Lean Project Management, Requirement of Indian Construction Industry

133, Proceedings of Indian Lean Construction Conference 2015
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LEAN PROJECT MANAGEMENT,
REQUIREMENT OF INDIAN CONSTRUCTION
INDUSTRY
Tony Jacob, PMP1
ABSTRACT
Construction, one of the oldest industries is facing challenges in India. The
inefficiencies that have been built-up in processes and its value chain are a great
worry. Many of non-value activities happening in our industry like waiting for
approvals, design changes, poor coordination, and chasing people to remind their
commitments are not just causing delays, cost over-run, poor quality and frustrated/
dissatisfied stakeholders but creating burden to our national economy.
Plenty of management concepts and best practices are available for
construction but what we need is a practical approach to integrate them for the benefit
of projects. The success of project is when people and organization in projects
transform from silo way of working to single vision for completing project on Time,
Quality, Safety and Cost. The concepts of Lean and Lean Construction can take lead
of bringing people and best practices from all concepts under single umbrella to add
maximum Value to project by ensuring Flow of information, resource, activities etc.
If we change the approach to current construction practices, Lean and
Project Management can play key roles in various phases of construction including
Design& Execution. Let us understand how Lean & Project Management together
will help us to Rethink the way Construction happening today.
KEYWORDS
ILCC2015, ILCE, lean construction, project management, efficiency, and
productivity.
INTRODUCTION
Construction, one of the oldest industries in world, is facing acute problems. The
industry or players in the field, who are used to such scenarios, hardly react to or deal
with these problems, thus causing huge losses to economy and hard life to its
stakeholders.
Challenges are part of construction due to its uniqueness, temporary nature and large
number of stakeholders in construction value chain. Construction projects are famous
for its delay, cost over run, quality issues and ultimately the stress upon entire value
chain from investor to end-user and labour to engineers. Satisfaction over the project
1
Management Consultant and Project Management Professional with experience in Project
Management, Lean Construction, Business Analysis and Partnering concepts. +91 9177493004
(M), tonyjk@gmail.com (Email)

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performed and the outcome is very low in Indian construction2
. Client not being
happy with the performance of contractor, contractors not achieving the profits they
initially calculated, stretched work life of engineers/ labours, users not comfortable
with end product and facility team struggling to maintain the infrastructure are known
scenarios in todays construction.
The openness of other industries to various management concepts like Project
Management, Lean, Agile etc. help them to perform better and work more
professionally with improved efficiency compared to construction industry. Based on
the data collected about the Construction Industry by US Bureau of Labour Statistics
and The Department of Commerce (Census Bureau) and with additional analysis of
this data by the Bureau of Economic Analysis; the productivity of construction
industry and value add per employee has come down or stagnant for last 50 years
while its gone high for other non farm industries like Information Technology,
Manufacturing, Banking etc.
The acceptance of management concepts and proper implementation of it during
various phases of project can improve the productivity and performance of project.
The silo working of individuals and organizations in construction processes need to
be questioned to improve the fundamentals of this industry. Teamwork and trust
among the stakeholders can improve the collaboration and coordination between the
players in construction value chain for better project results.
Lack of collaboration is visible among various management concepts in construction
similar to the silo way of construction professionals working in project. Focusing on
construction process with an open mind will help the project based organizations to
adopt Best of Best Practices and ensure the projects are performed in better way. This
also gives more importance to people than tools but delivery focused. Lean Project
Management is the term coined to show a collaborative way of managing project with
principles of Lean, Project Management, Partnering and Requirement Management
by implementing best practices across globe.
CONSTRUCTION CHALLENGES - A REALITY CHECK
The efficiency of labors and professionals in construction organizations are measured
high to low as project progresses from tender to closeout. Not all contractors have the
productivity measures in position and whoever has, doesn’t assure compliance
resulting drainage of profit in their projects. When it comes to client organizations
efficiency to complete the project on time, cost, quality, safety, sustainability etc. is
not at all predictable. Last but not the least are the professional organizations like
consultants, engineers, designers, architect, project management companies, who
control every aspects of projects, generally work on the project with hourly or
monthly rate and no efficiency norms in place. These professional organizations may
have internal efficiency measures but when project failure comes it’s more or less
2
Survey by iTalent India, Nagpur shows that many factors like low job satisfaction, customers
doesn’t want to repeat contractor, dislike of finished products are above 90% in construction
industry

