Teamwork that Included the Suppliers Produced a 15%Labour Saving for this Project
"I'm an old baseball player. I
know how important teamwork is.
This is what my job is about;
trying to figure out how field
and office can work together
better for successful jobs.Bob Fitzgerald, President
Fitzgerald ContractorsWhen Fitzgerald Contractors received a $4 million mechanical contract for a 5-storey addition to St. Francis Hospital in Monroe, La., it was decided to totally pre-plan this project. "What we have done, basically," said Bob Fitzgerald (president), "is extend the scope and amount of pre-planning beyond any we've done in the past. We've analysed, in detail, how the various materials should be prepared, pre-organised and containerized; how they should be transported to the job; how they should be handled on-site. And in the process our overall job planning is also becoming more detailed.
"In addition to having foremen, general superintendent, project manager and top management all involved in early planning, some of our suppliers are also becoming part of the pre-planning process.
"The best part is that people in both field and office are enthusiastically coming up with ideas and better ways, in an area we have pretty much taken for granted in the past," Fitzgerald added.
The Team Gets 'Educated'
Fitzgerald's people had originally attended one of Kerry O'Brien's one-day seminars. All of the foremen, project managers, journeymen and apprentices were there, and most of the office and warehouse people.
Then, a year later, O'Brien returned for a two-day session. The idea was to follow up with a program of detailed implementation, in which Kerry O'Brien would assist in the initial preplanning of a particular project-the Monroe hospital job.
Participation in this two-day session was limited to the Fitzgerald project team for the hospital job, along with key office and shop people. Fitzgerald's subcontractors for the project, and some top people in the general contractor's organisation were invited to join the Fitzgerald people in an "awareness seminar" on the first day. Two local suppliers from whom the firm would be purchasing rough materials for the project were invited to the seminar too. The objective: to "educate" everybody who was in a position to influence, for better or worse, the cost effectiveness of materials handling for the job.
However, only the Fitzgerald personnel participated in the initial pre-planning session, led by O'Brien on the second day. The pre-planning dealt only with the mechanical work for the hospital addition.
Detailed Planning: It's a Thought Process
In the first place they accepted Kerry O'Brien's concept of intensive pre-planning-"pre-building" the job, as he puts it. "What Kerry's approach has done is get us into really detailed planning," said David Hochstetler (project manager for the hospital job).
"In our initial pre-planning meeting he showed us the thought process. As a project team we should think through a particular operation. Will we palletize the plumbing fixtures? How should we palletize-by toilet room, or by fixture? What width must pallets be to go through the doorways? How do we handle trim? Could be palletize pre-trimmed lavatories? And so on.
"We went through this process for different groups of materials, such as hangers, sleeves and air handling units. Locked up together for the better part of a day, we brainstormed every aspect of materials handling for each particular material, following Kerry's detailed six-step procedures."
(The six steps are: (1) palletization and containerization, (2) truck utilisation, (3) site unloading, (4) hoisting, (5) horizontal handling (on floors), (6) installation (vertical handling and setup).)
"For the Monroe hospital project," Hochstetler noted, "we scheduled a sequence of five pre-planning meetings. Beginning with the first meeting, we made detailed notes as the group identified operations to be pre-planned and potential problems, and came up with ideas and solutions. Before a particular operation came up on the job, we had already thought through a lot of the details.
"Then, as a given operation was about to begin on the job, Robert Franklin (the project superintendent) and I could go back and review our notes. We could see what solutions we had settled on six months before. And, importantly I think, this gave us flexibility. Maybe we would have an even better idea by now, or we might need to modify the original idea because job conditions had changed. After reviewing our notes, we could update and improve the plan as the job went along.
"This was the kind of job where we wanted to go through that kind of detailed planning," Hochstetler noted. "As Kerry explained to us, each company needs to fit the approach to the situation. We have found that very detailed planning is not feasible on some of our jobs, but some pre-planning can be done on most jobs. It depends on the size of the job, its complexity, and the time available for pre-planning before construction starts. The Monroe job was big enough and there was time to plan."
