I want to dedicate this article to a great concrete contractor and his many field foremen and supervisors up in Packer country. In their desire to be better, they challenged me to raise my own efforts to create an easy to follow reminder for field leaders when beginning each new workday. The points presented below for each START activity is provided by these fine construction leaders. Thanks guys for inspiring me to develop START, and may your efforts help other current and future construction leaders overcome their own challenges!
One expert in the construction industry has found that the least productive hour of the workday is the first hour. In that first hour important decisions are often NOT made, there is failure to ensure critical maintenance has been applied to equipment and tools, and field leaders, in a hurry to get going, fail to review critical project plans and documents.
Every contractor knows first hand the real action starts at the “front-lines,” where actual crews and leaders execute project plans. Yet this is where we lose too much firepower, productivity and precision after hard fought jobs have been estimated, won and pre-planned. Sure there are always surprises on projects, but the contractor who can prepare his or her crew leaders to consistently follow a sequence of preparation steps will empower their crew leader, and their crew members, to perform “No Bad Jobs!”
Ok, let’s consider a sequence, placed in an easy to remember order, which will raise your crew’s ability to hit their daily numbers. Let’s jump START your workday!
START is an acronym that you can teach your crews in 15 minutes. The secret isn’t the ease in which they learn START, it’s building it into a daily commitment for them to adapt and execute each new day.
- Schedule your day
- Take daily inventory
- Ask questions daily
- Review documentation daily
- Train your workers daily
Schedule Your Day
Sounds almost too simple, but it’s sadly not completed every day, much less by the crew. Sure, many contractors may have their crews meet in the “shop” each morning and the supervisor may talk to the foremen about their day’s efforts. That’s good and needed. Yet seldom does the actual crew foreman sit down and actually line out just what he intends to have his crew work on for the day, much less set any targets that need achieving.
The crew foreman, hopefully working with a formal one or two week “look ahead,” should focus 15 to 20 minutes each morning working through his plans for that day specifically. Enlisting his lead man or several members from his crew will bring even greater insights to the days needs and thus, improve performance.
This process allows the crew to leave the shop more confident about what they are doing, what they will need to complete their work and how much work will need to be completed. (Please read some of my previous articles about jobsite planning and use of a look ahead for more information.)
- Look and review the “Super” schedule
- Identify the “times of need” to be on-site
- Involve the entire crew/team to discuss that day’s plan
- Crew leaders prepare their decisions to make that day
- Break the day’s plan into “4 quarters” for greater attention and faster adjustment
Take Daily Inventory
This second action directs each crew leader to ensure that their trucks, trailers and workers have exactly what they need to complete their work. Leaving the yard without every piece of equipment and tool secured and confirmed is a leading reason why workers fail to achieve needed production rates and targets. Waiting for the company’s “hot truck” to bring something from the yard because the crew did not inventory the missing shovels or oil cans for the equipment is simply a waste of time and drives profit margins south.
An inventory list should be created for work crews that list all of the equipment and tools, materials, safety equipment, etc., needed for each project. For many contractors, this can be a list that remains constant as their crews may perform the same type of work each day. However, such consistency of work often breeds complacency among the crew members, each thinking someone else got the needed tool or component needed on the job.
There may be other forms of needed inventory for field leaders to employ such as the requirements for a particular customer involving an inventory of what is needed to complete at the site, a list of contact information and a list of what workers have been cleared to work on the project due to security requirements of the customer, i.e. clearance documents needed to perform work on a military base.
In short, any inventory list for any reason is too simple not to create. Possessing an inventory list doesn’t guarantee your workers producing quality results but it sure makes it easier for them to achieve needed results by first ensuring that they have the needed tools of their trade in their possession when leaving your company’s yard.
- Use a quality audit document that lists non-negotiable process to follow
- Implement a daily inventory of trucks and trailers AND confirm needed items are secured before leaving yard
- Push the “Star” Process: assign crew members to provide extra attention on quality, safety, tool/equipment preventive maintenance, etc.
Ask questions daily
In the rush to get going every morning there is usually little time to solicit questions. Crew leaders often feel the need to just get the crew out of the office and to the jobsite. But more questions may need to be asked prior to leaving than after the crew has arrived at the jobsite.
Simple questions such as:
- “Who is setting up the chalk lines today?”
- “Where are we going to park the trucks today?”
- “What area of the site are we going to begin working today?”
- “Do we need to bring any extra forms or anchor bolts today?”
All seem to be innocent enough but are too often asked later rather than earlier. Crew leaders need to be asking their workers and company senior leaders questions before start-up and their employees need to be free to ask questions each morning to ensure that we’re all on the same page. A work culture that appreciates asking questions, sometimes the most important question at the right time, is a culture that will perform tasks better and do more things right the first time.
- All supervisors ask daily questions of their foremen to ensure all bases are covered
- Make daily use of the “Process Book” of SOPs for every major work process company executes; get sign-off from users
- Lead “Process Book” questions, especially with new employees or employees not performing well
- Circle back to your “ADHD” workers to ensure they understand
Review documentation daily
There seems to be more documentation today required for the simplest of projects than ever. Big or small, your crew leaders are often the holders of copies of blue prints, CAD renderings, OSHA and DOT documents, weekly “look-ahead,” city or county permits, customer requirements and contact information, location and contact information for local material plants and suppliers, and standard operating procedures or “SOPs,” to name a few.
For the contractor performing larger sized projects with the crew operating out of a jobsite trailer, the need and reasoning is still the same. Important project documentation needs to be identified in terms of what is to be reviewed and completed daily, weekly or monthly. Our crew leaders can simply not omit reviewing needed documentation.
- Identify “needy” foremen and lead them to review their daily documents
- Inspect training plans for employees needing extra training and support
- Crew leaders to engage other reliable crew members to assist in reviewing documentation for inventory, tracking crew hours, quality audits, safety inspections, etc.
- Regularly assess what crew foreman needs what accountability and support for greater performance and to build foreman mental retention
Train your workers daily
If there is one action every crew leader must be fast to start it is to increase the effort to train and educate their workers. At no other time have we observed so many employees joining the construction industry with so few skills for their trade. Thus, it will be incumbent on the crew leader, supported by their supervisors, to make every day a “classroom” of learning.
Suddenly every start, stop and restart has a teachable moment. Rather than take the job back from the new employee, crew leaders must take that extra one to five minutes to explain the “why?” behind a particular technique while demonstrating the “how to.” If there is one daily effort that more crew leaders will employ it will be that of training and educating their workers.
- Crew foremen to be highly active to train…even more active than performing the work personally
- Supervisors to redirect crew foreman when a wrong step has been taken; crew foreman redirecting their crew members when a wrong step has been made
- Engage recently taught employees to train another worker…ASAP!
- Slowly add little pieces of responsibility to workers
- Drive the non-negotiable importance of safety and jobsite cleaning along with technical training
- Refuse mediocrity… NO BAD JOBS!
Like my crew leaders from Packer-land have begun to do, initiate your own frontal assault on making your project teams and field crews more productive. Gone are the days that we just hope that by pure badgering of our workers things will begin to get better. It takes too long to wait out that method, and it also risks losing potentially long-term employees who will give up too soon before a more organized approach is implemented.
Look, to START faster and smarter takes exactly those items shared above. Why wait for the performance to improve when you can START right now!
