VOICEThe Issue 2, 2023 The official magazine of The Construction Users Roundtable Register for Upcoming CURT Events! https://www.curtevents.com Increase Productivity, Predictability, Profit, and Protect Your People Lean & Modularization Together:The Construction Users Roundtable 5 COVER STORY WORDS OF WISDOM 7 A Message from Jim Ellis, CURT President THE COVER FEATURES 11 Redefining Design Phases: Put Your Projects on the Fast Track 16 It’s Takt Time: What’s the Solution for a Broken CPM System? 19 Solving Problems That Matter: CURT Launches New ESG and Sustainability Committee 21 Tangible Sustainability Solutions: Helping Construction Companies Increase Their Fleet’s Operational Efficiencies 25 Driving Construction Through Innovation: Constant Progress is Driven by Competition, Increased Participation of Contractors, and Technology 26 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS LEADERSHIP Lean & Modularization Together: Increase Productivity, Predictability, Profit, and Protect Your People 8 VOICE The Issue 2, 2023 The official magazine of The Construction Users Roundtable Re gister for Upcomin g CU RT Ev e nts ! https://www .curte ve nt s. co m Increase Productivity, Predictability, Profit, and Protect Your People Lean & Modularization Together: If you would like to update your subscription to digital-only moving forward, please email distribution@ matrixgroupinc.net.The Construction Users Roundtable 7 A message from the CURT President. WORDS OF WISDOM T his issue of The VOICE is dedicated to the overarching theme of creating a competitive advantage. When planning what stories to include, the editorial team focused on topics that share how construction users can create some certainty in a very uncertain world. I hope you’ll take a moment to check out the cover story, which is all about Lean and offsite construction. What important and timely topics! As our projects continue to deal with ongoing supply chain challenges and workforce shortages, Lean and offsite are two processes that can immediately put some measure of control back in our hands. I know that if you’re attending CURT’s Lean Project Delivery and Offsite Construction Summit in May, that you’re going to learn a lot about how to make this happen. Make sure to ask questions and engage with the speakers – they’re all incredibly knowledgeable and experienced, and want to empower others to drive these key values within their own organizations. C lose to my heart is the topic of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and sustainability. This is why last year, I sponsored a new CURT Committee called the ESG and Sustainability in Construction Committee. I am energized by the interest in what we’re working to accomplish, and if I am being honest, I believe the work that we have to do can’t happen soon enough. Investors, consumers, and other stakeholders are increasingly demanding that companies have clear, strong, and actionable guidelines related to ESG and sustainability. I’m glad that more and more of society is on board, and I hope we’re taking action soon enough. E SG helps companies to identify and manage risks. By measuring their performance in these areas, companies can recognize potential areas of risk, such as environmental liabilities or social unrest, and take steps to mitigate them. This can help to protect the company’s reputation and financial performance. It is also important for attracting and retaining investors, many of whom are increasingly looking for companies that are committed to sustainable practices and have a positive impact on society. By demonstrating strong ESG performance, companies can attract investment and retain the loyalty of existing investors. F inally, ESG is essential for building trust with customers and other stakeholders. More than ever, consumers are concerned about the impact of their purchasing decisions on the environment and society. By demonstrating strong ESG performance, companies can build trust and loyalty with their customers, which can lead to increased sales and a stronger brand reputation. M ost notably, the work we do in this arena will either make or break us as a global society. We can’t keep carrying on with “business as usual.” As Brad Smith said in the quote to the right, those of us who can do more and move faster on this MUST. I am comforted by how many CURT members have started to build ESG and sustainability reporting into their annual reports – this is a great step forward! CURT members are often leaders in the construction industry, and I look forward to working with them to bring the concepts and “how-to’s” of ESG to our wider CURT and industry audience in the years that follow. M y final note is to invite every single one of you to an upcoming CURT event. Did you know that we host several Zoom and in-person gatherings every year? Click to www.curtevents.com to see what’s coming up and to register. I promise you won’t regret being a part of these learning and networking opportunities. U ntil next time, stay safe! CURT is Always Adapting to Meet the Needs of Members! If you work for a CURT member company or have expertise specific to construction owners that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): safety, health, and wellness; workforce; the business case for ESG and sustainability; the economy; technology and innovation; leadership; Lean, modularization, and new ways of building; and productivity. Email your name, company, position, and a short 100-word abstract to Editor-in-Chief, Shannon Savory (ssavory@matrixgroupinc.net). All topics are subject to approval and all completed articles are subject to review. Note, articles cannot be company and / or product promotional. Authors will have their byline included as well as an author bio and contact information. “While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.” – Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft Put Your Pen to Paper…um…Computer Screen! Showcase Your Expertise in The VOICE!COVER STORY Increase productivity, predictability, profit, and protect your people. C oming out of the Toyota production system in the 1950s, the Lean concept was originally applied to the manufacturing industry, and has since been successfully used to improve efficiencies across that sector. Years later, construction research suggested that – with traditionally planned projects – only about half of all of the assignments given by foremen to be completed within a week were actually finished. This general lack of perceived productivity led the founders of the Lean Construction Institute (LCI) – Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell – to the conclusion that, because the construction industry shares many of the same workflow issues as manufacturing, they could apply the same Lean principles to construction. For Ballard and Howell, Lean meant finding ways to maximize benefits and minimize inefficiencies by meticulously and strategically planning out construction projects with innovative technologies and effective communication. When done correctly – and where appropriate – LCI determined that this type of project delivery model could significantly reduce wasted time and materials, which could potentially lead to reduced costs