Lean Construction is an adaptation of Lean Manufacturing. It combines the collaborative planning methods with the best production practices to deliver highly efficient construction projects.

BMWC has established a lean culture by fully implementing lean principles, practices and behaviors throughout all facets of the company. This is accomplished by developing, training, governing, measuring, improving, communicating, marketing and most importantly executing our lean process.

• Defining activities from project milestones
• Breaking activities into smaller measurable tasks
• Identifying constraints associated with each task
• Schedule tasks only when constraints are resolved
• Track the completed tasks versus the uncompleted tasks and specifies reasons why tasks were not completed
• Resolves issues preventing task completion to improve planning capabilities
• Use data to analyze production rates and eliminate waste
• All disciplines work together to identify and optimize a single, unified plan for a project
• Field supervisors make commitments for work activities to be performed daily and weekly

Lean Construction results in more organized projects where constraints are identified early and solved with minimum interruptions in daily work, reduced premium time, strong safety performance and on-time completion within the project budget. Supervisors attest that after a month of on-the-job learning, the methods make their jobs easier.

Project Examples:

• University of Washington Medical Center G&H-Wing Renovation - Stop and start work was prevented. We chose to delay the work in the utility tunnel for four months until all engineering questions were resolved. As a result no RFI’s were created during the actual execution of work and man hours expended were 10% less than anticipated.
• Boeing Auburn Acid Waste Piping Project - The craftsmen informed the management team during a lean scheduling meeting of space limitation that would prevent a critical tie-in. The project team was able to re-design the tie-in connection point to allow the work to be performed as scheduled.
• University of Washington Global Health Project - During planning sessions, the mechanical craftsmen coordinated with the electrical craftsmen to detail the work flow in a highly congested area. What was thought to be the riskiest part of the project was completed almost two weeks ahead of schedule.
• BP DHT Project - Principles of Lean Construction and Production Management were applied to our construction of a Brownfield Refinery Hydrotreater Unit. The construction plans were developed in three levels by group collaboration among the management staff and field supervisors. Field supervisors made quantified commitments for materials to be installed and operations to be performed, and commitment reliability was measured and tracked. The hydrotreater was erected on time, on budget with minimum overtime, with high quality and one recordable injury. Piping was installed for 20% less man hours per foot. Independent Project Analysis (IPA) benchmarked our hydrotreater project as "Superior to Industry."