The Takt Production System – Part 2

One Ring to Rule Them All: Why Takt Must Govern Your Schedule

Scheduling is about the visualization of time and space. If your construction schedules don’t do this, they don’t serve you well. Marine Corps General Robert Hilliard Barrow said “Amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, but professionals study logistics.” Takt planning does all three.

In Takt, you can see the location-based rhythm of the project and its critical supply chains—the logistics of the site. You can also see what needs to happen in those locations and when they should take place. That’s the intersection of what, when, and where. And interestingly, the basic unit in scheduling that represents the intersection of what, when, and where is called a Takt. It’s the cell or box in Excel or Tacting that houses a Takt wagon.

Only Takt accomplishes what all other programs cannot. A normal activity in a Gantt chart or CPM schedule has the element of time and space, but it’s vague and barely visible. The difference is between a database of time and space and the visualization of time and space. Only a Takt unit can provide the visualization of time and space in scheduling.

Takt with stable and lean field environments will do more to stabilize our scheduling processes, reduce material inventory, eliminate waste and variation, decrease durations, and increase profits than anything else in construction. We must be able to visualize and then stabilize time and space.

What Actually Qualifies as a Takt Plan

You must have a schedule that visualizes time and space, clearly shows workflow and trade flow and logistical flow, schedules on a rhythm with the right buffer management, and stabilizes the pace of work with what’s called one-piece flow that limits work in process in order to have a Takt plan. The last requirement for Takt planning is that the schedule has a reasonable overall project duration. If it doesn’t have that, people will begin pushing and the rhythm of the system will be lost.

Here’s what Takt planning actually requires:

• A visual schedule showing time and space
• Shows work, trade, and logistical flow (when, what, and where)
• Schedules on a rhythm
• Includes buffers
• Stabilizes the pace of work with one-piece flow and limiting work in process
• Allows for a reasonable overall project duration

If you don’t have this, you don’t have a Takt plan. We should not want anyone labeling Gantt charts, CPM schedules, or other visuals as Takt plans if they don’t show these things. If this is allowed to happen, Takt will get a bad name and the life-changing magic of the system will be slowed.

One of the main things that will hurt people and families is the pushing of trades without flow. If you schedule work through areas without flow, you’re creating schedules that will fail for the people you care about.

Flow Where You Can, Pull Where You Can’t, and Stop Pushing

Taiichi Ohno, one of the fathers of lean, said “Flow where you can, pull where you must.” To translate it from manufacturing and apply it to construction, we added “and stop pushing.” Flow is king. It rules all and it should be our first priority, value, and focus.

In construction, when we cannot flow, we will need to pull. And we all know there are situations that regardless of our best efforts, we think we have to push hard to get finished. But there’s a better way. In a similar fashion and in this order, we must use Takt, tools like Scrum and Last Planner, and then CPM only if we must, if at all. At times when the last three are used, Takt will govern them all.

Think of it like the ring of power from Lord of the Rings. Last Planner, Scrum, CPM, graphical schedules, and many others ultimately work and fulfill their purpose when they’re governed by one, and that one is flow. It’s Takt planning and the use of Takt time in scheduling. All our rings of power are ruled by one: the ring of flow.

The three basic habits of a builder are studying the drawings, working in the schedule, and taking reflection walks daily. There are seven key positions on a project team. There are nine key meetings that the team must use in a remarkable way to create stability. The focus is on respect for people and resources as the base philosophy of the project team. And in these meetings, there’s a standing tactical order of maintaining flow where we can to guide the team’s efforts to create stability and to govern all other systems.

One ring to rule them all. That ring is Takt.

The Five Major Problems With CPM

The construction industry is incentivizing push. True CPM, the critical path method, when used as a standalone system inherently pushes with its famous forward and backward pass. Although some CPM experts would argue that through proper logic sequencing you can still model flow in the system, the CPM visual representation fools and confuses project teams into thinking there’s a solid plan in the schedule hidden under the excessive detail.

CPM has been used since the 1940s, was fully adopted as industry practice in construction by the AGC in 1965, and is still considered the standard. Even with its widespread adoption and general use, most projects finish behind schedule with crash landings or an accelerated push to the end that expends significant human and physical resources.

Why does this happen? Here are the five major problems with CPM:

Problem 1: CPM Is Too Optimistic

CPM is not a tool that easily shows flow or geographical connections from one work breakdown structure to another. It’s hard to read, unintentionally hides inefficiencies, and essentially miscalculates how long the project will take. When the first draft of a schedule is made, it’s made with the smallest amount of detail. The system is planned for ideal conditions and it’s not usually tied to the proper project risks and constraints.

Whereas Takt is somewhat immune to this because it visualizes flow and projects what should happen, not what will happen. So what does happen with CPM? The owner or team bids the optimistic schedule, falls in love with the end date, and as confirmation bias settles into the psyche of the first planner group, they needlessly give away general conditions and schedule time to save face and please a customer doomed to disappointment when they enter the eventual crash landing with no more contingencies available.

