean Business practices that have been adopted in many industries and the best practices that A/E firms can adopt and utilize in their own work.

There is a growing trend in the design and build industries focused on the benefits that can be achieved by changing the design/build paradigm. The design-bid-build process, in use for more than 100 years, has faults. The silo nature of its contracts and relationships distances inter-reliant parties from one another. The bidding process does not always produce the best building for the best price.  The process pits Owner against Architect and Contractor during construction. As a result, outcomes can be less than satisfactory for all parties.

In recent years, a growing trend in Architectural/Engineering (A/E) design has evolved around Building Information Management (BIM) and its benefits for a “virtually designed” project. BIM is not a software technology; BIM is a workflow process which promotes a coordinated, internally consistent information model in the design and construction of a building project. Problems arise with BIM when A/E firms rely upon BIM’s visualization only, and when complexity issues arise as a result of modeling granularity. 3D modeling without integrated data lacks information sustainability. Also, 3D modeling undertaken with an attitude of “because-we-can” lacks efficiency.

So how do we in the A/E industry improve our workflow/business process while maintaining the core benefits of BIM?  We can combine the data rich information in a BIM project with new workflow techniques to increase efficiency and reduce waste. We can become more integrated in the project and gain greater customer satisfaction. The name for this process is “Lean Design.”  Lean Design adopts principles from business processes such as Six Sigma and Lean, and uses workflow techniques that include workflow principles of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD).

You may ask, “Why should the A/E industry change?” and “My customers are not asking me about this.”  The fact is, there is a fundamental shift in the way Owners will develop projects in the wake of the recent financial crisis and the recession that ensued. The current A/E design process provides neither cost nor schedule predictability. Whether Owners are affected by a lack of available credit or less government money, they are highly motivated to bring together a team of professionals that can provide both costing and schedule predictability. 

Historical Origins

Six Sigma, which is a business management strategy developed by Motorola in 1986, strives to increase quality through the use of statistical analysis to achieve the sixth level of error elimination. The sixth level is 99.99966% free of defects. Six Sigma seeks to achieve predictable process results. Its project methodology has five phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify (DMADV). This methodology provides the backbone for the metrics side of Lean Design.

Lean as a business management strategy was developed by Toyota in the 1990s. Its aim is to increase process speed and reduce waste. Its goals are to increase customer participation and concurrence through listening to what the customer values and to deliver only that. Lean is about reducing barriers and pinch-points in the process. To compete in the current economy, companies need to become as efficient (and therefore lean) as possible. Some of the efficiency can be achieved through technology, but new workflow and business processes are required for a firm to become truly lean.

Lean Six Sigma, a combination of Lean and Six Sigma, is specifically oriented to services businesses. Lean Six Sigma focuses on:

• Listening to the voice of the customer: This entails learning what the customer wants or values, and is willing to pay for.
• Analyzing existing processes and locating pinch points (where work is waiting for another process to finish).
• Metrics:  Learning from what was done last time and improving upon that process; this learning is continuous and must be measurable.
• Reduction of complexity: Eliminating work processes that do not add to customer value. Complexity has a systemic effect that accumulates over time (similar to the accumulation of lint in a clothes dryer). Optimization is the key to reducing pinch points and complexity.

Case Study

There are some projects that are being completed today using Lean Design. For example, CollinsWoerman, a Seattle-based architectural firm, used BIM to achieve a coordinated and virtual design, and Lean Design to reduce waste (waste of space, waste of Owner’s personnel, and waste of construction dollars) on the Group Health Medical Center in Puyallup, Washington. Lean Design was used in an open/collaborative Owner/Design team environment. The use of BIM was done both for communication with Owners and to communicate design intent to the Design and Build team. The firm operates on the premise that the combination of Lean Design + BIM + IPD, in an integrated methodology, is inherently the ”leanest” design process for A/E Firms.

Though the Group Health project is a health-care building, CollinsWoerman believes that all project types benefit from lean principles. It uses a 3P system (Production, Preparation, Process), defined as pulling together the team that actually does the work, developing the process, and creating the workflow that accommodates the voice of the customer. The customer is part of the entire process in an open and collaborative way.

In the same way that firms are adopting lean practices, Owners are also educating industry members about Lean Design with workshops in process and design improvements. A three-day workshop developed by Virginia Mason Institute, a Health-Care Owner, demonstrates that there is a need for process improvement in the design space. CollinWoerman is convinced that A/E professionals who embrace Lean Design, and who advocate its strategic business benefits to Owners, will have a measurable advantage in the future.

Best Practices – First Step

The three most crucial areas of change that need to occur within A/E company organizations are:

• SWOT Analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis): The strategic analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, and threats to the A/E firm includes both an internal and external analysis. It is crucial for firms to constantly analyze their strengths and weaknesses in a dispassionate and collaborative manner.

• Voice of the customer (VOC): In accordance with Lean Six Sigma, only the customer can define quality and value. VOC is defined as on time, on budget, with customer’s desired level of quality. Achievement of the “voice of the customer” can truly only be measured after the project is completed through gathering post-mortem information, such as with a blind survey, using a service such as www.surveymonkey.com, for example.

• Project Advocacy: The mantra in the organization must revolve around “IT IS ALL ABOUT WHAT IS BEST FOR THE PROJECT.”  A/E practice must evolve from being a “life-style” profession to being about making the customer’s project successful (in both design and economic terms). This is where Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and Target Value Design (TVD) intersect as crucial components of team creation—the building of a team the customer elects to work with again on the next project.
• IPD is a project delivery approach that integrates all members of the team by harnessing the group’s talents and insights to reduce waste and optimize efficiency.
• TVD is a business process where collaboration (working in teams) and project design are based on detailed estimates and increases in the budget estimate must be validated and justified.