for construction owners. In 2004, the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) started to hear about the work being done at LCI and decided that it needed to take a closer look at Lean – hence the creation of its Lean Construction Task Force. It was soon decided, however, that ‘Lean construction’ was far too narrow a scope when the issues they were looking to resolve include the entire delivery process. Because of this, CURT re-envisioned the task force into the Lean Project Delivery Committee (the Committee was later renamed the Project Delivery Committee and then the Project Excellence Committee) and began the process of informing the industrial construction sector about the benefits of Lean. “Back then, Lean was a bit of a ‘dirty word’ since many felt that it was only good for manufacturing where you are doing the same processes over and over again with the same team, and that it couldn’t be applied to construction,” By Paul Adair, Staff Writer Together Lean &Modularization 8 The Construction Users Roundtable 9 says Albert Schwarzkopf, Associate Director, Engineering at Merck, and original Co-Chair of the Lean Project Delivery Committee. “But when you break construction down into its components, you can see that there are elements that are quite repeatable, which lends itself well to Lean principles.” With Lean, construction practitioners can theoretically complete more jobs per year and produce significantly less waste, which will increase profits and keep costs down when compared to traditional construction practices. “Through incremental steps, Lean can help to drive down costs, improves the labor pool, and allows you to figure out how to make your supply chain more robust,” says Schwarzkopf. “The old ways of throwing money at your problems until they go away is simply unsustainable in today’s reality.” According to Schwarzkopf, the construction project delivery system typically looks at the ‘triangle’ of cost, schedule, and quality / safety. Traditionally under this model, construction owners and trade partners can only pick two elements to control, perhaps delivering high quality and schedule, but experiencing high costs, or controlling costs and quality, and sacrificing schedule. Lean allows construction owners and trade partners to find a balance between all three sides of the triangle and have it all: achievable schedules, predictable costs, and a high standard of quality and safety. “The only way we can get all three together is by reinventing the way we do business and finding new ways to optimize your processes – and that’s Lean,” says Schwarzkopf. “Getting better at the old way of doing things doesn’t go far enough, and we need to find new, disruptive ways of executing projects. Otherwise, we risk losing everything.” It’s difficult to say just how much Lean is being used across the construction industry but it is clear that there is still much work to be done to get the industry as a whole to embrace its principles. Part of the problem lies with the fact that, despite the inefficiency, construction continues to find success following the traditional ways of building things. After all, Fortune 500 companies became Fortune 500 companies because they stick to what works for them. “Some companies are willing to dabble with Lean but are still unwilling to go all in,” says Schwarzkopf. “When you’re successful because you have a belief in your processes, it’s incredibly hard to change course and go with another delivery model, and the only way Lean will truly take hold in this industry is through repeated successes and acquiring enough data to back up its claims.” CURT’s Offsite Construction Committee provides members with the modularization and prefabrication tools and resources they need to meet the many challenges facing their project execution goals, such as reducing cost and schedule, and maintaining a safe construction work environment. “The Offsite Committee leverages learnings and knowledge about offsite and modular construction, and then passes those insights onto construction owners and contractors about what works well and where there might be opportunities for improvement,” says Committee Co- Chair Badar Alam, Construction Competency Leader at The Chemours Company. “The Committee shares the experiences of members so that others can know what they are getting into before they go out and attempt it on their own.” Surveys conducted by the Construction Industry Institute (CII), FMI Consulting, and CURT between 2017 and 2020 identified a 17 percent improvement stemming from the use of modularization as a part of the owner’s project execution strategy. In the years since those surveys, however, the multitude of challenges that construction owners face has only worsened, thanks in large part to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Compounding these challenges, the construction industry is also seeing an increased demand for ever-faster project delivery. It is clear that – in order to meet that accelerating demand – construction owners and their trade partners must come up with a new strategy moving forward. Fortunately, offsite construction and modularization can be part of the solution. “Offsite construction and modularization have been identified as one of the primary methods of overcoming the challenges industry faces and, if properly implemented, can be the single most advantageous improvement that can be incorporated to a project execution strategy,” says William Lewis, Director Global Modularization at Microsoft, and second Co-Chair of the Committee. For most of human history, construction has been stick-built on site, destined to deal with the unpredictable challenges that come with being on location, such as the elements, scheduling and logistical delays, and issues with safety, just to name a few. Over the last decade, however, organizations like CURT have stepped up to espouse the many benefits of incorporating greater modularization within construction projects, and they have developed tools and processes to enable their members to pursue offsite construction. The ultimate goal of using offsite or modular construction is to move work hours off the site and into a more controlled environment, one that can allow for parallel construction. Offsite and modularization provides construction practitioners the advantage of completing much of the same work but with higher productivity, more predictable schedules, better quality, and improved speed to market by working two sites in tandem. “If you can imagine working outside in the elements of a desert or in the frozen tundra of the North, you will understand the benefits of a module fabrication yard (MFY),” says Lewis. “With the repeatability opportunities we get in the MFYs, we obtain an improved quality project that is more difficult to achieve in the field. In many cases, construction owners can perform commissioning in the MFY itself and receive a module that is truly plug and play.” Recent projects executed on the U.S. Gulf Coast in the chemical, oil and gas, pharma, and data center industries have shown significant benefits by using modularization options, versus similar stick-built projects. A well-executed modularization strategy can provide Next >