Good Idea: Committing to a Targeted Reduction in Manhours
Bob Fitzgerald especially mentioned O'Brien's idea of asking the project team to commit to a targeted percentage reduction in manhours to be achieved through pre-planning. O'Brien did this in the initial pre-planning session."The targeted percentage is not imposed by management," Fitzgerald said. "It comes from the group. That happens after foreman, general superintendent, project manager and others have batted around what they consider possible figures, and reach some kind of consensus. It commits the team to a goal. That has stimulated a lot of good cooperation and collaberation.
Success, with a Team Operation Going
Jolley Wasson (general superintendent for all projects) reflected the enthusiasm of one who has grown up in the field.
"Everything Kerry said in his seminar made sense," the general superintendent said. "You knew it was true-how big a part of the job materials handling is, and how much room for improvement there is. You could see the ideas were practical. And of course all this related to a really critical area: the competition we're facing today and the need to keep improving our productivity.
"The most important thing I got from Kerry's presentation was that the big potential for improvement will be realised when you get a team operation going. He got it across to us that this is the way; everybody working together-foremen in the field, people in the office, subcontractors, suppliers, and general contractor.
"Our field people, and the warehouse and office people too, were really interested in what Kerry was presenting. They understood what he was talking about. They wanted to try it out. And that's what has happened."
What They Did to Score Productivity Gains
Number one: palletizing. Thanks to pre-planning, the firm's materials takeoff was broken down by work area. Materials were ordered palletized, so that pallet loads moved onto the job and all they way to their final destination-on a pallet jack or a forklift. No manual shuffling and shifting; no double-handling. Bridge from material hoist. The general contractor, whose site superintendent attended the O'Brien seminar, built a special bridge. This was no easy task for the GC in that the bridge was 50 feet long, 15 feet in the air, and had to support 5,000 pounds. The bridge connected the material hoist to a third-floor opening at a location where Fitzgerald could bring up 32 large pieces of air moving equipment, on pallet jacks, to the area where they were to be installed. The opening would have been inaccessible without the bridge.
Unloading dock. The general built a dock, too, for unloading materials at the level of the material hoist. This permitted unloading of palletized materials on pallet jacks which were rolled right onto the hoist and taken up to the desired floor, then rolled across the floor to the final destination.
"Pallet jacks are the greatest tools," said Jolley Wasson. "When I think of the way we used to move heavy, bulky equipment-rolling it on a pipe or doing it manually in some other way-what a natural, quick, simple way we have to do that kind of work now with pallet jacks. They're not expensive (about $350); we can have them wherever there's a need."
Palletized fixtures, pre-trimmed lavatories. All plumbing fixtures for the patient rooms were ordered palletized, but the lavatories came on separate pallets-not the pallets on which water closets, drinking fountains and other fixtures were loaded.
"We wanted to pre-trim all of the lavatories," said David Hochstetler. "So when the pallets of lavatories came from the suppliers, we did not take them to designated floors. Instead we put these pallets in our fab shop adjacent to the job, with a forklift we have there. We uncrated the lavatories and trimmed them out in the fab. shop. We cut each cardboard carton where the tailpiece fitted through and restacked the lavatories on their pallets, which would presently be moved to patient rooms on pallet jacks. But the other fixture crates weren't touched until we rolled them down the hallways on pallet jacks or dollies and dropped them off in the rooms where they were to be installed."
Flush valves and sweat adapter kits pre-organised. "We also did something similar with flushometer and sweat adapter kits," Hochstetler said. "These we received from the supplier packaged together. We opened up the packages; pulled the sweat adapter kits and stop valves; resealed the flushometers, and kept them secure for trimming out after the fixtures and the walls were in place. We used the shrink-wrap machine to seal flushometers in plastic bags. This provides some protection against damage, loss or pilfering.