CPM essentially slams everything to the left as close to the data date as possible and gives the team a false sense of security by calming any possible objections with the promise of calculating float, although that float is rarely shown or printed on the schedules used. True CPM deceives us about how long projects take.

Problem 2: CPM Makes Us Think the Plan Is Better Than It Really Is

For most users, CPM masquerades as a solid plan simply because it looks complex. CPM attempts to identify what will happen, which is impossible. Takt identifies what should happen. Often people wrongly associate busyness and motion with productivity, and similarly they mistake excessive detail as an indication that there’s a solid plan. This is the second way CPM fools us—it makes us think the plan is better and more complete than it really is.

Ultimately, CPM scheduling is a wild guess. Many would argue with this, but we have yet to see accurate production rates without advanced Takt work packaging that is applied properly within local market conditions that would make a CPM master schedule anything other than a shot in the dark. And the dark part is the main point. Takt is a shot with data and visibility in a flow simulation that even the most inexperienced laborer can read and understand.

Sure, there’s historical data with certain sequences in CPM, but those same sequences can be used in Takt and do not in and of themselves justify CPM as a method. CPM masquerades as a good plan when all it actually shows is a ton of detailed guessing.

Problem 3: CPM Hides the Plan in the Complexity of Its Format

Very few builders—even those who create their own schedules, can see the overall plan from a CPM printout that well. CPM experts may argue that the use of filters, hammock activities, graphical schedule printouts, and other tools would accomplish this goal, but these solutions don’t answer for nor hold other non-summarized data accountable to flow within the context of the whole plan.

The bottom line is that very few read CPM schedules and no one can fully understand them without a lot of detailed and focused work and effort. CPM isn’t practical or efficient. Even a superintendent building his or her own schedule from the start will lose track of crew ties, the logic tie strategy, and the overall flow of the schedule. Humans are just not sharp enough to stay with the complexity of that system.

At best, the use of CPM schedules relies on the skill, thoughtfulness, discipline, and good fortune of the person who entered the information in the first place. Our quality, safety, and financials rely on this plan, and knowing the plan in its entirety is crucial. No one can take a CPM schedule, read it within a reasonable time frame, and see the overall plan like you can with Takt. CPM is too complex to effectively read and manage.

Problem 4: CPM Has Too Much Unchecked Power

Our legal considerations, analysis, and standards are mostly based on CPM. It’s made its way into most contracts, and it’s difficult to find an owner who doesn’t think it’s vital to success. CPM is seen as the only way to mitigate risk and safeguard us legally. But even those who do this well admit that CPM is quite a poor communication tool.

So it becomes a chore to make it reflect reality, either by employing a scheduling team or having an inefficient series of meetings just to map out the detailed nature of construction. We manipulate and use it for so many pointless purposes that we’ve become addicted to it through sheer familiarity. Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t, right?

It’s like a tyrannical mother-in-law who shows up to help after a baby is born. It sounds like a blessing in the beginning, but over time she’s bossing everyone around, badmouthing you for every move you make, and disrupting your family’s peace and stability. She remains in the house only because the damage to family relationships and drama it would cause if you spoke up makes sending her home seem harder than just enduring her presence.

Conversely, you might welcome her with open arms if she fit in the way you needed her to, if she had self-control and checked power, and if she would stop abusing your family. In a similar manner, Takt can hold CPM accountable if CPM stays within its rightful place—which is under the control and accountability of Takt.

So what stops us from doing this? Ask yourself: do most owners want to see the truth? In a world where developers, owners, and general contractors are all taught to sell the risk of a project, it’s sometimes more profitable to hide the truth in a CPM schedule so any possible data trail can be muddy enough to protect parties upstream and force a negotiated settlement.

The bottom line is that an owner wanting to transfer the cost of a failed project to the GC does not want a Takt plan showing where the owner and designer interrupted flow and created the cost or time delay. This also happens with general contractors. If the GC is not proficient, what would they prefer—a CPM hiding the details or a Takt plan showing the truth? The answer is obvious.

Unaccountable people, teams, and companies want roadblocks hidden so they can more easily transfer blame and costs. Accountable people, teams, and companies will love Takt planning and knowing the truth and bringing the roadblocks to the surface so we can manage around them as a team and win.

Problem 5: CPM Institutionalizes Hiding Problems

Professionals in construction can wrongly adjust a few logic ties and make some well-hidden changes to make the negative float go away. In fact, when using Takt, new practitioners might say “Takt doesn’t work. I’m constantly seeing problems in the system and we’re not tracking to finish on time.” This is precisely because Takt is a productively paranoid system that reflects reality and brings problems to the surface.

The true lean scheduling system—Takt—shows what’s actually happening to your project. CPM hides things and builders feel falsely content and happy in the moment until the evidence that the team will not finish on time is irrefutable and oftentimes too late.

CPM also contributes to superintendents developing dragon sickness. Dragon sickness, borrowed from The Hobbit this time, is our label for the many non-transparent, possessive, and siloed supers that hoard over their schedule like a dragon hoards over his gold. They covet the power and security that comes from being the only one who knows the plan simply because they’re not confident or competent enough to work with the team and let the team collectively own and know the plan.