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described as failure of contractor or scope changes, lack of fund, delayed approval
from client. The low efficiency or productivity in construction projects is known facts
but what is the real reason behind it and who should control is an open question. Later
in this paper we will explore how Lean Project management can bring organizations
and people together for better project performance.
What can go wrong typically in any project with non-collaborative working scenario?
Delay, Cost Overrun, Rework which will tense the situation within project and
making Frustrated contractors, Unhappy employees finally variations, fights,
arguments, claims, some time legal actions.
Following (ref fig-1) are the common reasons that surfaces in any troubled project
and the fact is that, ground level project teams know well in advance that, the project
is going to be delayed or budget is going overshoot or project is going to end-up in
reworks.
Fig 1: Reasons for troubles in typical construction projects
We know that these are only excuses and real reasons behind the troubles are more
cultural as shown in Fig 2. A team, trusting each other in a collaborative environment,
can expose all issues, resolve them together and ensure project is on track.

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Fig 2: Root Causes of troubles in todays project
The unreliable schedules prepared for the project generally force contractors to accept
it for sake of getting job in most of the Indian scenarios. Companies with certain
assumptions make commitments and accept these schedules but lack of timely
decisions make such commitments unpredictable in nature. Many times projects
complaint about non-availability of resources but the actual reason being, team’s
inability to plan precisely, to ensure continuous information flow and underutilization
of resources when available. During planning phase, companies are reluctant to
allocate sufficient number of labors or engineers to perform work but are ready to
deploy plenty of resources when their failures are exposed as project progress. As part
of this we also see that the top management people generally end up staying in project
for weeks or even months to ensure completion.
Trust in construction today is so low that people start to believe in known devils than
unknown angels. We end up engaging the contractor or professionals who made
mistakes in their earlier projects and are likely to do the same in new one. In real, we
don’t have any choice as most of the contractual commitments are found to be wrong
as project moves forward.
Passion and shared vision doesn’t get recognized in today’s world. Most of the time
leaders in project spending time to negotiate terms and conditions of contract than
building confidence, trust etc. among team members. By nature the stakeholders in
construction value chain is silo structured and it always reflect in their works, even to

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people working in project-based organizations. It’s rare to see the collaboration
among various departments within companies to fulfil its commitment to perform
projects because of extreme behaviour seen in the construction.
Once contract is awarded to contractors, clients and PM companies are under the
assumption that their responsibility is over. No one believes in helping contractors or
designers to achieve the project goals. Here comes the importance of everyone in
project to work together, beyond the limit of contractual terms to deliver its goal. It’s
the time for companies to focus on project successes than trying to safeguard its own
interests.
Rather than getting trained on PM skills and team building, individuals get more of
hands-on training on ‘Crisis management’ nowadays. Today we have plenty of
project leaders with crisis management capability but hardly anyone who can build a
high performing team from 10+ unknown organization and 100+ individuals in short
span of project, which is the need of industry.
Project team today collaborate less, blame more; coordinate less, dispute more;
communicate less, argue more. Let us see how management concepts like Lean &
Project Management together can play key role to make industry performing better.
MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS3
- AN OVERVIEW
Apart from technical capability, the success of construction project depends on the
way it’s managed. Adopting various concepts into practice is one key reason why
Manufacturing, Information Technology, Banking etc. improved the way they serve
customer and ensured people in value chain is professionally established. Its time for
construction to embrace these concepts together and practices for a better productivity,
improved performance, predictable outcome and assured profitability.
Project Management is the concept popular in construction for a long time and even
have organizations that are specialized to perform project management duties. Project
Management helps the organization/ people to establish a structured way to manage
the program or project and enable various players to assemble as team for a cause.
Lean construction helps projects to focus on value to customer by eliminating all
unnecessary processes and procedures, which we always perform to cover our
inefficiency. Lean constructions focuses on transition of input to output through
continuous and uninterrupted flow that makes it acceptable among general contractors
and design& build contractors. Lean concepts can increase company’s productivity
and project performance.
3
There are many institutions who educate, engage and promote management concepts like Project
Management Institute for Project management, Lean Construction Institute & Institute for Lean
construction excellence for Lean Construction, International Partnering Institute for collaborative
partnering and International Institute for Business Analysis for Business Analysis