"In cases like this we make an evaluation to determine whether we want our supplier to do some of these things or whether we'll do it all with our apprentices on the job. Which way will be cost effective?
"Maybe a supplier will say the manufacturer won't ship a certain material in a way that permits packaging or organising as our people have requested. We don't stop there. We talk to both the manufacturer and the suppliers, try to find out what the problems are, and together come up with a solution.
The wheeled fittings cart. "We have five of them by now," Jolley Wasson said. "We use them for copper plumbing, for medical gas piping, for iron piping, for chilled water runouts to air conditioning units, and other work. They're loaded up with the fittings and other items needed for a particular work operation. The cart can be rolled across a building floor, taking crews the materials they need-all pre-organised. There's no hunting, running after materials, or waiting for them.
"The tools for each worker are in a small metal cart on wheels; it fits in the journeyman's locker. Tools are always ready, not damaged, no longer thrown together in a gang box where people must rummage through the box for the tools they need."
Pre-organising fixtures and trim. Bob Fitzgerald explained: "We have been able to have our plumbing fixture supplier receive china, brass and trim in his warehouse and pre-organise it the way we want the items, loaded on pallets.
"These items come from the fixture manufacturer in separate trucks-a china truck, a brass truck, and a trim truck. Formerly we had to sort all this out after it came to the job. Now the supplier organises and palletizes the items according to our instructions.
"Sometimes a supplier will say, 'It's costing me a little money to handle the palletizing the way you want it,' I say, 'Well, how much?' Maybe for a $100,000 fixture order it will be $300. That's economical compared with what it costs to do this work on the job.
"One of our suppliers says-and I love him for it-that it saves him money because he can receive materials in his warehouse, unload them with a forklift, get them all together, and then load the pallets on trucks with the forklift, for transport to the job. He has never touched the items except to put them on a pallet once. Before, he had to handle each item three times."
Half-crates make pallet-with-sides. "We have Tyler Pipe-their plant is close to us-ship fittings in half-crates," Fitzgerald said. "Then we take a piece of plywood and put it across the crate and we have four boxes in effect. This makes a sturdy pallet-with-sides having four compartments. We use these not only to 'palletise' cast iron fittings but steel fittings, plumbing brass and other small items. It's an idea one of our field people came up with."
Management's Commitment Was 'Visible'
We asked David Hochstetler (project manager for the hospital job) and Don Carter (project manager in charge of the company's start-up and test-balance work) for their impressions of how the field people responded to Kerry O'Brien's seminar and to management's appeal for their participation.
"I think at first they were a little bit sceptical," said Hochstetler, "not about Kerry's ideas but about what we as management would do. I think the foremen felt like they'd had some of these ideas long before. They were interested. They were people who would welcome something that allowed them to handle heavy materials and equipment better, and with less physical strain. Still, I think their initial reaction was, 'Good. Now let's see what the company's going to do.'
"Of course one of the first things we could do was implement the idea of extensive use of pallet jacks. We did that, and we started to have material palletized. Very soon they saw that management was committed. They began to come up with their ideas. And we worked together to implement them. It's become a real team operation."
Don Carter said, "I think our field people and others in the company became involved, and began contributing to the goals, very quickly. I think it's because this was a commitment they were able to see; it was visible. Like the fellow said, 'I'd rather see a sermon than hear one.'
"They saw, and they got involved. In our meetings we would look at each activity on the job, asking questions and coming up with ideas. Would a forklift working on this activity make it more productive? Or does this crew need its own pallet jack? Or someone had an idea like making pallets boxes out of fitting crates. That's how it has gone. Nobody is just talking; we're doing."
Results
Fitzgerald saved fifteen percent of the labour hours on this project.
Bob Fitzgerald-"We experienced some real problems concerning the general project organisation/coordination and the project drawings. However, even with all the adversity we experienced, we still did fine. This project really sold us on the pre-planning approach."
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