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Month: April 2026

Plan Like A Builder!

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 15 min

Are You Planning Like a Builder? Why This Should Be the Most Fun Part of Your Job

The conflict is that we’re all not planning like builders and we sure could have the opportunity and the invitation to do so. This isn’t a criticism. This isn’t anything negative. This isn’t a rant. It’s an invitation to passionate living. The way a builder plans a project can be so stinking fun and so addictive that Jason wants everybody to be able to experience it. That’s what this is about.

Jason just finished two days with Janusz in Germany and Munich with Spencer, Felipe, and his son Reno. It’s been a blast finishing the simulations that they have that take you through Takt planning and some of the nuances of the formula. It’s been absolutely amazing.

He got to tour the BMW museum, the showroom, see certain parts of the line as a visitor to the Takt simulation. There’s so much they learned. The cab driver from the Munich airport was talking about how in Bavaria, in South Germany, everything is clean and safe and organized and that it’s just really culturally a happy place to be and they really strive and focus on excellence, especially with manufacturing and cars.

Jason was like “Wow, this is my place.” You hear him on this podcast for a year now talking about cleanliness, safety, and organization over and over. Coming to Munich is a visual representation of that philosophy from a cultural standpoint. It’s ingrained in the people here. And that’s what planning like a builder should feel like. Ingrained. Natural. Addictive. Fun.

The Simulation That Shows How Builders Actually Think

Jason was doing the simulation with their group and Janusz was facilitating it. They had decided to break up the building a certain way, got a feel for it. They were definitely rushed. It was part of the simulation they knew they were going to fail the first time. But when they broke it up, they got it done under time, which usually in the simulations doesn’t always happen. But it was fairly chaotic. Then they went through the math, Dehne and Fiedler’s law. It’s basically a form of math from Little’s law where they calculated the throughput time and most especially how much time each trade, each trade partner would have by area.

They were able to break the building up into six Takt zones instead of maybe the representative two that they typically do. So they broke it up into six Takt zones. In looking at it, they found what the standard space units are, meaning the smallest standard unit, and worked into the six units. Janusz taught them about sub Takt and analyzing their time and their productivity rate, their production rates.

Once they knew those basic principles, they did our debriefs and kind of walked through “What should we have done differently?” And then they added workers and they re simulated and they went through it in real time to where they could really feel the benefits of this concept of Takt time planning.

What really stood out is that when you run the numbers, you get a story that tells you how the building wants to be built. Not how you think it should be built. Not what the critical path method forces. How the building actually wants to be built based on the math of throughput time, production rates, and logistics.

How Builders Actually Schedule: The Seven Step Process

Here’s how builders schedule. First, they get a full set of plans in their hands. They get them in print. Now Jason likes to do them, and this is a preference, not a rule, he likes to print them out in half size. Even if they’ll never be updated again, even if he’s not posting ASIs and RFIs, he can just trash them, that’s a $350 investment to print them. However, it speeds him up.

He’ll go from page to page, he’ll get his highlighters, his colored pencils, he’ll get his markers, he’ll get sticky notes, and he’ll start going through there and get a feel for the building. He’ll ask the building “How do you want to be broken up?” Where are the electric rooms? Where are the comm rooms? Where are the elevators? Where is the access? Where will the hoist be? Where will the flow of the concrete and steel go? Are there any constraints like the basement or the cores or anywhere that would somewhat dictate the sequence of where I start on the building?

He’ll start to sketch those, and by virtue of sketching and making those colored marks and highlighting and shading and just doing all the fun stuff like he’s back in school, like he’s back in kindergarten, that’s what gets your mind really wrapped around how you want to build this thing.

Now, he would add what Marco and Janusz have added: the concept that we can take the ideal sequence by representative Takt zone and the projected Takt time and the number of areas, the number of Takt zones. So you have your Takt wagons, Takt zones, and Takt time, and go through the formula to not only calculate your overall duration but actually calculate how much time each individual trade partner has per Takt time and therefore their overall duration, which matters to them and their work and the quality they’re able to do.

Here’s the seven step process builders follow:

  • Get a full set of plans in print, even half size if budget allows, because physical interaction with plans engages your brain differently than screens.
  • Ask the building how it wants to be broken up by studying electric rooms, comm rooms, elevators, access, hoist location, concrete and steel flow, constraints.
  • Sketch and mark up plans with highlighters, colored pencils, markers, sticky notes like you’re back in kindergarten because this tactile process wraps your mind around the building.
  • Go through the formula to calculate throughput time, production rates per trade, and determine optimal Takt zones (not too many causing diminishing returns, not too few losing efficiency).
  • Identify the general flow by asking should I work from middle out (rarely start in corners on rectangles because middle out gives more logistical control and access).
  • Simulate logistics day by day, drawing where pumps go, where forklifts go, where concrete goes, where rebar stages, where deck formwork goes, because you can’t see conflicts unless you visualize time and space.
  • Create your Takt schedule or Takt train covering entire phases, tie it all together for your overall plan, build your complete schedule.

You go through those formulas and you’re really able to break it up. You’ll be able to look at these floors and say “Well, instead of two, this should be six representative Takt zones. It doesn’t want to be eight, it doesn’t want to be 12, it doesn’t want to be 18, because then you have diminishing returns, your batch size would be too small. But you don’t want them to be too large. You want to optimize your batch sizes.” Once you know “Hey, for this concrete deck, instead of two sequences I have three, and on this floor instead of two I have six,” then you’re able to start to piece them out and get a really nice logistical flow.

Why Logistics Are What True Masters Study

Jason heard from Janusz that rarely would you start in a corner on a rectangle or square building because working from the middle out gives you more logistical control and access. You’ve heard Jason say in the past that quote from Nathan Malam: “Amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, but true masters study logistics.”

That’s really what it comes down to. When we’re on a construction project, we have to take into consideration the logistics. Once you’ve identified the general flow, you’ve gotten a feel for the building, you’ve sketched it out, you’ve drawn it, you’ve gone through the math which Elevate Construction or Tacting can help you with to optimize mathematically, the question is logistics.

Simulation is what’s going to get you where you need to be. A lot of people say “Let’s go ahead and do a 4D model.” Jason loves that. He can create a model in Revit. He used to be able to use other software. He can personally create a 3D rendered sequence for a proposal in Synchro. He can do that to a certain extent in Navisworks Manage.

But he has not found them, maybe there’s something new he doesn’t know about, he has not found those models to keep up quickly enough. When 4D schedules become as easy as plugging in symbols and hitting play and adjusting in seconds, we’re going to be jamming because it’s all about simulation.

When Jason creates a schedule for a floor or for a basement or for a concrete core, he will literally on the schedule go from day to day and literally just sketch. Where’s everything going to be? Where’s my pump going to be? Where’s the forklift going to be? Where’s the concrete going to be? Where’s the rebar staging? Where am I going to put my deck formwork? Whatever the case may be because logistics are what experts really study.

Once you have your ideal Takt wagons with your Takt sequence, once you have the number of Takt zones, once you have your Takt time and your overall duration, and you have your general plan through that math, then it really comes down to can we feed the areas?

That’s why for a basement, you have to draw that out day by day. You can’t do spot footings while you’re also shotcreting a wall with shoring and you have pumps and you have concrete trucks in there. You can’t do everything together and you can’t see that unless you look at the visualization of time and space.

Why You Must Simulate Four Times More Than You’re Doing Now

You must simulate it. You must visualize it. The greatest generals of old, Napoleon, Sun Tzu, were talking about this. You can read stories of it in The 33 Strategies of War. You can watch almost any war movie. They’re looking at, once they have the production rates, once they know how fast the military can go, once they have their capacity, it really is all about logistics after that.

Superintendents, schedulers, project managers, you probably need to do at least four times as much simulation as you’re doing right now. Do you have a basement schedule underground? Great. Did you print out 90 sheets and every day draw where everything’s going to be and make sure that you fit?

Did you just finish your concrete sequence? Great. Did you draw out visually exactly where everything’s going to be? Who’s using crane time, where you’re storing materials, where your wall forms are going to go, the whole nine? If not, you need to simulate that.

You’re installing a pipe 12 feet into the ground with trench boxes. Great. Did you create your schedule and then every day draw where your track hoe is going to be? Your trench box is going to be, your pipe’s going to be, your heel man’s going to be, your backfilling crew’s going to be, when are you staging pipe throughout the day? All of the things.

When you create your base sequences, that’s when you’re going to start to break or finish the rest of the scheduling of the building and start to create your complete Takt phase or what the Germans would call Takt schedule, where it basically covers a phase, that entire Takt train. You’re going to start to create those and then you’re going to tie it all together and create your overall plan and build your schedule.

The Critical Steps You Cannot Skip

Do not skip the drawings step. Do not skip the math optimization step. Please do not skip the critical step of drawing and identifying your flow. Please do not skip the logistical step. This is how builders schedule. Jason wants to say one other thing: he has not found a scheduling system better than Takt planning to actually simulate how builders think, how they should think, how they have thought in the past on how to break up a building and really be great.

He’s saying this with passion: if this isn’t fun, if, and now if you’re a general superintendent you have to do 10 of these a day maybe it’s not fun. But planning a project is so fun. And Jason wants you to be able to have fun. If you’re not having fun, please reach out and get some help because we want it to be.

The great builders of old really understood the art form and the science to this. And you can too if you put yourself to it and stick to the basics. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why should I print plans when I can look at them on a screen?

Because physical interaction with plans engages your brain differently than screens. Get a full set in print, even half size for $350. Go from page to page with highlighters, colored pencils, markers, sticky notes. By virtue of sketching and making colored marks and highlighting and shading and doing all the fun stuff like you’re back in kindergarten, that’s what gets your mind really wrapped around how you want to build this thing. The tactile process creates understanding that scrolling on a tablet never will.

Q: How do I know how many Takt zones the building wants?

Go through the formula to calculate throughput time and production rates per trade. You’ll be able to look at floors and say “Instead of two, this should be six representative Takt zones.” It doesn’t want to be eight, twelve, or eighteen because then you have diminishing returns and batch size becomes too small. But you don’t want them too large either. You want to optimize batch sizes. The math tells you the story. Ask the building how it wants to be broken up based on electric rooms, comm rooms, elevators, access, hoist location, flow constraints.

Q: Why should I work from the middle out instead of starting in a corner?

Rarely would you start in a corner on a rectangle or square building because working from the middle out gives you more logistical control and access. Amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, but true masters study logistics. Once you’ve identified general flow, sketched it out, gone through the math, the question is logistics. Can you feed the areas? Can you get pumps, forklifts, concrete, rebar staging, formwork where they need to be? Middle out gives you more options.

Q: What does it mean to simulate day by day?