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Partnering gives a framework for client and contractor organizations to come out
from the conventional contracting model and focus on project than dispute and claims.
Partnering is getting popular in large-scale projects across globe.
Business analysis is more of an Information Technology jargon but can bring lot of
benefits to construction industry, especially designers to ensure the quality of
requirement gathering and tracking it during detailing & execution. A proper business
analysis approach can reduce the changes in design and ‘change management’
requirements in projects.
All these concepts are good and nice but most of them get rejected at execution level
citing practical reason. There are no magic wands in these concepts in order to deliver
projects in perfect shape but it needs people’s acceptance including participation for a
proper implementation and reaping benefits.
Also it needs broad-minded people in project and organizations to ensure the best of
best practices from all concepts are implemented hand in hand based on either the
way organization want to perform or project need to be delivered. That’s the approach
of Lean Project Management describe in this paper.
LEAN PROJECT MANAGEMENT – A PRACTICAL APPROACH
Let us explore some of the powerful techniques from various concepts and understand
how these best of best practices can bring synergy between teams and achieve project
excellence in a Lean Project Management way. Following are some best of best
practices from various concepts, which can go together in any project.
Project Management plan can guide the execution and controlling of project. It also
will help the project to align with its program level goals. A proper project
management plan can be the foundation of project which covers plan/ strategy related
to scope, cost, time, procurement, resources, communication, risk and stakeholder
managements. Project management plans prepared in a collaborative way from
current method of preparing by selected people is the difference industry can expect
when Lean and Project management go hand in hand. This gives the project
management plan more effective and predictable in nature along with high level of
acceptance from the execution team.
A project management plan established with PMO (project management office) can
ensure the integration of people, process and procedures in project with structured
way of working. An established PMO can work as catalyst to ensure collaboration
and coordination among the players as well as to ensure co-creation of shared vision
with proper implementation of it during the course of project. The role of PMO
should be more of felicitation and bringing the culture of lean to the project than just
controlling and monitoring. PMO can take the lead to establish a proper stakeholder
engagement in project, develop the culture of bringing people together and
collaboration of various stakeholders at respective stages of project in Lean way of
Project management.

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It’s best practice to know who all are the stakeholders and what’s their interest in
projects. Stakeholder analysis carried out during the initial stages of project brings
clarity to process owners on who needs to be consulted, informed and taken to
confidence for smooth running of the project. Stakeholder engagement models
prescribed in Partnering helps the project team to break the current way of
organizational reporting to innovative way of grouping based on the interest of
project. Stakeholder engagement model is beyond the thinking of conventional
contracting model and always tries to build trust between parties by sharing the
responsibilities.
Partnering also helps to define a proper ‘Dispute Resolution Ladder’ for the project
and to stay focused on issue resolution rather than on issues. Difference of opinion
and conflict of interest are common when two people work together and is part of a
project as we see 100’s of organizations working in a project. A time frame to
escalate the issues and keeping focus on day-to-day issues in project will help the
team members to stay away from hurting their ego and taking any emotional
decisions.
A project charter is a basic project document in matured countries and followed in
most of the management concepts as best practice. Project charter co-developed by
project members, includes the snap shot of project management plan, strategy,
process on how the PMO works and how disputes can be resolved. It will not only
bring clarity on goal to achieve but a larger picture to all stakeholders. The success of
all these documents and process depends on the leaders and how best they follow in
its spirit.
Silo planning can no longer bring results in todays execution, gone are the days that a
dictator can manage the project outcome. Even if it happens anywhere, it is not a
repeatable model and risk on such projects is very high. Collaborative planning which
is getting more popular now can monitors and controls the project in smarter way. It
gives maximum benefit when performing micro planning for look ahead period. The
Last Planner System ® developed by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell helps the team
to produce predictable workflow through collaboration. Last Planner, Wall planning
by PSMJ, planning board in agile project management etc. gives larger visibility of
tasks performing in upcoming days to all teams. The collaboration planning is a very
important practice that can translate the shared vision and goal of the project to a days
work. This collaboration also helps the team to make ready all tasks by identifying
and removing the constraints on time.
Delay in information passing up and down, as well as, the production process in
construction, is very sensitive and always contribute to project delays. Value stream
mapping helps the team to manage any repetitive process very effectively by focusing
the vale delivery at each stage. Its common that same process is repeated many times
in a project with inefficiencies and so, deriving a to-be process from the as-is can be
the best option to optimize the way team interact. Value stream mapping can be
performed during any phase of the project and can streamline the production activities
in construction to great extend.