CPM encourages this bad behavior and destroys collaboration with a promise that the super can reign supreme in the secrecy of being the only one who knows the plan, at least in part. It’s ironic that with dragon sickness, the afflicted person never uses his gold. And in like manner, the afflicted CPM scheduler never uses his schedule because no one can understand it.

Why Takt Brings Transparency and Truth

The problem is that CPM lacks transparency. Even though the hidden logic, calendars, and other functions can all be shown in one way or another, it’s difficult to report and analyze these on an ongoing basis. There’s so much concealed within a CPM schedule that other systems are needed for quality control to make sure there are no missing logic ties, open ends, open finishes, loose ends, redundant logic, loops, bad ties, crew ties, hidden lag durations, an exorbitant amount of predecessors, out-of-sequence activities, status greater than the data date constraints, negative float, and many others.

This entire system has to be monitored in such a way that wastes time due to its complexity and the inability to see when issues appear. It’s a temperamental system prone to quality mistakes and errors. It can take up to seven different applications to properly run a CPM schedule. Some say they can do everything we do in Takt if they build the schedule with Excel first to show flow, then P6 to create the schedule, then Acumen Fuse to QC the schedule, then Acumen Risk to prepare the schedule for construction, then Acumen 360 for recovery analyses, then graphical schedule (a program that summarizes a visual depiction of the schedule into an easily understandable Takt plan format), and Adept for design phase.

Why take all those steps? We can do all that in Excel, Tacting, or Timotei in one-twelfth the time.

Additionally, there’s little value to knowing all these metrics if they only show that the schedule is in trouble without showing why and how to recover it. Takt is the only system that will show the team why and where to focus to recover. You will never recover a schedule without regaining flow. And therefore, you will never properly recover a schedule without Takt.

As we said in the introduction, there should be one that governs them all: Takt. Even if the industry persists in the use of CPM, Takt is the best accountability partner. To use another human analogy, CPM is like the spouse that overprograms a Saturday and Takt is the other one who brings the duo back into reality by realistically planning what should be done within the time allotted. In that scenario, the only way to have a great Saturday is to use the common-sense partner or pair them together. But never should the unrealistic partner plan the Saturday alone.

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

FAQ

Q: If CPM has all these problems, why is it still the industry standard?

Because it’s been structurally incorporated into so many systems, cultures, and processes since 1965 that going against the grain offends positions, relevance, and education. We’ve become addicted to it through sheer familiarity, better the devil you know than the angel you don’t. CPM also has unchecked power in contracts and legal standards, and it’s profitable for parties who want to hide the truth and transfer blame. Unaccountable people want roadblocks hidden. Accountable people want Takt’s transparency. The industry persists with CPM not because it works well, but because changing requires courage.

Q: Can CPM and Takt work together, or do I have to choose one?

Takt should govern CPM, not replace it entirely. Think of CPM as the spouse that overprograms Saturday and Takt as the realistic partner who brings things back to reality. You can pair them together, but never let CPM plan alone. Takt creates the flow schedule first, then CPM can handle logistics and milestone tracking within that flow framework. Takt is the accountability partner that keeps CPM honest and prevents it from hiding problems or creating unrealistic expectations.

Q: What is “dragon sickness” and how do I know if I have it?

Dragon sickness is when superintendents hoard over their schedule like a dragon hoards gold, coveting the power and security that comes from being the only one who knows the plan. It happens because they’re not confident or competent enough to work with the team and let the team collectively own and know the plan. CPM encourages this by making schedules so complex that only the creator understands them. Signs you have it: you protect your schedule, resist collaboration, use complexity as job security, and your team can’t read or understand your plan. The ironic part? Like a dragon who never uses his gold, you never actually use your schedule because no one can understand it.

Q: How does Takt bring problems to the surface instead of hiding them?

Takt is a productively paranoid system that reflects reality. When you visualize flow on a Takt plan, problems become immediately visible, you can see where trades will collide, where material buffers are missing, where durations don’t match capacity, where the rhythm breaks down. CPM hides these problems in complexity, logic ties, and optimistic durations. New Takt practitioners sometimes complain “I’m constantly seeing problems and we’re not tracking to finish on time”, that’s the point. Takt shows what’s actually happening so you can fix it before it’s too late. CPM keeps you falsely content until the crash landing is inevitable.

Q: What’s the difference between what CPM shows and what Takt shows?

CPM attempts to identify what will happen, which is impossible, it’s a wild guess hidden in excessive detail. Takt identifies what should happen based on flow, capacity, and rhythm. CPM is a database of time and space; Takt is the visualization of time and space. CPM shows activities and dependencies; Takt shows the intersection of what, when, and where. A normal CPM activity has time and space elements but they’re vague and barely visible. A Takt unit provides clear visualization that even the most inexperienced laborer can read and understand. You’ll never recover a schedule without regaining flow, and you’ll never properly recover without Takt.

On we go.