Elevating Construction Foremen – Part 19

“I’ve been doing this the same way for 40 years” is likely the most irresponsible comment I have ever heard in construction. Would we be okay if a pilot still flew planes the way he or she did 40 years ago? What if your cardiologist could still light up a cigarette while treating you? You get my point.

This is Part 19 of my walk-through of my book Elevating Construction Foremen. If you are just joining, start with Part 1. This part is about knowing your trade and staying current, crew leader safety, cleanliness, and organization, and getting a passion for Lean.

Short answer: Great crew leaders know their trade and keep learning it, through reading, training, and new tools and technology. They are always safe, always clean, and always organized, because how we do one thing is how we do everything. And they get a passion for Lean, which at its root means progress, improvement, and taking pride in our work.

Why Must Crew Leaders Keep Learning Their Trade?

Doing the same thing for 40 years is the antithesis of progress, learning, and continuous improvement. Crew leaders know their trade, stay current with it, and are always reading, studying, and taking the best and most current training. The best understand the newest equipment, technologies, and tools and ask their leaders for the best. Napoleon Hill said, “The person who stops studying merely because he has finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity.”

Clyde King wrote about how lasers changed carpentry. When he started, they plumbed the top track for metal stud walls with a plumb bob and leveled ceilings with a water level. He and a few other crew leaders researched lasers and convinced the company to try some. That completely changed the labor hours for layout and walls. Lightweight rotating lasers changed ceiling grid, and green-beam lasers you can see in daylight increased production even more. Always keep learning about new technologies for your trade.

• Always teach and share what you know. It will drive you to learn more.
• Always have a goal for improvement. Goals drive the need for learning.
• Learn off the jobsite too, when you travel, drive, or check out new tools at the hardware store.
• Be a self-starter. Don’t wait to be offered training. Go get it.
• Use big problems on site as a chance to research, ask for help, and apply new things.
• Stay informed about the trade curriculum after leaving trade school.
• Listen to your gut. If you feel there is a better way, there likely is.

Why Are Great Crew Leaders Always Safe, Clean, and Organized?

How we do one thing is how we do everything. The end customer expects a clean, organized, beautifully built structure, with empty wall cavities, clean cast-in-place forms, and neat, patched, safe mechanical chases. It should be prepared that way, built that way, finished that way, and delivered that way. The best crew leaders use the nothing-hits-the-ground practice with the five Bs, bin, bag, barrel, bucket, and box, and clean as they go. More in Clean, Safe, and Organized.

One adage I have repeated over the years is to work like a rodbuster. The steel doesn’t move itself, and it doesn’t care if you’re mad at it. At the end of the day, you pick the bar up and put it down. As you get wiser, you only pick it up once and put it down once. You also cannot not communicate. Site cleanliness, employee appearance, and organization tell buyers, inspectors, and occupants that your project is a quality project. Ray Kroc said, “If you do it first class and you don’t compromise values… quality… service… cleanliness, then everybody else who is the competitor has got to play catch-up.”

On the Victorville prison project, I watched a crew leader named Randy who would never do anything that wasn’t clean, safe, and organized. Another crew leader did buildings one and two with tunnel and table forms. Randy did building three, and his operation looked slower. The lead super tried to rush him. Randy kept telling us to calm down and watch. He finished on time. On buildings one and two, we blew our patching budgets by hundreds of thousands of dollars grinding out-of-plumb beams, patching honeycomb from debris in the forms, and cleaning up spilled cement. Randy’s back-of-house areas barely needed patching at all.

Ask yourself: how could you do this work and clean as you go? How could you be perfectly safe and productive at the same time? How could you remove extra motion, transportation, treasure hunts, and overprocessing, with everything in its place?

What Can Crews Learn From Mortenson’s 5S Program?

Mortenson has one of the best 5S programs I have ever seen. Their people get a 5S field guide, and it shows in their work. A few of the concepts I learned from them:

1. Reduce the amount of trash or scrap.
2. Nothing hits the ground. Everything is on wheels, colored pallets, or dunnage.
3. Always have gondolas for cut stations.
4. Only bring what you need for the day, with a minimal buffer.
5. Always sequence work. Do not trade stack or work out of sequence.
6. Stage materials where they go, in organized, designated laydown areas.
7. Keep gang boxes, conex boxes, trucks, and cords clean, organized, and off the ground.
8. Keep walkways clear and clean as you go.
9. Plan for safety, cleanliness, and organization the day before in the crew leader huddle.