When you create a schedule for a floor, basement, or concrete core, go from day to day and literally sketch where everything’s going to be. Where’s my pump? Where’s the forklift? Where’s the concrete? Where’s the rebar staging? Where am I putting deck formwork? You can’t do spot footings while shotcreting a wall with shoring and pumps and concrete trucks. You can’t see conflicts unless you visualize time and space. Superintendents probably need to do four times as much simulation as they’re doing now. Print 90 sheets for basement schedules and draw where everything goes every day.

Q: What are the critical steps I cannot skip when planning like a builder?

Do not skip the drawings step where you get plans in print and mark them up. Do not skip the math optimization step where you calculate throughput time, production rates, and optimal Takt zones. Do not skip the critical step of drawing and identifying your flow by asking how the building wants to be broken up. Do not skip the logistical step where you simulate day by day where pumps, equipment, materials, crews will be. This is how builders schedule. Takt planning is the best system to simulate how builders think. If this isn’t fun, reach out for help.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

Posted in All

Plan It Like You Will Be Gone!

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 14 min

Are You Planning Like You’re Going to Be Gone? Why Your Crew Should Succeed Without You

Jason was in Northern California giving a talk about how foremen and trade partners can be more productive. He was drawing on the whiteboard because that’s his superpower. He was drawing out production principles: Little’s law, the law of bottlenecks, the law of variation, Kingman’s formula, Brooks’s law. Then they talked about labor teaming principles where they covered context switching, the effects of overtime, the effects of onboarding, the complexity of communication with more workers, all the things that slow us down.

Then they went into the meeting system, using the Last Planner system with the Takt production system. Under TPS, you have a master schedule, you have your pull planning where you plan your phases, your six week make ready look ahead, your weekly work plan, your day plan, and then you communicate that to the workers and what foremen could do to communicate that.

Jason drew a really good toy soldier on the board. He said as a foreman, you have to have a safety presence in the field. You have to be coaching and teaching and mentoring all day, bringing materials and information to your workers and clearing the path. But you have to look at it like everybody’s a toy soldier. And it’s not disrespect.

You give them everything they need: the materials, the tools and equipment, the instructions, the quality expectations, everything. Wind them up and make sure they have clear instructions. If you wind up a toy soldier, they will march forward unless something tips them over. And what happens when a toy soldier tips over? You go back, you stand them up, dust them off, wind them up again, and set them going forward again.

It’s a neat analogy that has absolutely no disrespect communicated in it whatsoever. Our people need to have clear enough instructions where we can wind them up and set them going forward and then continually coach and support and adjust their trajectory and stand them up when they get tipped over. And this thought came to Jason: the reason that people aren’t planning really well in their huddle system is they’re not planning like they’re going to be gone.

Why Foremen Don’t Follow the System

Here’s the system foremen should be following. In the afternoon foreman huddle, you plan any key logistics. You do your production planning for the next day. You fill out your pretask plans. You fill out your permits.

The next morning, you go to the morning worker huddle where the general contractor or the prime contractor talks to all of the workers together and creates a social group. Then as a foreman, you do the 25 minute crew preparation huddle where you do your safety talk. You talk about the work. You do a training. You fill out your pretask plan. You get feedback from the trades, from the actual workers. You get all of the workers to where they’ve shaken out their tools, they’re ready to go to work, and everybody has clear instructions.

Then you go throughout the day and you’re coaching and mentoring and managing. And then in the afternoon, right after lunch, you check in with everybody again and then you work until the afternoon foreman huddle where you’re turning in your daily reports and you make sure that your production planning is logged for the day and then you plan the next day with the prime contractor or the general contractor.

Why do more foremen not do that system? We’ve already talked about the fact that a lot of foremen have the huddle board or superintendents have the huddle board in their head. But the other thing is they’re not planning like they’re going to be gone.

This really came into Jason’s mind because he and Spencer headed to Germany. Weeks ahead of time, they were getting everything done to the point that things could exist properly. Church could work properly. Work could work properly. Clients could work properly. Information could be distributed properly. Katie was set up. Everything was ready to go because they were gone.

If a foreman every day knew for a fact that their people were set up, that they’ve wound up their toy soldiers to the point that they weren’t needed that day, not that they’re going to go anywhere because they’re not going to Home Depot and they’re not going to escape, but if they planned like they weren’t going to be there, that is when we’re going to get some remarkable planning.

What Planning Like You’re Gone Actually Looks Like

Would every worker have a list of things they were supposed to do? Would every worker have their quality feature of work boards? Would every worker have a visual pretask plan? Would everybody on the project site have what they need with the foreman knowing and feeling confident that they wouldn’t get phone calls?

When foremen are planning, we need to get to that point. When we’re planning in the morning, it’s not “Oh, I’ll get back with you later” from the huddle board in your head. It’s create sketches, create standard work, create printed day plans, create visuals, create lists, or teach your people to create lists and create sequences to where they can succeed without you.

Here’s what that means practically:

  • Every worker gets a written list of tasks for the day, not verbal instructions they’ll forget or misunderstand within an hour.
  • Every crew has quality feature of work boards showing exactly what good looks like so they don’t guess at the standard.
  • Every task has a visual pretask plan posted where the work happens so new information doesn’t require finding you.
  • Every delivery, tool need, material staging location is communicated in advance so workers don’t wait on you for answers.
  • Every quality expectation, sequence requirement, coordination point is documented so your crew can make decisions without you.

The test is simple: if you got called away for an emergency, could your crew finish the day successfully? If the answer is no, you haven’t planned well enough. You’re keeping the plan in your head. You’re making yourself the bottleneck. You’re creating dependency instead of capability.

The BMW Plant and Shifting the Network to the Right

Jason was in Munich, Germany at the BMW plant. They have the andon buttons. Anyone on the line can stop the line if they see a quality defect. When the line stops, when they’re making a car, the whole line stops because it’s all on one electronic system. The car is going from one end all the way to the other. It might take a couple of days, it might take weeks to get through, but it’s all on that one line.

When somebody pushes that button, the whole line stops. Jason has recently been counseling people that if they have a problem in construction, meaning there’s a delay, a rain delay, a defect, a procurement item or something going on like that, they really need to stop all the trades or at least give them the extra time and shift the entire schedule from left to right and create a buffer, a buffer Takt time scale.

They call it a Takt time buffer, whether it’s a day or two days or a week, but basically just move the entire system together as a network to the right. You can do that because in Takt time planning or Takt planning, you optimize the sequence and you gain buffers and you can actually do that.

It’s hard for some people to think about it that way, that you can actually just shift the sequences to the right, interlocked together from left to right, instead of just having one delay and then attempting to recover it and keep everybody else working at full efficiency.

Jason’s likening that to the line he saw. Once one area stops or is paused for a quality defect because they want to fix it or something’s going on, everything stops, which means they all stop together. The reason we love Takt planning is because it is a system that creates buffers. We love Scrum because it’s a system that creates buffers. We love Last Planner because it’s a system that creates buffers.

We do not support CPM scheduling because it is not a system that creates buffers. In fact, it’s a system that pushes you right up to the end date with a critical path where if anything was delayed, the whole project is delayed. That is not a good way ever, under any circumstances, to plan anything. You should be able to create buffers so that when you run into problems, you shift the network to the right.

Forced Errors vs. Unforced Errors in Construction

There’s a concept from tennis about forced and unforced errors. A forced error, even though it’s still an error, is if an opponent playing tennis spikes that ball or forces that ball while you’re on the other end of the court to where to serve it or return that ball is almost impossible. That’s a forced error. An unforced error is if you had every chance to return that ball, to make that play, to play that game or to make that action and you tank it anyway. It’s an unforced error.

There’s a guy who came to a superintendent bootcamp. He went back, he created a Takt plan. He stabilized his project site. He cleaned his project site. He stabilized deliveries. He got all the trade partners on board. He pull planned his sequences. He has the schedule and he’s projected to finish a month early.

He showed it to his project manager and his project manager giggled and said “Yeah, construction doesn’t go like that. Good luck.” The superintendent was like “We’re going to create this stability and we’re going to get this done and we’re going to follow this plan and I’m going to show you.” And the PM giggled and said “Construction doesn’t work like that” and walked away. Jason was so annoyed. Now we have superintendents actually creating stability and scheduling and doing these wonderful things and we’ve got people out there giggling and acting stupidly.

The point is, if you are serving forced and unforced errors, then the whole game sucks. But if we can at least get rid of unforced errors, if we can at least stabilize things on the project site that don’t need to be unstable, if we can at least remove variation on the project site that we can remove and allow ourselves the chance to focus more and to reduce the impact of forced errors, then we’re going to be so much better off. When we in construction do not stabilize first and then optimize, then we have forced and unforced errors. But when we in construction use the systems every project needs, we can eliminate most unforced errors.

What Every Project Needs to Eliminate Unforced Errors

Every project needs a couple of things:

  • Personal organization systems so leaders can manage their time, tasks, and commitments without dropping balls or creating chaos.
  • A team balance and health system so crews are sized right, coordinated well, and not burning out from dysfunction.
  • Takt planning and integrated control on their construction project because you need buffers and you need to shift the network when problems hit.
  • Operational excellence according to the principles Jason has been talking about on the podcast and in Elevating Construction Superintendents.

If they have those things, then we will get rid of, for the most part, unforced errors so that we can better deal with forced errors. We need to be creating so much stability. And if you think “Yeah, I understand what Jason’s talking about, this creates stability,” multiply that by three or four times and then you’ll start to get what he’s talking about.

We need stability to the point that things can succeed on the construction project site without us. The huddle board and the visual systems need to be outside of our head. It needs to be so well communicated that if we weren’t there, people could still succeed. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What does it mean to plan like you’re going to be gone?

It means creating so much stability and clarity that your crew could finish the day successfully if you got called away for an emergency. Every worker has a written list of tasks. Every crew has quality feature of work boards showing what good looks like. Every task has a visual pretask plan posted. Every delivery, tool need, material location is communicated in advance. Every quality expectation and sequence is documented. Your people are wound up like toy soldiers with clear instructions, materials, tools, expectations. They can march forward and succeed without you there to answer questions.

Q: Why is the toy soldier analogy not disrespectful?

Because it’s about setting people up for success, not treating them like mindless automatons. You give them everything they need: materials, tools, equipment, instructions, quality expectations. You wind them up with clear direction and they march forward. When something tips them over, you stand them up, dust them off, wind them up again, set them going. It’s continual coaching, support, adjusting trajectory. The disrespect is NOT giving clear instructions, then blaming them when they fail. The respect is planning so well they can succeed without constantly needing you.

Q: What’s the difference between forced and unforced errors in construction?

Forced errors are things outside your control: unexpected subsurface conditions, supplier bankruptcy, weather beyond forecast. Unforced errors are things you could have prevented: unstable deliveries you didn’t coordinate, variation you didn’t remove, planning you kept in your head instead of documenting. If you serve forced AND unforced errors, the whole game sucks. But if you eliminate unforced errors through stability, you can focus on dealing with forced errors. Takt planning, Last Planner, personal organization, team balance, operational excellence eliminate most unforced errors.

