#LeanInAction blog

From Paper to an App: Continuous Improvement in the Age of Technology

Wednesday, February 28, 2019 Continuous improvement in the age of technology can mean a process leaps from a sheet of paper into the ether with a custom app. After struggling to design and print legible, project-specific crisis management cards for our workers in the field to carry and easily reference, and in a quest to improve our emergency response times and our communications with our team members, we explored several existing tools, technologies, and processes that might be deployed to strengthen our safety protocols. When we couldn’t find a solution that met our needs, we developed our own crisis management app, Smart Safety, which is currently in beta testing. Read More

Black & Veatch Practices Lean to Improve Construction Execution

Wednesday, February 28, 2019 Lean principles create a culture of continuous improvement and respect for people, and an increase in comprehension and practice is producing multiple benefits. Read More

Continuous Improvement by Last Planner®

Wednesday, February 28, 2019 Imagine this…there’s nearly 100 workers on a very small site that has nearly no space to store material, with deadlines rapidly approaching, for a project that in its simplest form in a concrete box. Your thoughts probably lead you to believe there’s chaos, clutter, and ultimately an unsafe jobsite. Now snap back to reality. Read More

Building a Future Workforce through Respect

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 The labor shortage for skilled craft and professionals continues to grow. Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) Chief Economist Ken Simonson said for the United States alone, “There has been no letup in demand for construction projects—or workers, even though the industry added employees at more than double the pace of the overall economy. In the past year, the average workweek in construction reached an all-time high and unemployment in construction hit a series low, indicating that contractors would hire even more workers if they were available.” Read More

The Hospital of the Future: How Tech Trends and the Internet of Things (IoT) Shape Healthcare

Wednesday, February 13, 2019 Today’s rapidly evolving tech world can essentially be summed up in one word: connectivity. It may seem cliché, but every “dumb device” we turn into a “smart device” presents an opportunity for innovation, and in turn expands the connected world we are all a part of. In the words of Akamai Technologies, the cloud services giant that serves roughly one third of the world’s daily web traffic, “You don’t just GO online, you ARE online.” Read More

Leaning into Kanban

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 As part of our Lean journey here at SSOE, we’ve been working to employ the Kanban Method at the discipline department level, taking a narrow and deep approach to implementation as our first step toward tackling it as an organization. More than just a to-do list, the Kanban Method—often used synonymously with the pull system tool used to employ it—is an organizational approach to incremental, evolutionary change originally created by software pioneer David J. Anderson. It allows project teams to more effectively visualize their work in order to speed up the flow of that work. This is done by breaking work down into a manageable, commitment-based plan that is driven by the team as a whole, moving away from “my work” and moving toward “our work”. Read More

Lean: The Core of SSOE’s Organizational Strategy

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 At SSOE, we’re moving toward Lean Project Delivery—a strategy guided by a Lean mindset with a goal of defining and delivering a collective vision of success on a project by eliminating waste, compressing schedules, lowering cost, and improving satisfaction. Lean Project Delivery is our translation of the Lean project system. Read More

Reducing Waste In Construction

Wednesday, February 13, 2019 The construction industry is notorious for wasting resources. Wasted effort, inventory and time can lead to schedule delays and increased costs. That’s why companies like Warfel are turning to the principles of Lean Construction to reduce waste by improving efficiency and communication throughout the preconstruction and construction process. Check out the infographic below to learn more about the Lean principles being used to combat wasted resources in our industry. Read More