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Understanding the value in every action and effort, to eliminate ‘waste’ activities, is
fundamental of Lean concepts. We do many process and activities in project without
getting any substantial value. Understanding the value and waste in our actions will
help us to optimize the way we perform today. Everybody in project should observe
waste elimination in their day-to-day work by performing 5S and Waste Walks.
When team members are focused to eliminate waste in their work, it helps the process
to move faster and outputs are always delivered faster, cheaper and better in nature.
Huddle meeting or stand-up meeting on daily basis with respective members of
project team at various levels of engagements can bring miracle in project than
conventional project meetings. Lean construction and Agile Project management
stories from both construction and information technology shows that this short
meeting helps people to resolve the issues faster, make ready the task in better way
and communication flows perfectly in project.
It’s very important to know the performance of project and all parties involved.
Earned value management is one of the proven project management technique to
measure the project progress and performance. Also there are various methods of
measuring the teams’ performance in the project. Analysing daily task completion
against the promised commitment like PPC, work left to do versus time like burn
down chart and measuring of team trust and collaboration level like score cards can
reveal the way project team is progressing and support it to come back on track.
Visual display of project information, measurements, scorecards etc. dissolves the
barriers and ensures that the information is shared across the stakeholders uniformly.
The ups and downs of individuals, organizations and their contributions are visible to
all projects through this process, which makes coordination and collaboration an
integral part of projects lifecycle.
This paper covers just 20-25% of best practices what we can implement in a project.
Following these basics can bring great results when compared to the way we do
projects now, same time its not easy to achieve in one go considering the way we
work today.
Daily huddle or stand up meeting, collaborative planning and visual management of
performances are the key practices we can implement in projects for a quick win is
my opinion. Dispute resolution ladder is one best tool to adopt for Indian construction
but need maturity from participants to make it a success. My next recommendation
will be to implement value stream mapping, 5S and waste walk in projects as these
can help the team to be more efficient and productive in project delivery.
Collaborative preparation of project charter and project management plan with
practical use of it is the first level of maturity we can expect by implementing Lean&
Project Management in our projects. A project management office working with
stakeholder engagement model to run the project than contractual hierarchy is the
next level we can adopt in our projects.

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CONCLUSIONS
Lean Project Management is a way of working with best practices and is evolving
like how Agile Project Management came up in Information Technology. The power
of working in a structured way with people centric processes can assure comfort to all
stakeholders and predictable project delivery. Projects can be delivered without
getting into delay, rework and cost escalation along with elimination of key wastes
like claims, arguments, disputes etc. with the help of Lean Project Management.
Lean and Project Management involvement in a project is much bigger than what is
mentioned above. We can consolidate all such processes and list in line with the
lifecycle of a project. There is requirement for more studies/ research in this subject
along with educating professionals and consulting to organization to reach high level
of maturity. More the professionals are trained and organizations convert lessons
learned to improve their performance, more the projects can be performed in a
consistent and predictable way. Let us work towards the collaborative way of
working in our project to achieve the excellence and be part of national development.
REFERENCES
Paul Teicholz (2013). Labour-Productivity Declines in the Construction Industry:
Causes and Remedies (Another Look) Professor (Research) Emeritus, Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering Stanford University.
http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2013/issue_67.html (Pg 12, Conclusions)
International Partnering Institute (2011). COLLABORATIVE CONTRUCTION:
Lessons Learned for Creating a Culture of Partnership
Project Management Institute (2013). A Guide to Project Management Body of
Knowledge- 5th
edition
International Institute of Business Analysis (2009). A Guide to the Business Analysis
Body of Knowledge- Version 2.0
Engineers Australia (2012). Recommended Practices for the Application of LEAN
Construction Methods to Building New Australian LNG Capacity

Lean Project Management, Requirement of Indian Construction Industry

Lean Project Management, Requirement of Indian Construction Industry

Lean Project Management, Requirement of Indian Construction Industry

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Lean Project Management, Requirement of Indian Construction Industry