Q: Why should you shift the whole network to the right when there’s a delay?

Because Takt planning creates buffers so you can do this. At BMW, when one area stops for a quality defect, the whole line stops. They all stop together. In construction, instead of one delay forcing everyone to attempt recovery while keeping full efficiency everywhere else, you shift the entire interlocked sequence to the right together. Use your Takt time buffer, whether it’s a day, two days, or a week. Move the system as a network. CPM pushes you to the end date with a critical path where any delay means project delay. Takt creates buffers so problems don’t cascade.

Q: What systems does every project need to eliminate unforced errors?

Personal organization systems so leaders manage time, tasks, commitments without chaos. Team balance and health systems so crews are sized right and coordinated without burnout. Takt planning and integrated control because you need buffers and the ability to shift the network when problems hit. Operational excellence according to the principles in Elevating Construction Superintendents. These eliminate most unforced errors so you can focus on forced errors. We need stability to the point that things succeed without us. The huddle board must be outside our head, communicated so well that if we weren’t there, people could still succeed.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

Posted in All

Being A Hard Worker!

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 14 min

Are You a Hard Worker? Why This Question Matters More Than You Think

The conflict we’re dealing with is this: we are not working hard enough when we’re young nowadays and we’re working too much when we’re old. Specifically, young people are working in the wrong way and old people, leaders, are working at the wrong things.

There’s been a lot of talk everywhere Jason goes. People are criticizing the younger generation for not being able to work hard or not working hard. And he’s wanting to figure this out mentally and get a good read on the situation and also come from a standpoint of what were the rest of us who are listening to this podcast taught and how can we apply that to the current situation.

It comes up everywhere he goes. When he flies from place to place around the country, people complain about this. And here are some data points. People are saying things like “Jason, we can’t get anybody to show up.” “Everybody quits on us.” “People get jobs and then they won’t even come back the next day.” “People don’t want to work hard.” “I think we’ve got an epidemic in the United States of people that are unwilling to work or commit to anything.”

And Jason started to dig at this and he asked people “Do you think people have lower work ethic than they used to?” And most people would say yes. Then he’d ask “What do you mean by that?” And here’s what they’d say: “Well, they’re unwilling to work hard. They’re unwilling to sacrifice. They want things now. They want to start at the top.” All these kind of things. So let’s break this down and figure out what’s actually happening and what we should do about it.

What His Parents Taught Him About Work

Jason’s going to tell a couple of stories that his parents taught him. And before he does that, he wants you to know that not everybody was in the same situation and had the same parents. And this isn’t at all a criticism of people’s parents. This is Jason sharing the specific things that his parents taught him.

His parents moved from California to Idaho to a small town. They did that because they wanted a good place for their kids to go to school. They moved to a rural place. His parents didn’t have very much at all. They were in their mid 20s and they gave everything to Jason and his brother and his sister. Everything.

When Jason went to get his drivers license, his dad took him up to the DMV or whatever it’s called and he had Jason take the test. Jason didn’t pass the first time. His dad made him wait six months. And Jason was like “Dad, can I just take it again?” And his dad said “No, you have to wait six months because you didn’t pass it the first time.” And Jason was like “But I need a car.” And his dad said “Well, save up. Get a job. Save up and buy a car.”

His mom and dad were always very clear: you earn things. You don’t get things for free. If you want spending money, you get a job. If you want to go to college, you pay for it or you get scholarships. His dad didn’t pay for Jason’s college. Jason had to work for it. He had to get student loans. He had to get scholarships. He had to earn it.

When Jason was young, his parents had a big backyard. There was one corner of the backyard that nobody would go into because it was just this nasty like raspberry infested, covered with stickers and bees and garbage. And one day Jason decided he was going to clean it up. He was probably 10 or 11 years old.

He got gloves on. He got bags. He started working through this thing and he worked and worked and worked. And by the end of it, he had cleaned up that whole corner. And what he found was he loved it. He was addicted to the accomplishment. He was addicted to the hard work. He was addicted to the fatigue and the dirt and the sweat and the accomplishment and the before and after. That taught him something foundational about himself and about life.

The Mexican Workers Who Changed Everything

When Jason was in his early 20s, he had the opportunity to work with some Mexican workers. These guys would show up at 6 AM and they would work until it was done. They didn’t complain. They worked hard. They laughed. They had fun. But they worked their tails off.

Jason got addicted to that. He got addicted to the feeling of blood running through his veins. He got addicted to being tired at the end of the day from real work. He got addicted to the camaraderie of working hard with other people who worked hard. Those were his addictive moments. The corner of the backyard. The Mexican workers who showed him what real work looked like. And those moments became foundational to everything Jason did after that.

Here’s what he learned: if your parents taught you how to work hard, that is not only the foundation of everything you’re going to do, but it becomes a part of who you are and how you think about things.

The Hard Truth About Starting Your Career

Jason is 39 years old. After years, two decades of grinding and working hard and working his butt off and earning things, he’s finally out of debt. He finally has a nicer house. He finally has a decent truck. He finally has a path for the future. He finally started his business and is doing something he’s passionate and fulfilled in doing.

You have to go earn it first. Don’t expect when you come out of high school at 18 or when you come out of college at 22 or 24 that you’re immediately just going to land your dream job. You need to go prove yourself and you need to prove to employers that you are actually worth your salt. That is a true principle. And nowadays, because there’s so few workers, because we’ve got this concept of giving people something for free, which isn’t going to work, people have lost sight of this.

Here’s what Jason wants to be clear about: whatever plays out, whatever the government does, whatever the stimulus checks do, whatever happens with unemployment, whatever happens with the market, whatever happens with the economy, eventually it will only pay out for those who work hard.

His admonishment to anybody coming up is you have to grind. You have to work hard. You have to find that addictive moment. His addictive moment was when he went out and cleaned that corner of his backyard. His addictive moment was when he worked with those Mexican workers and got addicted to the feeling and his blood running through his veins. Those were his moments. Where are your moments? You have to learn how to work hard and everything else will be dependent or only as successful as that principle.

When Leaders Need to Stop Working Hard at the Wrong Things

When you’re older, you kind of have to switch your paradigm with work a little bit. There are so many people who become leaders, who become project superintendents or senior superintendents or managers or whatever, who are still out wanting to work hard and clean the back of the truck. You still have to work hard at what you’re doing, but you need to start doing different things. Don’t escape to go do the things that you already know. Work hard at doing the things you’re supposed to be doing.

Leaders need to work hard at different things than workers:

  • Building the team instead of doing the work the team should do because you miss the feeling of accomplishment from physical work.
  • Having hard conversations instead of avoiding conflict because you want to be liked or because confrontation is uncomfortable.
  • Managing direct reports instead of escaping to tasks where you feel competent because management feels uncertain.
  • Holding remarkable meetings instead of skipping them because meetings feel like a waste when you could be doing real work.
  • Scaling communication instead of hoarding information because being the only one who knows makes you feel important.

One of the biggest things Jason deals with when programming leaders in trainings and doing teaching is getting rid of that “I want to be liked” and “I feel like I have to work hard to be valuable” mindset. People in leadership positions need to arrive at a point where they will stay at the head, they will stay at their stations, they will stay at the helm and steer that ship and do the things that are required to keep that project, that team, or that organization in orbit, afloat, whatever the analogy you want to use.

We have to get from the “leaders are out with their bags on with their head below their backside working” to “I’m going to work hard at whatever I’m going to do. I’m going to work hard at being a leader. I’m going to work hard at learning the people side. I’m going to work hard at building the team. I’m going to work hard at these meetings. I’m going to work hard at planning and preparation. I’m going to work hard at scaling communication.”

The Negotiation That Showed the Problem

Jason was talking to somebody about hiring into a certain position the other day. They were discussing hours and they found themselves negotiating the lowest amount of hours in a work week for a certain amount of pay. The pay was quite considerable and the amount of negotiated hours was really low.

The person was really wanting to negotiate the lowest amount of hours. And Jason thought, yes, he believes in work-life balance. Yes, he believes in being home with families. But in construction, we work 55 hours. And this person was negotiating towards 40 in a starting position. He thought “I just don’t know that we’re a good fit because we have to be addicted to this industry. You got to be committed to this industry. You’ve got to be all in.”

Once you’ve started to work and grind and earn your stripes and you’re through that year, two year, three year field engineering position, that’s when we teach you the personal work-life balance, where you can really even out and level your hours. But you can’t do it in the phase of human development. You can’t do it until you first grind and you go into those entry level foreman, assistant superintendent, field engineering positions where you grind and you’re dedicated.

Jason came to the conclusion this might not be a really good fit because in order to become an expert, you need to put in the time. In order to become an expert, you need to put in the hard work. In order to become an expert, you have to be committed.

What It Takes to Be Successful in Construction

To be successful in construction, you’ve got to love that smell of cement. You’ve got to love the smell of asphalt. You’ve got to love the smell of construction. You’ve got to love those early morning backup alarms. You’ve got to become addicted to construction.

That’s one of the main reasons they do field engineer boot camps: to get people set up and headed in the right way and to actually, just like they do in SEAL training, show people and separate the people that are committed from the ones that aren’t and show people to themselves.

At the end of the day, if your parents taught you to work hard, get on your knees every day and thank God for them and what they taught you. And then get up on your feet and prove that you were listening. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why does work ethic matter more than technical skills when starting out?

Because everything else will only be as successful as your ability to work hard. Jason is 39 and after two decades of grinding, he’s finally out of debt, has a nicer house, decent truck, started his business doing what he’s passionate about. You have to earn it first. Don’t expect to land your dream job at 18 or 22. You need to prove yourself and prove to employers you’re worth your salt. Eventually it will only pay out for those who work hard, regardless of what happens with the economy or government.

Q: How do you develop an addictive relationship with hard work?

Find your addictive moment. Jason’s was cleaning that corner of his backyard at 10 years old. Getting gloves, bags, working through the nasty raspberry infested corner covered with stickers and bees. By the end he was addicted to the accomplishment, the hard work, the fatigue, the dirt, the sweat, the before and after. His other moment was working with Mexican workers who showed up at 6 AM and worked until done. He got addicted to blood running through his veins, being tired from real work, the camaraderie. Where are your moments?

Q: When should leaders stop doing physical work and focus on leadership work?

When you become a leader, you have to switch your paradigm. So many superintendents and managers are still out wanting to work hard and clean the back of the truck. Don’t escape to do things you already know. Work hard at what you’re supposed to be doing: building the team, having hard conversations, managing direct reports, holding remarkable meetings, scaling communication. Get rid of “I want to be liked” and “I have to work hard to be valuable.” Stay at the helm and steer the ship. Work hard at being a leader, not at doing work the team should do.

