Conversations with lean constructors™
Led by Alan Mossman, The LCI UK Northern California study tour 12-16 October 2009 was based in San Francisco.
The purpose of the tour was to:
- meet with owners/clients, designers, constructors and their trade partners,
- discuss their lean project and enterprise transformation process and how it is changing their design, construction and civils work,
- explore the relationship between lean and green,
- visit a range of projects at different stages of design and construction.
What did we do?
Sun 11 • dinner for all those willing and able
Mon 12 • initial briefing & agreement of key areas of interest
1200 • met with Romano Nickerson AIA Boulder Associates in San Francisco - transforming an architectural practice.
Tue 13 • 0830 California Pacific Medical Centre (CPMC) or Cathedral Hill Hospital project – observe all team Target Value Design Meeting & cluster meetings
1030 • tour of the sixth floor with ad hoc meetings with team members
1200 • lunch & discussion with David Long, project leader for Sutter Health, Paul Reiser, Executive VP and lean leader, Boldt, Steve Pepler AIA, Smith Group, lead designer and others.
Sutter Health are a Northern California Healthcare provider that decided to procure all its construction on a lean basis in 2004. CPMC uses IFoA, Target Value Design, Set based design, Big Room co-location and much more.
Herrero/Boldt, a JV, is the lead constructor on this $911m project that looks set to come in below target cost (which was set 14% below market) and ahead of time with a significantly enhanced scope.
Sutter asked Boldt Construction, based in Wisconsin where it began its lean journey in 1999, to set-up in California to work with them on CMPC. Boldt chose to partner with a local constructor Herrero Contractors for the CMPC project.
1530 • Herrero Contractors have been on their lean journey since 2004 and it is firmly led from the top. For a little more background read this article. Herrero have a JV with Boldt on Sutter’s CPMC project and on other projects. We met with CEO, Mark Herrero, Vice President of Business Development, Scott Muxen and Director of Learning, Paulo Napolitano.
Wed 14 • 0630 breakfast meeting with trade foremen from the Mills Peninsula project and George Zettel, Turner Construction. Mills Peninsula features Lean Learning Lab, VSM of commissioning process, Last Planner, IPD hybrid form + a tenant improvement with the pure new IFoA
0800 • attend weekly work planning meeting
1200 • lunch with George Zettel, Turner Construction, a subsidiary of the German company HOCHTIEF. George is their lean leader based in California.
1400 • met with Will Lichtig, author of the Integrated form of Agreement (IFoA), is an attorney and legal counsel to Sutter Health. Lichtig was listed as one of the top 25 news makers by Engineering News Record in 2007 for his work on IFoA & continues to make news through his distinctive leadership on the innovative California Prison Receivership project.
1800 • LCI Northern California Lean Coordinators meeting in Fairfield CA with Dinner - Presentation of and lessons learned from an IPD School project
Thur 15 • 0800 The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center — the IPD team for this public sector project is almost fully co-located in it's own "Integrated Construction Design Center" ICDC at the site. Construction will not begin for another 2 years. We met with senior project staff from DPR Construction, and with Dean Reed, DPR’s lean coordinator and a pioneer in lean construction.
1400 • Sutter Health & DPR Construction: Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley (SMCCV) — Dean Read says this is the most advanced project in lean terms. We attended the end of the final day of a three day off-site meeting to ensure the team are ready to submit the last major interior architectural plan package to the state agency – we met with Digby Christian, Sutter Project Manager, James Choo, SPS Technical Director and others – Digby, a Brit, is in effect the client’s Design Manager for the project. He is responsible for business plan validation and initial concept through design, entitlements, permitting, construction, move-in and initial operation. Construction has just started while design is on-going. The Integrated Project Design team of 10 companies (including DPR Construction) are linked by a contract developed by Sutter (IFoA) and use planning tools and concepts Digby brought to the project via his contacts with Ghafari Associates and Strategic Project Solutions. They meet every other week for 2, 3 or even 4 days, depending on the intensity of the work (many are working together on another project that meets in the intervening weeks). The specific & significant forward thinking expertise that DPR has brought to the project is it's ability to price concrete, framing and drywall from a 3D model.
1900 • dinner with Philip & Chen Sun, Wayne Hu, Paulo Napolitano
Fri 16 • 1000 met with Philip Patrick Sun AlA, Institutional Consulting Practice Leader at the Architectural Practice of Jacobs Engineering, Jacobs Carter Burgess. Philip, who worked with BDP in UK after graduating, talked to us about managing design in a lean way even when the client isn’t interested. Born in Taiwan, Philip is lead designer on the Chinese Hospital project in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Two members of the tour went on to Boulder, Colorado to:
LCI one-day Introduction to Lean Construction with Greg Howell and Glenn Ballard
LCI 11th Annual Congress — read Alan Mossman’s notes from the Congress LCI_Congress_2009_note.pdf
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