Elevating Construction Foremen – Part 22

Imagine a kinked water hose. Will the blockage get better the more water pressure you put on it, or is it more important to undo the kink? The answer is obvious. Fixing the problems in our production system is more effective than pushing workers or adding resources. That is what takt steering and control is about.

This is Part 22 of my walk-through of my book Elevating Construction Foremen. If you are just joining, start with Part 1. This part is about takt steering and control: zones and Little’s Law, the three Ms, roadblocks versus constraints, and zone control.

Short answer: Everything in construction is organized by zone. Little’s Law says you go faster with small, leveled zones built one at a time. Crew leaders watch for waste, overburden, and unevenness, remove roadblocks immediately, and help supers optimize constraints. Then they control their zone: prepare ahead, finish behind, report needs, and keep pace with the train.

What Are Takt Steering and Takt Control?

Takt steering is the steering and adjustment of the train of trades that flow through zones. Takt control is the control and clearing of the tracks ahead of the train while supplying it with needed resources. This is where we take a good takt plan and implement it in the field with flow.

Every project will be broken up into zones. A zone could be an area of a building, a section of the exterior, a run of pipe on a civil project, or a grouping of equipment. This is not just a good idea. This is how it’s done, full stop. Little’s Law, as applied to construction, says you go faster the smaller your zones are, the work in each zone must be leveled by work density, not square feet, the effort from crew to crew must be fairly equal, and you go faster building each zone in one process flow.

A takt plan is a visual schedule showing ideal production for a train of trades. It has the trades working the same long-term plan, moving in the same sequence, doing the same amount of work in each zone, going the same speed the same distance apart, getting needed resources on time, and flowing without stops and restarts.

Do not default to adding more labor, materials, and money. Brooks’s Law says adding manpower to a project that is behind schedule delays it even longer. See Brooks’s Law, Feat. Felipe Engineer.

What Are the Three Ms on a Production Line?

The three Ms are muda, muri, and mura: waste, overburden, and unevenness. More in The Three Ms.

Waste. There are eight wastes in construction: overproduction, excess inventory, transportation, motion, defects, overprocessing, waiting, and not using the genius of the team. As Paul Akers writes in 2 Second Lean, continuous improvement begins when these wastes are memorized, and the leader or worker sees waste and makes improvements to eliminate it every day.

Overburden. This shows up as workers pushed too hard or too fast, excessive overtime, too many areas, too much context switching, zone work density too high for the time given, too few people, people working beyond their training, and no breaks or buffers. We count on crew leaders to notice, prevent, or stop these. They disrespect people and won’t yield production. Even if they did, it would be wrong. We improve the system, not push people.

Unevenness. This is when work stops and restarts: defective work, roadblocks, delayed work, unleveled zones, unleveled crews, variation, and trade or zone bottlenecks. Unevenness typically comes from roadblocks that haven’t been removed and constraints that haven’t been adjusted.

What Is the Difference Between a Roadblock and a Constraint?

Words matter, and we want to signal the right action for the right word. Most references to constraints in construction are really roadblocks. The items on constraint boards will slow or stop the train if they are not removed. They are not accepted as permanent. In The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt defines a constraint as the limiting factor standing in the way of a goal, which you systematically improve until it no longer limits you. More in The Difference Between Roadblocks & Constraints.