Q: Why can’t new workers start with work-life balance in construction?

In construction we work 55 hours. You can’t negotiate towards 40 in a starting position. You have to be addicted to this industry, committed, all in. Once you’ve worked and ground and earned your stripes through that year, two year, three year field engineering position, that’s when we teach personal work-life balance where you can level your hours. But you can’t do it in the phase of human development. You can’t do it until you first grind in those entry level positions. In order to become an expert you need to put in the time, the hard work, the commitment.

Q: What does it mean to be addicted to construction?

You’ve got to love that smell of cement. You’ve got to love the smell of asphalt. You’ve got to love the smell of construction. You’ve got to love those early morning backup alarms. You’ve got to become addicted to construction. Like Jason’s addictive moments: the corner of the backyard, the Mexican workers, blood running through his veins. Field engineer boot camps exist to get people set up right and, like SEAL training, separate the committed from the uncommitted and show people to themselves. If your parents taught you to work hard, thank God for them and prove you were listening.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

Posted in All

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 14 min

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains: Why 1% Better Each Day Changes Everything

Sometimes people think they can only focus on and engage in massive action to make any kind of change. And they don’t stick with the consistency of small marginal gains. Jason is very much one who advocates massive action in his life. But that’s not the only tool. We should have as many tools in our tool belt as we absolutely need to get done the task at hand.

We need to have massive action in our tool belt and we need to have small incremental gains, the aggregation of marginal gains, in our tool belt as well. We need to have that 1%, that discipline. And here’s why it matters more than most people realize.

The One Hundredth of a Second That Cost an Olympic Medal

Jason’s heart went out to one of the young Olympians named Torri Huske. Torri is an 18 year old swimmer from Arlington, Virginia. At the 2021 US Olympic team trials in Omaha, Nebraska, she swam a new American record time of 55.78 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly semifinal.

The next day on June 14th, she once again set a new American record of 55.66 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly finals. It was the third fastest time ever and she automatically qualified for a spot on the 2020 USA Olympic team. Competing in the 100 meter butterfly final on day three of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she finished fourth. One one hundredth of a second behind bronze medalist Emma McKeon of Australia.

Can you imagine this poor girl’s disappointment by not medaling because of one one hundredth of a second? She had spent years of her life preparing for this one event. She had worked so hard and she had given it her all only to finish one one hundredth of a second out of a medal.

This is an example of how close the margins are sometimes and how small little differences can make in the overall structure of winning. This is the Olympic games. One one hundredth of a second matters in the Olympic games.

How does that tie to construction? Sometimes when we’re looking at efforts that we use for scaling, for operational excellence, for improving a project, for recovering a project, we think it’s always going to happen with something massive, with some effort that’s going to change everything on a turn, everything on a dime. It’s going to be something just amazing and massive.

But in construction, we need to liken our efforts, our scaling, our improvement, our cultural changes, our lean journeys to this one one hundredth of a second story. Not focused on the possibility of losing or placing fourth. But the fact that one one hundredth of a second in this case meant not obtaining an Olympic medal. And failing to aggregate small marginal gains on a construction project may keep us from the full results because small things matter greatly.

How British Cycling Went From Mediocrity to Domination in Five Years

One of the Olympic events Jason found interesting to watch was cycling. Great Britain was ranked number one in cycling at the recent Summer Olympic Games and won a total of 12 medals, six of which were gold. However, they have not always been so dominant in cycling. The fate of British cycling changed in 2003. The organization which was the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain hired Dave Brailsford as its new performance director.

At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had endured nearly 100 years of mediocrity. Since 1908 until that time, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event.

In fact, the performance of British riders had been so underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear.

Brailsford had been hired to put British cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to the strategy that he referred to as the aggregation of marginal gains. This was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything that you do.

Brailsford said the whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything that you could think of that goes into riding a bike and then improve it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.

The Hundreds of One Percent Improvements That Created World Champions

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team:

  • They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for better grip.
  • They asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding.
  • They used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout.
  • The team tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor racing suits which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic.

But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find one percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas:

  • They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery.
  • They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold.
  • They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider.
  • They even painted the inside of the team truck white which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.

Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing where they won an outstanding 60% of the gold medals available. Four years later, when the Olympic Games came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven world records. That same year, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France.

The next year his teammate, Chris Froome, won the race and he would go on to win again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving the British team five Tour de France victories in six years. During the 10 year span from 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and 66 Paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is widely regarded as the most successful run in cycling history. They continued to dominate and won 12 medals in Tokyo. How does this happen? How does a team of previously ordinary athletes transform into world champions with tiny changes that, at first glance, would only make a modest difference at best?

Why Small Improvements Accumulate Into Remarkable Results

Why do small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results and how can we replicate this approach in our lives? It is easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

Too often we convince ourselves that massive success is only accomplished through massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

Meanwhile, improving 1% isn’t particularly notable. Sometimes it isn’t even noticeable, but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is outstanding. Here’s how the math works out. If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you will end up 37 times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1% worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.

What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more. When Jason or Tony Robbins talk about massive action, they’re talking about massive mental action to move forward and to take action. And this action sometimes will take the form of getting 1% better each day. What it takes for the mind to mentally prepare and queue up is massive. What it takes for us to actually make improvement on a physical level is very minor. This 1% can aggregate into really remarkable results.

How the Aggregation of Marginal Gains Applies to Construction

When you are attempting to improve your field operations, it’s going to be from the aggregation of marginal gains. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

  • Cleanliness improvements where you clean the site a little better each day until it becomes a standard everyone maintains.
  • Organization improvements where you label one more thing, stage one more area, create one more system until chaos becomes order.
  • Safety improvements where you correct one more hazard, hold one more safety talk, enforce one more standard until incidents drop.
  • Huddling with workers more consistently, aligning your meeting systems a little better, getting the team coordinated incrementally.
  • Making a focus on quality by doing daily quality, safety, and correction checks to make sure you’re outpacing entropy on a constant basis.

When you’re trying to improve your business, it’s going to be a little bit of finances over here. It’s going to be a little bit of marketing over there. It’s going to be a little bit of culture over here. You need to continue to move forward with the aggregation of marginal gains.

Someone once told Jason there’s too much stuff in the superintendent book. There’s too much here. How can you simplify down what a construction manager does into just three things? Jason got annoyed. Actually, he got a lot annoyed because in construction, unfortunately, there’s no way to simplify down what we do. It’s really about the aggregation of marginal gains in everything that we do. We get to be professionals and to improve everywhere possible.

Being a PM is complex. Being a project superintendent is complex. Being a PE and a field engineer is complex. And if we want to improve, it comes from mastery and it comes from the aggregation of marginal gains and doing what we do better each day. It requires us taking our lean journey. If we’re improving our business, our projects, our company, anything that we’re doing, it will come from the aggregation of marginal gains.

Think about British cycling. They didn’t find one magic solution. They found hundreds of one percent improvements. Better bike seats. Heated overshorts. Biofeedback sensors. Wind tunnel tested fabrics. Different massage gels. Hand washing techniques taught by a surgeon. The right pillows and mattresses. A white painted truck interior to spot dust.

None of those things alone created world champions. But all of them together, accumulated over time, transformed 100 years of mediocrity into the most successful run in cycling history.

That’s what happens in construction when you commit to the aggregation of marginal gains. You don’t need one massive breakthrough. You need hundreds of small improvements that compound over time. One percent better in planning. One percent better in coordination. One percent better in quality. One percent better in safety. One percent better in communication.

Do that every day for a year and you won’t be one percent better. You’ll be 37 times better. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why is 1% improvement better than waiting for one massive breakthrough?

Because it’s easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements daily. We convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action, so we put pressure on ourselves to make earth shattering improvements everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving 1% isn’t particularly notable and sometimes isn’t even noticeable, but it’s far more meaningful in the long run. If you get 1% better each day for one year, you end up 37 times better. What starts as a small win accumulates into something much more.

Q: How did British cycling go from 100 years of mediocrity to world domination?

Through the aggregation of marginal gains. Dave Brailsford’s philosophy was searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything. If you broke down everything that goes into riding a bike and improved it by 1%, you get a significant increase when you put them all together. They made hundreds of improvements: redesigned bike seats, heated overshorts, biofeedback sensors, wind tunnel tested fabrics, massage gel testing, hand washing training from a surgeon, optimized pillows and mattresses, white painted truck interiors to spot dust. Five years later they won 60% of gold medals at Beijing Olympics. Ten years later they had the most successful run in cycling history.

Q: What does the aggregation of marginal gains look like in construction?

Cleanliness a little better each day. Organization where you label one more thing until chaos becomes order. Safety where you correct one more hazard until incidents drop. Huddling with workers more consistently. Aligning meeting systems incrementally. Daily quality, safety, and correction checks to outpace entropy. A little bit of finance improvement, a little marketing, a little culture. It’s not one massive breakthrough. It’s hundreds of small improvements that compound. One percent better in planning, coordination, quality, safety, communication every day. Do that for a year and you’re not 1% better. You’re 37 times better.

Q: Why can’t we simplify construction management down to just three things?

Because in construction there’s no way to simplify down what we do. It’s really about the aggregation of marginal gains in everything we do. Being a PM is complex. Being a superintendent is complex. Being a field engineer is complex. If we want to improve, it comes from mastery and the aggregation of marginal gains, doing what we do better each day. British cycling didn’t win with three things. They won with hundreds of one percent improvements. That’s how construction excellence works too.

Q: How does one one hundredth of a second relate to construction projects?

Torri Huske lost an Olympic medal by one one hundredth of a second after years of preparation. In construction, we think improvement always happens with something massive that changes everything on a dime. But small things matter greatly. Failing to aggregate small marginal gains on a construction project may keep us from full results. One percent better bike seats didn’t create champions alone. But hundreds of one percent improvements accumulated into world domination. The same applies to construction. Small improvements in cleanliness, organization, safety, quality, coordination compound over time into remarkable results.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

Posted in All

The Huddle Board Should NOT Be in Your Head!

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 13 min

I had a burst of inspiration when Brandon Montero and I were doing a boot camp at Petty Coach Schmidt. It came together all of a sudden, and I realized I’d been complaining about two separate things for years without knowing how to connect them. Now it’s clear: your huddle board is in your head. And that’s exactly why you’re fighting fires.

Short answer: If the plan lives in the superintendent’s head, everyone has to come to the superintendent for every answer, and the day turns into firefighting. Put the plan on a visual huddle board (attack plan, six-week look-ahead, weekly work plan, logistics, roadblocks and production tracking) so people go to the board instead of to you, and you can get back to steering the ship.