Building Information Management (BIM) + Lean Design

How do Lean Design principles align themselves with BIM?  Lean Design must be a company’s philosophy and BIM the company’s methodology to help achieve Lean Design. BIM is a workflow process to provide virtual design and building information to projects.

The most powerful aspect of BIM is the "I,” the information. It is the communication/transfer/delivery of building information to Owners, Contractors, Trade Partners, and even governmental agencies. Lean Six Sigma’s principles of providing value-add to customers, reduction of waste, reduction of complexity, and increased speed are all improved through the transparent information that BIM can provide.

The overriding concept is that the whole A/E firm organization, from principals to designers to project managers, must utilize and leverage BIM from early conceptualization through project construction completion. To achieve this, the firm must clearly decide:

• How the firm will provide “best-in-class” model-based information to all team members (Owners, Consultants, Contractors, and Trade Partners).
• How the information will be leveraged through inclusion of data from other sources or team members.
• How the information will be verified as valid.

Firms can best utilize BIM in a Lean Design workflow through a number of practices such as: 

• Investigate design options early and digitally. Use these early design options to scrutinize which have the greatest value for the customer early in the design process.
• Become the project’s model manager. As more Owners look for firms capable of owning and maintaining the model information throughout the design and construction process, firms equipped to integrate model and non-model (usually Microsoft Excel) data into a BIM project have an advantage.  
• Use TVD (Target Value Design) as defined earlier. For example, Autodesk Revit design options allow for multiple options to be modeled and quantified quickly and easily. 
• Optimize your Construction Documents. Instead of continuing to produce an ever-increasing quantity of drawings in order to “cover liability concerns,” share your data-rich model with the Contractor. 
• Optimize your model as per AIA Document E202-2008 as a guideline, after initial discussion with Owner and Contractor.
• Remove or drastically reduce format figuring out (for example, abbreviations, linetypes, etc.).
• Remove information from schedules that can easily be driven from the BIM model.
• Remove standard details; these details are neither “standard” nor are they without defects. Leverage your BIM model to drive data-rich 3D annotated details.

Implementation

In Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions (published in 2003 by NY McGraw-Hill) author Michael L. George outlines four phases of implementation:

• Readiness:  Have an internal champion in place and create a baseline snapshot of the firm’s current practices. The internal champion must have power to make changes. The baseline snapshot exposes the firm’s readiness which reveals what the firm must attack first.
• Engagement: Achieve upper management buy-in in order to create the company’s internal “one voice” and make change management a company focus. Lean Design must become a core competency for success.
• Mobilization:  Targeted training in Lean must happen; pilot projects must be used to test implementation, and metrics must be applied to measure gains and other improvements.
• Performance + Control:  Plan ahead to avoid pitfalls. Typical pitfalls include priority drift, taking on too much, not sharing best practices, and a lack of team communication.

It is interesting to note that the implementation plan outlined in Lean Six Sigma for Service is very similar to early BIM implementation plans that firms adopted in the transition from 2D CAD to BIM. In the CAD to BIM implementation, we learned that the following were essential:

• Need for total upper management buy-in as well as a motivated internal champion.
• Plan for training, pilot projects, and post-mortems (in order to make implementation plan adjustments/modifications).
• Pitfalls happen; plan how to overcome them.

Barriers to change are plentiful. Research by McKinsey and Company has outlined nine mistakes that are responsible for 70 percent of the failure to make change:

• Lack of performance focus
• Lack of winning strategy
• Failure to make a compelling and urgent case for change
• Not distinguishing between decision-driven and behavior-dependent change
• Failure to mobilize and engage pivotal groups
• Over-reliance on structure and systems to change behavior
• Lack of skills and resources
• Leaders’ inability or unwillingness to confront how they and their roles change
• Inability to integrate and align all the initiatives.

Next Step

The A/E design world is changing, and firms are likely to either change or suffer. The time is now to think about the strategic future.

• Owners desire a more integrated, leaner team that is focused on project benefit and delivery speed.
• Firms can benefit by identifying processes used currently that decrease speed, increase defects, and create pinch-points.
• Firms can be more collaborative with the overall design-build team, show more value to the Owner, and increase project credibility.

Three things that you can do today to start the journey are:

• Analyze your firm as though you were going to buy the firm.  Unearth processes that are carryovers from older technologies and workflow.  Develop a plan to change those. Do a SWOT analysis.
• Do a blind survey of your customers. Determine what they wish you would change about your services and your workflow. Learn which services they would like you to provide for them. Ask for an honest evaluation.
• Learn all you can about Lean Design. This may include attending Lean Construction events. Embrace BIM as your firm’s standard process from the earliest design iterations through project closeout and beyond!

The future brings opportunity and challenges for each firm. Those firms that become more “lean” will have the best chance for marketability and profitability in the future.

About the Author

David Haynes, Architect, is currently Director of Consulting for Ideate, Inc., a West Coast Autodesk Value-Added Reseller, where he provides business process analysis and change management solutions for AEC firms across the United States. David’s prior experience is as Principal in an architectural practice, President of a commercial design-build construction company, as well as experience in development and management of commercial facilities. He has presented to numerous CEO-level organizations (AIA, ASWPA, CSI, SEAONC), and industry-focused conventions (Autodesk University and Revit Technology Conference).

David can be reached at david.haynes@ideateinc.com and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/@dhaynestech.

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