Plan It Like You Will Be Gone!

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.