The first time I started consulting and traveling around the country, I went to a job in Florida, about eight to ten years ago. The superintendent told me he was doing Lean. “Here’s the huddle board. Here’s this, here’s that.” We walked around the project and it was still unsafe, chaos, dirty, no organization. But the superintendent was proud. “Look at this, look at this.” And I’m thinking, “What’s going on?”

The chaos came from the fact that nobody knew the plan. The master schedule wasn’t anywhere to be seen. They didn’t know what the short interval schedule was. He didn’t have a weekly work plan. When I asked, “How do people know where they’re headed?” the superintendent said, “Oh, I tell them.” What do you mean you tell them? “Well, yeah. I have the plan. It’s all in my head.”

And that was the problem. The huddle board was in his mind. Nobody could see it. Nobody could reference it. Nobody could coordinate with it. They had to come to him for everything. And he was running around playing savior, fighting fires, burning through adrenaline, having too much of a sense of importance because he was so needed. But that’s not the way superintendents should do things. If you’re fighting fires, you’re not doing your job as a superintendent.

Why Is a Huddle Board in Your Head a Problem?

I’ve been complaining about two things for a long time. Number one: superintendents that are always fighting fires and never steering the ship. Number two: superintendents that don’t have a visual control system, that don’t have a huddle board, that don’t have the information posted where people can see it.

And it finally clicked. These aren’t two separate problems. They’re the same problem. The huddle board is in the superintendent’s head, which means everyone has to come to the superintendent for every question, every decision, every bit of information. Which means the superintendent is fighting fires all day instead of steering the ship.

Here’s what it looks like in practice. The superintendent has the master schedule, the short interval schedule, the weekly work plan, the logistics plan, the roadblock list, the production tracking, all of it in their mind. So when a foreman needs to know what’s happening next week, they come to the superintendent. When a trade partner needs to know where to stage material, they come to the superintendent. When someone needs to know what the critical path is, they come to the superintendent.

The superintendent spends all day answering questions that should be answered by a visual board. They’re playing savior. They’re burning through adrenaline. They feel important because they’re so needed. But they’re not doing their actual job, which is steering the ship, keeping the ship in orbit, sailing forward.

Meanwhile, the project is chaos because the plan changes every time the superintendent talks to someone. Because it’s in their head, it’s not stable. It’s not visible. It’s not consistent. Different people get different versions depending on when they ask and what mood the superintendent is in.

What Should a Huddle Board Show?

If the huddle board is an actual visual board on the project site, it shows the overall attack plan schedule. It shows the six-week make-ready look-ahead, the weekly work plan, the logistics plan, and where materials are being staged. Production tracking. Roadblocks. All of the critical things that we would have to have or that we would get to have on a huddle board.

People will go reference that visually and reference the plan instead of referencing the plan inside the leader’s mind. And that changes everything. Instead of coming to the superintendent with every question, they go to the board. They see what’s happening this week. They see what’s coming in six weeks. They see where materials go. They see the roadblocks being tracked. They coordinate with each other based on the visual plan.

The superintendent stops fighting fires because the fires don’t start. People have the information they need. The plan is stable and visible. Coordination happens at the huddle board, not through the superintendent’s phone. The superintendent can actually do their job: steering the ship, solving the problems that can’t be solved by the team, improving the system, thinking ahead.

This whole time I’d been complaining about two separate things without knowing how to fix them. And now it’s clear. Get the huddle board out of your head and onto the wall. Visual control systems aren’t optional. They’re fundamental.

How Do You Build a Huddle Board That Works?

Huddle boards are not easy to make. You might need to spend some money on it. You might need to print some things. You might need to experiment. Here’s what it’s probably going to look like for you.

First, you’re going to get some outlines. You’re going to read the book Elevating Construction Superintendents and get the outline and say, “Okay, these are the things I want to show. I want to show my attack plan. I want to show my make-ready look-ahead. I want to show my weekly work plan. I’m going to show my roadblocks, my logistics, my sequence maps. I want to show my shout-outs, my daily agenda.” These typical things, these are the things you want to show.

Then you’re going to start printing things and it’s going to be too small or it’s going to be too awkward or you’re going to have to tape things together or you’re going to have the huddle board outside and it’s going to rain on it or it’s going to blow down or you’ll have stickies and the stickies are going to fall down. All the things. All the things that go wrong.

And you’re going to give up. And then the huddle board is going to go back into your mind because you don’t have to use the printer because you don’t have to use the tape because you don’t have to use the scissors and because you don’t have to pick up the stickies. But that is an absolute mistake. We have to press forward with the huddle board.

Here’s what it can look like next:

  • Start experimenting with different prints and formats to see what works for your specific site and team size.
  • Get a huddle board that’s weatherproof so rain doesn’t destroy your plan and wind doesn’t blow it down.
  • Get a huddle board that’s larger so people can actually see it from a distance during morning huddles.
  • Order professional signs once you know what works, because the investment pays for itself in reduced chaos.
  • Get a 4-by-8 or 4-by-6 sheet of dry-erase whiteboard with sticky-sized boxes for your look-ahead schedule.
  • Print your Takt plan on coroplast since it doesn’t change much, making it permanent and professional.
  • Get your maps printed on board with plexiglass on top so you can write with dry-erase markers over it for logistics.
  • Format a roadblock board with dry-erase Expo markers in a little box screwed to the board with an eraser.
  • Print your agenda that you want to follow constantly so it’s always visible and consistent.
  • Add a piece of string with tacks on top and bottom to show the current date on the Takt plan.
  • Switch from stickies to dry-erase markers if stickies keep falling off in your environment.
  • Add KPIs to your board that you can track visually so everyone sees progress.

You just start improving and improving it until you end up like these jobs that have really remarkable huddle boards and huddle rooms and conference rooms. On YouTube and on the Elevate Construction site, I show examples of these boards and huddle areas, remarkable ones that superintendents use day in and day out. They do a very good job and it’s very easy and it’s very self-sustaining.

What Does It Take to Keep a Huddle Board Going?

To get to that point, it’s going to take what David Goggins calls all the non-cognitive skills. Grit, determination, stick-to-it-iveness, an absolute fierce desire to get it done and to get it done right. This is what it’s going to take for you to get these huddle boards set up. It’s going to take all the non-cognitive skills.

The easy thing is to give up after the first attempt. The stickies fell off. The rain ruined it. It was too small. People couldn’t see it. So you put the plan back in your head where it’s easy, where you don’t need equipment, where you don’t need to print anything.

But that’s exactly the problem. When the plan is in your head, you become the bottleneck. You become the single point of failure. You fight fires all day because everyone needs you for everything. You never get to actually lead because you’re too busy being a human huddle board.

The hard thing is to press through the experimentation phase. To try different sizes. To invest in weatherproof materials. To order professional signs. To keep iterating until you have a huddle board system that actually works, that people actually use, that actually eliminates the need for you to be the information source for everything.

And to make it easier on you, Jason has put resources on the elevateconstructionist.com website. If you go to field resources, then to lean signage, and scroll down, there are all the boards you need. Hoist boards, potable water, project expectation boards, huddle agenda boards, teaming principles boards, construction planner system, weekly meeting plan, quality process, team coverage plan, project delivery board, day plan huddle board, six-week make-ready look-ahead board, banners. All this stuff. It’s all formatted there, free. You can replicate it, take an image, print it out yourself, or have it made through a signage company.

Why Are Visual Boards One of the First Things to Set Up?

The reason Jason at Elevate Construction, one of the first things he did was post these signs available for people to order, is because it’s one of the first fundamental things you have to have in your company and on your project to run a stable site. These visual control systems. We can’t do without them. We just can’t run a project without them because it’s fundamental.

When I first started this, and in every Lean scaling effort I’ve been part of, step one was: get the signs ready. Step two: get your trailer ready. Get your huddle board areas ready and get it out of your head because it’s just that fundamental.

Right now, superintendents are playing savior with people, burning through adrenaline, having too much of a sense of importance because they’re so needed. But that’s not the way superintendents should do things. If you’re fighting fires, then you’re not doing your job as a superintendent. Or if you work with a superintendent that’s fighting fires, they’re not doing their job as a superintendent. It shouldn’t be done. I don’t want you to do it. I want you to stop doing it.

The answer is to get your huddle board set up. Get it out of your head. If you’re running multiple projects or one, or if you have multiple areas or if you’re very busy, as long as you get your instructions, your to-do list items, everything that you know needs to be done for the project clearly communicated in huddles, and then allow it to remain on the huddle boards, you are going to be wildly successful because that’s where people will go.

And you can go back to doing what you should be doing, which is steering the ship, keeping the ship in orbit, and sailing forward.

For more on visual systems, see Total Participation & Visual Systems.

So here is the challenge: get the huddle board out of your head and onto the wall, press through the experimentation phase, and keep iterating until people go to the board instead of to you.

Bottom line: Get the huddle board out of your head and onto the wall, and you can go back to steering the ship instead of fighting fires.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

On we go.

FAQ

Why is having the plan in my head a problem if I’m available to answer questions?

Because you become the bottleneck and the single point of failure. When the plan is in your head, everyone has to come to you for every question. You spend all day answering questions that should be answered by a visual board.

What should actually be on a huddle board?

The overall attack plan schedule, the six-week make-ready look-ahead, the weekly work plan, the logistics plan, production tracking, roadblocks, sequence maps, the daily agenda, shout-outs, and KPIs. Everything the team needs to coordinate without coming to you.

How do I get started if I’ve never built a huddle board before?

Start by reading Elevating Construction Superintendents to get the outline of what to show. Expect the first version to be too small, awkward, or get ruined by weather. Go to elevateconstructionist.com, field resources, lean signage for free templates you can print or order.

Why do superintendents resist visual boards and keep plans in their head?

Because it’s easier in the short term. But keeping it in your head makes you the bottleneck. Most people give up after the first failed attempt.

What’s the difference between fighting fires and steering the ship?

Fighting fires is spending all day answering questions, solving immediate problems, and being the information source for everything. Steering the ship is having visual systems that answer the routine questions, solving problems the team can’t solve themselves, improving the system, and thinking ahead. If you’re fighting fires, you’re not steering.

People Also Read:
Out of Your Head, Off of Your Shoulders: The Afternoon Foreman Huddle

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Takt Virtual Training)
-Check out our YouTube channel for more info: (Elevate Construction on YouTube)
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Elevate Construction Podcast)
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Training Programs and Certifications)
-The Takt Book: (The Takt Book on Amazon)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction. As the company’s Founder and COO, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

Posted in All

Worker Lunch Areas

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 10 min

If Your Workers Are Eating on a Bucket, Your Project Is Telling Them Something

Here’s the deal: the lunch area on your jobsite is a message. Not a policy. Not a line item. A message. And right now, on most projects in this industry, that message reads something like this you are here to produce, and where you rest is not our concern. Workers figure it out. They find a piece of open floor, a cooler they brought from home, a spot near the hoist base that’s out of the wind. They make do. And they notice, every single day, that nobody designed this part of the project for them.

