How Wood Used Lean Project Delivery to Drive Excellence
Congratulations to Wood, whose GSK Rockville Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Management (EPCM) program earned the 2025 Construction Industry Project Excellence (CIPE) Award from the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT).
This recognition underscores what the Lean community already knows: Lean Project Delivery empowers teams to excel even in the most complex and high-risk environments.
Wood’s EPCM program manages 50+ concurrent projects each year inside a live biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility while maintaining uninterrupted good manufacturing practices (GMP) operations, zero lost-time injuries, and award-winning delivery performance. Their success reflects the disciplined application of Lean principles.
Project Timeline
In 2024, Wood executed a full annual cycle of capital portfolio delivery, overseeing more than 50 simultaneous utility upgrades, facility modifications, process improvements, and equipment replacements. These projects ran throughout the year within an active GMP environment, requiring highly coordinated planning, precise scheduling, and seamless communication to maintain production uptime.
Lean-driven practices allowed the team to consistently meet all milestone requirements, achieving 100% compliance with approved for use deadlines and keeping production uninterrupted.
Main Challenges
Wood faced a delivery environment uniquely suited for Lean thinking:
- Executing dozens of projects in parallel within an operating GMP facility
- Maintaining strict regulatory compliance while upgrading utilities, equipment, and systems
- Ensuring zero production downtime, despite construction occurring inside a live biopharma manufacturing environment
- Integrating safety systems across multiple organizations and contractors
- Maintaining quality with no GMP deviations or rework-heavy turnover packages
These challenges required a structured, reliable delivery approach grounded in collaboration, transparency, and continuous learning.
How Lean Project Delivery Was Used
Wood embedded key Lean Project Delivery practices at every stage of the EPCM program:
Collaborative Scheduling and P6-Aligned Planning
The team used collaborative planning sessions and P6 schedule integration to gain full visibility into constraints, critical paths, and interdependencies. This enabled proactive decision-making and minimized impacts to production.
Real-Time Visibility and Daily Management
Lean tools, including PowerBI dashboards, ProCore document control, and custom resource-management workflows, supported daily huddles, more reliable commitments, and continuous flow across the portfolio.
Standardization to Reduce Variation
By standardizing Work Breakdown Structure coding, turnover templates, and punch list and documentation processes, Wood minimized process variation and created predictable, repeatable delivery outcomes.
Lean Safety Culture
Lean thinking informed their safety approach through:
- Frequent safety observations
- HEART cards
- Focused audits
- Embedded high-hazard planning workflows
These practices supported zero LTIs across 43,069 construction hours.
Integrated Teams and Early Engagement
With 10–15 EPCM professionals embedded onsite, the team aligned early with stakeholders, reduced handoffs, and shortened decision cycles – core principles in Lean Project Delivery.
How Lean Project Delivery Benefited the Project
1. Improved Reliability and Flow
Lean planning and constraint management enabled the team to keep 98% of projects on plan, supporting uninterrupted GMP operations.
2. Reduced Cost and Increased Value
Lean procurement and value engineering generated:
- $650K in direct savings
- $1M in additional value-engineering savings
- Improved forecasting and cost controls ensured that even with significant unplanned work, the program stayed within budget.
3. Higher Quality with Streamlined Process
Lean standardization and early alignment resulted in:
- Zero GMP-impacting deviations
- No rejected turnover packages
- Faster qualification readiness
4. Enhanced Safety Through Lean Project Delivery Practices
Continuous observations and proactive hazard elimination helped maintain an Adjusted Incident Rate Frequency (AIRF) of 0.0.
5. Better Collaboration and Faster Decisions
Daily Lean management and cross-functional communication kept the team aligned and responsive, reducing delays and avoiding bottlenecks.
A Model of Lean Project Delivery Excellence in Life Sciences
Wood’s GSK Rockville EPCM program demonstrates how Lean Project Delivery helps organizations deliver safely, reliably, and efficiently, even in fast-moving, highly regulated environments.
By embracing Lean principles such as collaboration, reliability, flow, standardization, and continuous improvement, Wood created a delivery model that improved performance at every level.
LCI celebrates Wood’s achievement and applauds their continued commitment to advancing Lean in the life sciences sector.