How Lean Construction Benefits Your Next Project

Best practices are borne out of common-sense practical experience. Lean construction is a set of principals designed to increase efficiency, reduce waste and lower project costs. Double Black Construction maximizes value for clients by saving them time and money by incorporating lean principals into every project we do. As a courtesy, we’re sharing what we’ve learned and how lean construction can benefit your next project.

Lean construction is based on the Toyota Production System, one of the manufacturing methods that helped the Japanese car industry advance so quickly throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Lean construction works by reducing construction time, increasing productivity and efficiently managing raw materials. Applying lean principals to construction takes some flexibility, because unlike manufacturing environments, construction doesn’t always take place in a controlled setting. Managing workflow becomes more challenging on a construction site with so many more unreliable or unpredictable variables.

• Identify value from the client’s needs
• Use best practices that deliver value
• Reduce waste to increase efficiency
• Avoid unnecessary waiting time
• Don’t use a faster-than-necessary pace
• Prevent or minimize defects
• Keep solutions simple – avoid complexity
• Use efficient flow of work processes to avoid unnecessary motion
• Reduce unnecessary transportation
• Keep inventory low (use just-in-time processes)
• Use talent effectively and fairly
• Prevent excess processing
• Schedule phases of work from the end and work backwards
• Perfect construction processes through continuous improvement

• Faulty goods
• Under-utilizing capabilities
• Not effectively using employee skills
• Delegating tasks with inadequate training
• Not incorporating worker ideas and suggestions
• Using the wrong metrics (or none at all)
• Not using the latest technologies to increase efficiencies.

To learn more about how we incorporate lean construction principles into our projects, please contact us online or speak with John Lohan and his team at (833) 322-2722 and we’ll provide you with a free consultation and quote.

John Lohan has over 15 years of experience designing, engineering and installing over 500 metal buildings for architects and clients across North America and the globe. He’s managed all aspects of steel building construction, including material logistics and managing local and foreign construction teams. John also has special expertise in concrete foundation and excavation. He can be contacted at Double Black Construction at (833) 322-2722, by email at info@DoubleBlackConstruction.com or on LinkedIn.