That’s not neutral. It accumulates. And it shapes how those workers feel about the company, the project, and the leadership team managing it in ways no compensation package can fully undo.

What the Industry Has Normalized

For decades, the construction industry has treated worker rest areas as an afterthought. Order the porta-potties. Check. Set up a trailer for the project team. Check. Design a real lunch space where fifty workers can eat a meal in dignity and comfort? That question never makes the mobilization checklist on most projects. By the time someone raises it, the project is underway and there’s no obvious place to put it, no budget was set aside for it, and the answer becomes “workers can use the break area near the hoist if they want.”

The break area near the hoist is where deliveries queue. It’s not shaded. The ground is uneven. There’s nowhere to store food. And in the middle of the Phoenix summer, it is a place where a person can genuinely suffer during a thirty-minute break that is supposed to restore them for the second half of the workday.

Jason Schroeder teaches that bathrooms are Lean indicators the first signal of whether a project is truly Lean. Clean, well-maintained facilities signal that leadership respects the workers who use them. If the bathrooms aren’t good enough for the project management team’s grandmother, they’re not good enough for the workers. The same principle applies to the lunch area, and the standard is just as clear: if it isn’t good enough for you to eat in, it isn’t good enough for your crew.

A Story About What It Communicates

I was on a project years ago where the superintendent one of the best I’ve worked alongside made a decision early in the project that surprised everyone on the team. Before the first trade mobilized, he had a conditioned tent set up with tables, chairs, refrigerators, microwaves, and a freezer stocked with popsicles. The trades came in and saw it on day one. I watched the reaction. These were experienced crews who had worked on dozens of projects. Most of them had never seen anything like it.

By the end of the first week, that lunch area was the most talked-about thing on the project among the trades. Not the schedule, not the production system, not the Takt plan the lunch area. Because it told them something none of those other things could. It said: we thought about you before you arrived. We knew you’d need a place to rest, and we built it before you even asked. That shift in the relationship between the general contractor and the trade workforce didn’t stay at lunchtime. It showed up in how quickly trades raised roadblocks, how readily they participated in huddles, how much discretionary effort they brought to the zones. You cannot buy that with a dollar-per-hour increase. You earn it by caring about the whole person, not just the hours they’re producing.

What a Proper Worker Lunch Area Includes

The image in this post shows what a dignified worker lunch area looks like when it’s designed with intentionality. It is not expensive. It is not complicated. But it communicates an entirely different standard than the alternative.

Tables and comfortable seating are the non-negotiable foundation. Workers need a flat surface to eat at and a chair that supports their body after a physically demanding morning. The area needs to be conditioned cooled in summer, heated in winter because the purpose of the break is recovery, and a worker who spends their lunch sweating in an uncooled tent is not recovered when they return to work. Lighting matters. A well-lit space is a welcoming space. A dark or dim tent signals that this area wasn’t thought through.

Microwaves and refrigerators in quantities that actually serve the crew solve the fundamental problem of workers having to eat whatever survived in a warm bag until noon. Many workers bring food from home because eating out is expensive, and that food needs to be stored cold and heated when the break arrives. A single microwave for fifty workers creates a line. Two or three changes the experience. A clean refrigerator, stocked or available for workers to use, shows that the project team thought through the logistics of feeding people over an eight-to-ten-hour day.

Cell phone charging stations respect the reality of how workers stay connected to their families during the workday. It’s a small addition that costs almost nothing and communicates that the project understands workers are full human beings with relationships outside the fence line. Designated lunch pail storage a shelf, a rack, a labeled area keeps personal belongings organized and off the floor, which is its own dignity signal. And condiments: salt, pepper, hot sauce, napkins. These are small. But they are the detail that says someone thought about the experience of eating here, not just the fact of providing a space to do it.

On large sites, staggering lunch times by trade prevents overcrowding and gives every crew a real break rather than a rushed scramble for table space. The freezer stocked with popsicles on a hundred-degree afternoon is a small gesture but ask any worker who has ever pulled one out at the end of a scorching summer day how it felt, and the answer will not be small.

Watch for these signals that your project’s rest facilities are falling short of the standard:

  • Workers eating at the hoist base, on material pallets, or in their vehicles rather than in a designated lunch area
  • A lunch tent that is unconditioned during summer or winter mobilization
  • One microwave or no microwave for crews of thirty or more
  • No refrigeration available, requiring workers to eat food that has been warming since 6 AM
  • No charging stations, forcing workers to leave work areas during the day to check in with family

Why This Is a Production Decision, Not Just a Welfare Decision

Workers and foremen are the only people who actually add value in construction they are the ones who put work in place. Everyone else in the system, from project executives to designers to superintendents, is necessary but exists to support the people doing the installing. Until the environment those workers operate inside is clean, safe, organized, and dignified, the system has not arrived where it needs to be.

The lunch area is part of that environment. A worker who returns from a thirty-minute break in a cool, comfortable space with a warm meal is not the same worker who returns from thirty minutes on a bucket in the sun. Their physical recovery is different. Their emotional state is different. Their relationship to the project and to the company is different. That difference shows up in the afternoon production numbers, in the care taken with handoffs, in the willingness to raise a problem rather than work around it.

Jason Schroeder teaches that when workers feel listened to and respected, magic happens the project becomes a team rather than a collection of separate subcultures. The lunch area is one of the most tangible, visible ways to begin earning that trust before a single production meeting happens. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. That work begins with the conditions workers experience every day including the thirty minutes they get to step away and be human.

Take Care of Your People Everything Else Gets Easier

Here is the challenge. Before your next project mobilizes, put the worker lunch area on the preconstruction checklist not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate design decision. Where will it go? What size does it need to be to seat the peak crew count? Is it conditioned? How many microwaves and refrigerators does the crew size require? Is it close enough to the work that a thirty-minute break doesn’t become a fifteen-minute break by the time workers walk to it and back?

Answer those questions before mobilization day, and then build what the answers require. Not the minimum compliant version. The version that says: we see you, we care about you, and we built this for you.

The best crews in this industry don’t stay on projects only because the pay is right. They stay because they feel respected. They go the extra distance because the project went the extra distance for them first.

As Jason Schroeder teaches: “Respect for people is not soft it’s a production strategy.” Build a lunch area that proves it.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does a worker lunch area matter for project performance?

A worker who recovers properly during a break returns to the afternoon with more physical and mental capacity. Comfort during rest is directly linked to sustained production quality throughout the day.

What is the minimum a proper lunch area should include?

Tables, comfortable seating, air conditioning or heat, microwaves and refrigerators sufficient for the crew size, and a designated area for lunch pail storage sized to serve the peak workforce without overcrowding.

Why stagger lunch times on large projects?

Staggering by trade prevents overcrowding, ensures every worker gets a real break with table space and equipment access, and keeps the lunch area calm and functional rather than rushed.

How do small gestures like condiments and popsicles matter?

They signal that someone thought about the experience of being there not just the fact of having a space. That level of care communicates respect in a way workers remember and respond to.

How does the lunch area connect to winning over the workforce?

Workers who experience genuine care in the physical environment extend more trust to the leadership team. That trust shows up in huddle participation, roadblock reporting, quality care, and discretionary effort across the entire project.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

Posted in All

Magnetic Spider Box

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 9 min

The Cords on Your Floor Are Telling You Something

Here’s the deal: every cord running across a construction floor is a design decision somebody didn’t make. Not a bad crew. Not a careless foreman. A system gap. Nobody designed a better option, so the extension cord went to the floor, the spider box followed it, and within a week the corridor looks like a tangle of orange and yellow that every worker has learned to step over without thinking. The floor clutter becomes invisible until someone trips, or a scaffold can’t pass, or a new worker on their first day nearly goes down in the middle of a pour. That’s when you realize what you normalized.

What Cord Clutter Is Doing to Your Project

Walk any active mid-rise floor during an intensive MEP phase. Count the cords crossing pedestrian paths. Count how many times in a single hour equipment has to pause or reroute because a power distribution point is planted in the middle of a travel lane. Count the seconds workers spend stepping around, lifting over, or re-routing cords that were there yesterday and will be there tomorrow. None of it shows up in the schedule. None of it gets attributed to the power distribution setup. It just gets absorbed as friction and friction accumulates quietly until the pace of work reflects it and nobody can explain why.

Cord management is listed by Jason Schroeder as a core element of 5S in construction precisely because it generates waste across multiple categories at once. Motion waste from navigating around cords. Waiting waste when equipment can’t pass. Safety risk from tripping hazards at the point of work. And a visual environment that signals disorder which means problems hide in the clutter longer before anyone catches them. A clean floor reveals issues early. A floor covered in cords hides everything.

The System Failed Them

I was on a project years ago where a journeyman went down hard stepping over a cord run on a concrete floor. Not a dramatic fall but he tweaked his knee badly enough to be off the job for two weeks. When we did the review, the cord had been in that same position for eleven days. Eleven days of every person on that floor stepping over it. Nobody removed it. Nobody raised it. Not because they were complacent because the system had normalized it. No one had established a standard that cords stay off pedestrian paths. No one had provided a tool to put the spider box somewhere other than the ground.

That worker’s injury was not a behavior failure. It was a system failure. The system allowed a tripping hazard to persist for nearly two weeks on an active floor because nobody had designed the alternative. They didn’t fail the system. The system failed them.

What the Magnetic Spider Box Actually Solves

The magnetic spider box shown in this post takes the spider box a piece of equipment that has lived on the floor since construction began using temporary power and removes it from the floor permanently. The mechanism is industrial-strength coated N52 neodymium magnets on the rear mounting plate, each rated at approximately 150 pounds of holding force. The unit mounts directly to a steel column in under a minute with no tools, no drilling, no screws, and no damage to the structure. It comes off just as fast when the scope moves and the power point needs to move with it.

The result is immediate and completely visible. The access path is clear. Cords run vertically from the column to the equipment rather than horizontally across the floor. The tripping hazard ceases to exist because the source has been elevated. The six standard receptacles give the crew full functionality nothing about the power capacity or distribution changes. The only thing that changes is where the unit lives, and that one change resolves the safety problem, the motion waste problem, and the zone cleanliness problem simultaneously.

Watch for these signals that temporary power is generating unnecessary waste on your project:

  • Spider boxes sitting on the floor inside active pedestrian or equipment travel paths
  • Extension cords crossing corridor paths at floor level in multiple locations
  • Scaffolding or rolling equipment requiring cord relocation before it can transit the zone
  • Temporary power that hasn’t moved with the work as the scope advanced through the building

Teaching the Framework: Nothing Hits the Floor

Jason Schroeder teaches one of the most practical 5S principles in construction: nothing hits the floor. Materials don’t hit the floor. Tools don’t hit the floor. Packaging doesn’t hit the floor. And power distribution equipment doesn’t hit the floor either. When something occupies the floor that shouldn’t be there, it forces everyone in the zone to adapt their movement around it. That’s motion waste. That’s waiting waste. That’s a safety condition waiting to activate. And it broadcasts a standard whatever is on the floor defines the setpoint for what’s acceptable in that zone.

