Plan Like A Builder!

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.