5S Set in Order says every element of the work environment needs a defined place that is accessible without creating hazards for the people around it. For temporary power, that place has always been the floor not by design, but by default. The magnetic spider box gives it a real place: mounted to the column, off the floor, out of the travel plane. That’s Set in Order applied to a problem the industry has accepted for decades without questioning it.

The rapid deployment time is equally important to how the system supports production. Under one minute from grab to mounted means a crew leader can relocate the power point as the scope moves through the zone without scheduling a task, without waiting for an electrician to be available for a setup move, and without disrupting the production rhythm to manage a logistics detail. The unit moves with the work. That’s point-of-use thinking applied to temporary power the power is where the work is, when the work needs it, without creating problems for everything around it.

Why This Protects the People Doing the Work

There is a human dimension behind the cord clutter conversation that rarely gets acknowledged. The worker who has spent ten years in the field has stepped over thousands of cords. They have compensated for dozens of spider boxes in bad locations. They have rerouted equipment around temporary power setups that nobody thought through. That cumulative adaptation the daily, invisible tax of fighting a work environment that was not designed for them erodes the experience of the craft. It says the people responsible for this project didn’t think about what this floor needs to feel safe and organized. When leaders design the environment intentionally when they eliminate the cord clutter, mount the power off the floor, and build a zone that communicates care workers feel it. That’s not a soft outcome. That’s a production outcome. Crews who are not fighting their environment build better work faster and with more pride in the result.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Designing the work environment from the staging yard to the spider box is where that stability becomes real.

Design the Work. Don’t React to It.

Walk your project this week and look at every spider box on every active floor. Ask one question: is it on the floor? If the answer is yes, ask the follow-up: did we design it that way, or did it just end up there? For the vast majority of projects, it ended up there. Nobody made a decision. Nobody had a better option. The magnetic spider box is that better option simple, strong, fast, and completely reversible as the work moves.

Paul Akers says fix what bugs you. Cords on the floor have bugged every person who has ever worked on a construction project. The tool to fix it exists. Use it.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a magnetic spider box and how does it work?

It’s a power distribution unit with industrial N52 neodymium magnets on the rear plate that mount directly to a steel column no tools, no drilling, in under a minute.

How strong is the magnetic mount and is it safe to use in the field?

Each coated N52 magnet provides approximately 150 pounds of holding force, making the unit stable under normal construction operating conditions and easy to reposition as work moves.

Does the magnetic mounting damage the steel column?

No. The magnets engage the column surface without penetration, preserving structural integrity and eliminating the permission and repair cycle that comes with drilling into building steel.

How does this connect to Lean construction and 5S?

It’s a direct application of 5S Set in Order and the “nothing hits the floor” principle giving temporary power a designated place off the floor so access paths stay clear and tripping hazards are designed out.

When should the unit be moved as the project progresses?

Reposition it at every zone transition so cord runs stay short and power stays at the point of work the same discipline applied to mobile material carts and rolling tool stations.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

Posted in All

What Constitutes Abandonment Of Construction Project?

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 11 min

Construction Project Abandonment: What Every Builder Needs to Know Before Walking Off

There is a moment that happens on troubled projects where someone reaches a breaking point. The owner isn’t paying. The contractor isn’t showing up. Communication has completely broken down. And somebody, in a moment of frustration, makes a decision that feels justified and turns out to be catastrophic. They walk off the project. They stop funding it. They disappear from the site and stop returning calls. In that moment, the person making the decision believes they are standing their ground. What they are actually doing is triggering a legal process that can cost them far more than the dispute that started it.

This is a conversation the industry does not have often enough, and when it does have it, the language gets buried in contract terms that most field people and many project managers never read carefully. The goal here is to bring it down to field level what abandonment actually is, who it applies to, what the consequences look like, and how to protect yourself before any of it becomes necessary.

What Abandonment Actually Means

Abandonment in construction has a specific legal meaning, and that meaning matters. Abandonment is the intentional and unjustifiable stopping of work on a project. Both words carry weight. Intentional means it was a choice, not a circumstance. Unjustifiable means there was no contractually valid basis for making it. When both conditions are present a deliberate choice to stop work, made without legal standing abandonment has occurred, and the consequences follow from the contract, not from whoever was right in the underlying dispute.

This is not just something that happens to contractors. Owners can abandon a project too. An owner who stops funding the work, fails to provide required approvals, denies site access, or suspends work indefinitely without contractual cause has entered abandonment territory just as much as a contractor who walks off the site. The dynamic runs in every direction it can happen with or to owners, with or to general contractors, and with or to trade partners and subcontractors. The legal exposure is real regardless of which party triggers it.

A Story That Makes the Stakes Concrete

Here’s a story that stays with me. An acquaintance of mine did contracting work small jobs, foundation work, residential scale. An owner started paying late, then inconsistently, then not at all in the way that had been agreed. My acquaintance got frustrated, got angry, and walked off the project. He told the owner he was done and stopped showing up.

He did not talk to a lawyer. He did not issue formal notices. He did not follow the contractual provisions that would have given him a legal path off the project. He just left.

The outcome was brutal. He was contractually on the hook to finish the scope of work regardless of the payment dispute. The owner pursued legal action. By the time it was over, my acquaintance was down around $120,000 for a small contracting business, that is a recovery that takes years. He learned the hardest way possible that walking off the project because the owner made him mad is not a legal strategy. It is an abandonment, and the contract owns the consequences.

How Abandonment Shows Up in the Field

Abandonment rarely announces itself. It usually looks like something else first slow deterioration that becomes a crisis. The practical signs are recognizable once you know what you’re watching for.

On the contractor side, abandonment typically shows up as crews disappearing from the site, work slowing to a crawl or stopping entirely, no coordination or supervision remaining, and a contractor who has stopped responding to communication. On the owner side, it shows up as funding stopping, approvals being withheld, access being denied, and decisions required for the project to move forward going unanswered.

The critical point is that none of those behaviors are self-justifying. No matter how legitimate the grievance on either side, unilaterally stopping performance without following the contractual process is what turns a business dispute into an abandonment claim.

The Contract Provisions That Govern This

Every prime agreement contains clauses that address how the parties can legally exit, pause, or restructure the project when things go wrong. These are the provisions that lawyers spend most of their time in when an abandonment situation develops. Understanding that they exist and where to find them is the first protection. The specific clauses to know include termination for default, termination for convenience, suspension of work, notice and cure periods, force majeure provisions, and payment clauses.

Each of those provisions establishes constraints and parameters. Termination for default says under what conditions a party is in default and what the other party can do about it. Notice and cure periods define how long a defaulting party has to fix the problem before termination becomes valid. Suspension of work defines when and how work can be paused and what obligations accompany that pause. These are not formalities. They are the difference between a legally protected exit and an unjustifiable abandonment.

You do not need to memorize contract law. You need to know these provisions exist in your contract, know where to find them, and commit to involving your legal counsel before acting on them.

Why Documentation Is Your Best Protection

Before any abandonment situation reaches the point of legal action, the record of what happened becomes everything. Lawyers, arbitrators, and courts work from documentation. They cannot work from what someone intended, what someone remembered saying, or what the right answer clearly should have been. They work from what exists in writing, in photos, and in the formal record.

This is why daily reports matter. Not as administrative overhead, but as the factual record of what was happening on the site and when. Accurate daily reports, site photos, schedule updates with a clear path to finish, payment records, proper emails, and formal notices are the documentation that protects both parties in the event that a dispute escalates. Without them, everything becomes hearsay. With them, the record speaks for itself.

The documentation discipline that good projects run every day as standard practice is the same discipline that protects those projects when things go wrong. It is not separate work. It is the same work, done accurately, consistently, and with the understanding that it may eventually matter in ways that nobody hoped it would.

Warning Signs That Abandonment Risk Is Building

These signals, on either side of the table, indicate that a project is drifting toward abandonment territory and that intervention is needed now:

  • Payment is chronically late, disputed, or being withheld without formal written notice or contractual basis.
  • Communication from a key party has slowed dramatically or stopped, and requests for information are going unanswered.
  • Crews have reduced without explanation, and measurable progress has stopped while the schedule continues to slip.
  • Required approvals, decisions, or access needed to continue work are being withheld without a formal process.
  • Threats even informal ones, even in passing have been made about stopping work or walking off the project.

That last one matters more than most people realize. An email that says “I’m done” or a phone call where someone says they’re walking off can trigger abandonment even if the person intended it as a frustration expression rather than a legal declaration. Be careful with language when disputes are active.

What the Consequences Actually Look Like

When abandonment is established, the consequences are significant and can compound. The party found to have abandoned the project may face termination and replacement contractor costs which is exactly what Jason’s acquaintance faced, and which are often the most immediate and largest financial hit. Beyond that, back charges and damages can be pursued for costs the non-abandoning party incurred as a result. Liquidated damages for schedule delays may apply and may compound with every day the project remains delayed. Performance bond claims can be filed, which trigger their own legal process. Litigation or arbitration follows, which consumes time, money, and organizational energy at a scale that dwarfs almost any field dispute. And behind all of that sits the loss of reputation and future work, which is the cost that doesn’t show up in any settlement but affects revenue for years afterward.

None of those consequences require the abandoning party to have been wrong about the underlying dispute. A contractor can be completely right that the owner failed to pay properly and still lose badly on the abandonment claim because they did not follow the contractual process for responding to that failure.

What to Do Instead

The path that protects every party is consistent, and it starts well before a situation becomes critical. Intervene early when problems develop payment issues, coordination failures, and schedule concerns are all easier to resolve before they become crises. Always involve legal counsel before making any decision that touches the contract, including what you put in emails. Issue formal notices before considering any form of work stoppage the notice and cure process exists precisely to give both parties a path to resolution that does not trigger abandonment. Bring on additional support where it is needed rather than letting a performance gap compound. Maintain a path to finish on the schedule and communicate it clearly. Negotiate a reset if the relationship can support one. And if termination becomes unavoidable, prepare for it properly through the contract process rather than through a unilateral decision to stop.

Everybody is negative about lawyers until they need one. When a dispute involves the contract and the ability to perform or get paid, that is the moment legal counsel earns everything they cost. Talk to yours before sending the email. Before making the call. Before saying anything that could be characterized as a threat to abandon.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow and build the documentation discipline and communication standards that protect projects before disputes ever reach the contract clause level. We are there to build and to have relationships and to improve the industry. Not to fight.

A Challenge for Builders

Walk your current project this week and ask honestly whether the documentation is accurate enough to protect you if something goes wrong. Are daily reports being filed? Are site photos being taken? Are formal notices going out when they should? Are payment records clean? If the answer is weak, the fix is simple and immediate. Start the discipline today, before you need it. Because the time to build the record is not after the dispute starts. It is every single day before it.

As W. Edwards Deming said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is construction project abandonment and who does it apply to?

Abandonment is the intentional and unjustifiable stopping of work without following the contractual process for doing so. It applies to all parties owners, general contractors, and trade partners and triggers legal consequences regardless of who was right in the underlying dispute.

Can a contractor walk off a project if the owner stops paying?

Not without following the contractual process. Payment disputes must be addressed through the notice, cure, and termination provisions in the contract. Walking off without following those steps constitutes abandonment, which can expose the contractor to replacement costs, back charges, liquidated damages, and litigation even if the owner was genuinely at fault.

Why does documentation matter so much in abandonment situations?

Because legal proceedings work from the written record, not from what someone intended or remembered. Accurate daily reports, site photos, formal notices, payment records, and proper emails are what protect both parties when a dispute escalates and they are built through the daily discipline of good project documentation, not as a crisis response.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

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How To Save Money On Construction Projects

Posted on by Jason Schroeder
Read 11 min

How to Save Money on Construction Projects: The Counterintuitive Strategies That Actually Work

Every project team under budget pressure eventually reaches for the same tools. Cut the soft costs. Trim the team. Compress the schedule. Reduce the scope of preconstruction. Speed up procurement. And every time, those cuts feel responsible in the moment and show up as expensive mistakes in the field. The real strategies for saving money on construction projects are counterintuitive. Nobody naturally thinks of them first. They run opposite to the instincts that budget pressure tends to produce. But they are tried, proven, and supported by some of the most rigorous research done on project outcomes anywhere in the world.

Here’s the deal. Money is saved upstream, not downstream. It is saved in planning, not in cutting. It is saved through integration, not through isolation. And it is saved by designing systems that protect the work instead of systems that push harder against a schedule that was never right to begin with.

The Pain: Budget Pressure Produces the Wrong Instincts

When a project is over budget or trending that way, the instinct is to reduce. Reduce the team. Reduce the preconstruction investment. Reduce consultant involvement. Reduce the scope of design reviews. Reduce the trade partner engagement. Reduce the training. Every one of those reductions looks like responsible stewardship on the day it gets made. Every one of them produces downstream costs that are larger than the savings that triggered them.

The pattern is predictable. A team compresses preconstruction to save three weeks and spends six months in the field chasing design gaps. A PM cuts the Lean consultant to save a fee and loses the production rhythm that would have saved five times that in rework. An owner skips the design assist process with trade partners to move faster into documents and discovers six months later that the routing decisions made without trade input are costing a fortune to correct. The savings happen on paper. The costs land in concrete, steel, and labor.

The Failure Pattern: Cutting What You Should Be Protecting

Here’s how teams drift into this trap. Budget pressure is real. Schedule pressure is real. And when leadership asks for a number, the fastest place to find one is in the soft cost column the preconstruction line items, the consultant fees, the training budget, the integrated planning time. Those numbers are visible, they feel controllable, and cutting them rarely produces an immediate crisis. The crisis arrives three months later, when the gaps they were designed to prevent start surfacing in the field.

The book How Big Things Get Done analyzed a database of over sixteen thousand representative projects from around the world. Its finding is unambiguous. A failure to plan in preconstruction with the right trained team and the right systems is the main root cause for project failure. Not field execution. Not trade partner performance. Not external risk events. Upstream planning failure. That finding is not a theory. It is the distilled pattern from thousands of projects across every major construction type. The teams that saved money at the front of the project paid far more at the back.

What Actually Reduces Cost: Preconstruction Done Well

Preconstruction is where money is saved not recovered, saved. Done well, it does several things simultaneously. It designs the project thoroughly enough that the field team can build from a complete set of coordinated documents rather than RFIs. It plans the build with real input from the people who will execute it. It runs feasibility studies not just from a development standpoint but from a build standpoint looking at the schedule, the installation sequence, and the logistics before any of them get locked in by circumstances. It brings in the team early enough that cost-reduction strategies can actually be implemented instead of just identified too late to act on.

The mitigation of black swans those large, unpredicted problems that derail projects and blow past contingency also happens in preconstruction. Chris Voss writes about black swans as the unexpected information that changes everything. In construction, the equivalent is the risk that surfaces mid-build and rewrites the budget. Good preconstruction finds those risks on paper, where they cost almost nothing to address, rather than in the field, where they can cost everything.

Lean Implementation at Scale

The second major cost-reduction strategy is implementing Lean properly at scale throughout the project. This is not a cultural initiative or a philosophical overlay. It is a production system decision with direct cost implications. When Lean is implemented correctly not for the first time on a learning curve, but with genuine competence built through repetition the financial outcomes are measurable: better pricing from trade partners because the coordination environment protects their production, better materials sourcing through Lean logistics staging, reduced contingency draw because the risks that trigger contingency never materialize, and a more streamlined team because the system does the coordination that headcount is usually hired to manage reactively.

Good quality from the start means no rework. No rework means the trade partners make money on the project. Trade partners who make money perform at a higher level, collaborate more openly, and price the next project more competitively. Flow on the jobsite means trades are not being stacked or rushed. Flow protects margins because rushed work produces defects, and defects are one of the most expensive wastes a project absorbs. Lean implementation is not a cost. It is the system that prevents the costs that blow the budget.

Design Optimization as a Cost Strategy

Design optimization is one of the most underused cost-reduction tools available to project teams, and it operates primarily in preconstruction. Here’s how it works. A bottleneck in the schedule is pulling the end date out, increasing general conditions and general requirements costs for every additional week the project runs. Rather than accepting that bottleneck as fixed, the team redesigns to it narrows it, sequences around it, or selects building systems that eliminate it. The same logic applies to material selection, structural systems, MEP routing, and enclosure strategies. Every one of those is a cost variable that can be optimized in design and locked in as a cost saving before the work begins.

The key is that design optimization requires time and the right people in the room. It does not happen in compressed preconstruction. It does not happen when the design team is working in isolation from the people who will build the work. It happens when the team has enough time and enough integration to ask “is there a better way” before “is this buildable” becomes the only question left to answer.

Trade Partner Involvement: The Most Undervalued Cost Strategy

There is no GC anywhere that is sharp enough to drive project costs down without trade partner involvement. That is not a soft statement. It is a recognition of how knowledge actually works in construction. Frederick Taylor’s segregation model designers design, GCs manage, trades execute created an information silo that costs projects money every single day. Trade partners carry the knowledge of materials, routing, installation methods, and sequencing that can meaningfully change the cost of a project. When they are brought in during preconstruction through design assist efforts, that knowledge becomes available at the point where it can actually be used.

Bring trade partners in early. Work with them on material type selection. Let them weigh in on how systems are routed through the building. Give them the chance to identify cost reduction opportunities in real time, before the documents are locked. The results include schedule acceleration, less rework, stronger team buy-in, better coordination, and direct cost reduction that no amount of GC-only value engineering can replicate.

Procurement, Delivery, and Logistics

A rigorous procurement, delivery, and logistics system is the fourth major lever. Most budget overruns have a procurement decision somewhere upstream of them equipment that arrived late and required expensive expediting, materials that were sourced locally when global sourcing would have reduced cost significantly, bulk purchasing opportunities that were missed because procurement started too late to leverage them. A well-designed procurement system buys from the right places, sources globally where it fits the project, buys in bulk where the economics support it, and selects equipment early enough that expediting costs never enter the equation.

Logistics design is equally important. Materials that are staged incorrectly, transported multiple times before installation, or delivered to the site before the zone is ready to receive them are all waste direct cost that shows up in labor hours and schedule slippage rather than as a line item anyone can see and challenge. A Lean logistics system delivers the right materials to the right zones at the right time, minimizing unnecessary movement and protecting the production rhythm.

Warning Signs That the Wrong Cost Strategy Is Running

Before the budget damage compounds, watch for these signals that your project has defaulted to the wrong approach:

  • Preconstruction was compressed to save time, and the field team is now managing design gaps reactively.
  • Trade partners were not brought in during design, and value engineering is now happening at a point where most of the savings have already been designed out.
  • Procurement started late, expediting fees are climbing, and equipment availability is affecting the schedule.
  • Lean is being talked about on the project but not implemented at scale tools are present, but the production system is not running.
  • Budget conversations are defaulting to cuts instead of investments, and the soft cost column keeps getting attacked.

Any one of those is a warning. Multiple of them together means the project is paying downstream for decisions that should have been made differently upstream.

The Path That Never Saves Money

It is worth naming directly what does not work, because these are the instincts that budget pressure tends to produce. Savings never come from rushing rushing produces rework, and rework costs more than the time it was supposed to save. Savings never come from cutting the investments that protect the work. Savings never come from panicking and making reactive decisions that trade long-term cost for short-term relief. And savings never come from the classical toxic management model of pushing people harder against a plan that was never buildable to begin with. If the plan requires burnout to succeed, the plan is broken, not the people and burnout never saved a budget.

The money is upstream. The planning, the integration, the trade partner involvement, the Lean production system, the procurement discipline all of it lives before the work starts. Protecting that upstream investment is the most cost-effective decision a project team can make. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow and build the upstream discipline that protects every downstream dollar.

We are building people who build things. That includes building the project leaders who understand where money is actually saved, and who have the discipline to protect the investments that make it possible.

A Challenge for Builders

Open your current project’s cost trend this week and trace the biggest variances back to their source. How many of them started in preconstruction a design gap, a procurement miss, a trade partner coordination failure that better early involvement would have caught? If the answer is most of them, the fix is not downstream. It is upstream. On the next project, protect preconstruction. Bring the trades in early. Implement Lean at scale. Build the procurement system before it becomes urgent. The money is there. It is just upstream of where most teams are looking.

As W. Edwards Deming said, “It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.”

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does preconstruction save more money than cutting costs during construction?

Because money is saved when decisions are still cheap to make in design and planning, before resources are committed. Every gap left in preconstruction gets resolved in the field at dramatically higher cost in labor, rework, schedule slippage, and contingency draw.

How does Lean implementation actually reduce project cost?

By eliminating the rework, stacking, waiting, and waste that silently inflate labor hours and schedule duration. When trades flow without interruption, make money on the project, and operate from a clear production plan, the financial performance of the project improves as a direct result.

Why does involving trade partners early reduce cost?

Because trade partners carry the installation knowledge that drives real cost reduction material selection, routing decisions, sequencing strategies. No GC can access that knowledge without early engagement, and by the time documents are locked, most of that savings opportunity is already gone.

If you want to learn more we have:

-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here) 
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here) 
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

Posted in All