Schedule for Sale: Workface Planning for Construction Projects

© 2009 Geoff Ryan P.M.P.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/23/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4195-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4196-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4197-7 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009911298

Schedule for Sale

The Title:

Can you really buy time on a construction project?

Yes you can, it’s called WorkFace Planning and the price is effort and conviction.

The return is the confidence that your project took the time that it had to, and cost the right amount.

Each construction project is governed by the golden triangle of Quality, Cost and Schedule. This is a principle from the Project Management Institute that is present on simple weekend projects and multi-billion dollar projects. A Plumber once summed it up for me by telling me that I could have a project:

Good and Fast, but it won’t be Cheap.

Or Good and Cheap, but it won’t be Fast.

Or Fast and Cheap, but it won’t be Good

In a world where production is money, the industrial and commercial projects that we build cannot afford to cut the corner on Quality, so we have established Quality as the governing influence. That leaves us a choice between Schedule and Cost for the one that we will let slip. The truth is that time is money when you have to hire people to do stuff, so if you want to reduce costs then you have to minimize the schedule. So the Plumbers analogy is not correct, you can have it good, fast and cheap, you just have to keep your focus on good and fast. WorkFace Planning is a process that improves quality and reduces construction costs by minimizing schedules through improved productivity.

The idea that Schedule (productivity) is for sale suggests that good productivity is not naturally occurring and that we have a choice between good and bad productivity. We do, and most often, we make the passive choice to leave productivity behind because we don’t understand the link between preparation and productivity. This is true at the field level, amongst middle management and in the early design stages of a project. In the wildly complicated world of mega projects our productivity has very little to do with field level desire and is mostly governed by preparation and planning.

WorkFace Planning does not actually buy schedule, it is a trade off that exchanges effort and conviction, (preparation), for a risk mitigation strategy that prevents the loss of schedule.

So WorkFace Planning does not allow you to buy back the schedule that you lost through poor planning; it prevents you from losing it in the first place.

And it works.

The Concept:

WorkFace Planning is a process that was identified as a best practice amongst constructors by the Construction Owners Association of Alberta (COAA) in 2005. This was the result of a quest by COAA to capture the essence of construction productivity that started with the development of a subcommittee in 2001.

By the end of the year 2000, several high profile mega projects had blown their estimates by billions of dollars and the economic environment was driving the development of many more multi-billion dollar projects. The industry was waking up to the fact that we didn’t know how to manage fast track mega projects. The game was changing and we were still trying to apply the old rules.

Lloyd Rankin and I joined the COAA WorkFace Planning committee on the same day in October 2003. Lloyd as a PhD student from the University of Calgary and myself as a representative of KBR and Syncrude. Over the next couple of years we worked together to conduct over 100 interviews with industry professionals and were major contributors to the development of the COAA model for WorkFace Planning.

Our search of the industry revealed some pockets of high productivity and a closer look at these organizations showed us detailed plans built by experienced constructors with a process for removing constraints. This became the foundation for the COAA model for WorkFace Planning, which can be viewed at: www.workfaceplan.com

In 2006, the real world application of WorkFace Planning gave us a completely new level of understanding. The need to capture this experience and expand the influence of this concept across the industry has led me to develop this guidebook.

My company, Insight-wfp.inc, has now established WorkFace Planning on 6 large projects each over $300 million, across both Canada and the US, hired and trained over 50 WorkFace Planners and is consulting for Owners, Engineers, Project Management Teams, Constructors and Software developers. This experience, along with the foundation of the COAA model, is the basis for Schedule for Sale.

To add another level of value to the book I presented the first draft to a wide selection of industry professionals through an online website where readers were invited to read a page at a time and then make comments on that page. I have incorporated their comments and it has enriched both the real world validity of the contents and my own understanding of the issues that we face. Many thanks to all of the contributors.

The Book:

The book will guide you through the Basic Concepts of WorkFace Planning and Resource Requirements to Information Streams and finally to Total Information Management.

The website www.scheduleforsale.com comes as an extension to the book that will allow you to view all of the documents that are illustrated in the chapters. Membership to the site will allow you utilize the interactive flowchart and then download a complete set of sample documents. Members will also have access to a chat room with other readers, where ideas can be floated and tested against the global experience of your peers. An electronic copy of the book is also available for purchase from the site.

My expectation is that this book combined with the website, your existing knowledge and some other links provided on the back page, will allow you to develop a complete understanding and appreciation of WorkFace Planning. I also believe that this book contains enough of the right tools, concepts and concrete examples to allow you to integrate WorkFace Planning into your existing organization.

With or without further help from us.

Geoff Ryan

Disclaimer:

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.

Contents

Introduction:

Basic Principles

Chapter 1 Field Installation Work Packages

Chapter 2 Removal of Constraints

Chapter 3 The WorkFace Planners

Chapter 4 Summary of Basic Principles

Information Streams

Chapter 5 Resources

Chapter 6 Scaffold

Chapter 7 Construction Equipment

Chapter 8 Material Management

Chapter 9 Information Streams

Chapter 10 WorkFace Planning by Design

A. Stakeholders

B. Flow charts

C. Nodes extrapolated

Total Information Management

Chapter 11 Data - Information - Knowledge - Understanding

Chapter 12 Beyond WorkFace Planning and WorkFace Planning Software

Some Resources:

Introduction:

Overview: WorkFace Planning

The basic concept of WorkFace Planning, or WFP, is that we can reduce our construction schedules by improving the coordination of information, tools and materials at the work face, where the work is performed. This is accomplished by developing detailed, achievable plans that are based upon reality and experience.

The primary product of this effort is a Field Installation Work Package (FIWP).

Historically the Planners in every project organization are a long way from the workface, are over burdened and quite often lack the experience of the people who are actually doing the work. This created large plans that the workforce could not execute in an optimal way. The solution that the industry is migrating towards is to move the detailed planning function closer to the work face, develop planners who understand the work, have enough of them that they can build quality plans, (1 Planner per 50 craft) and then give them direct access to all of the project’s information.

= WorkFace Planners

These two elements are the basic principles of WFP, i.e. Planners and Plans.

Let’s have a closer look at the details of each one.

Chapter 1

FIWPs: (Field Installation Work Packages)

A sample FIWP is available under the sample documents folder of the website.

http://www.scheduleforsale.com

A FIWP is a detailed plan that contains 500 to 1000 hours of work that will be executed during one rotation, by one crew, from a single trade discipline. Based on 10 workers and a Foreman working 10-hour shifts for a rotation of either 5 days (500hours) or 10 days (1000 hours). The expectation is that the crew will start work on their 500-hour plan when their shift starts on Monday and the plan will be complete by the end of the shift on Friday. For the purpose of this book, we will use the 1000-hour packages. The 10 days on / 4 days off schedule is emerging as the most common shift for our application of industrial construction.

The logic behind this scale is that most of the activities on any work site are based upon the rotation. We start activities with the intent of getting them finished by the end of the rotation or we envision a certain stage of progress before we go home for the weekend.

The Contents of each FIWP:

Each FIWP must have:-

A cover page: that shows a 3D picture of the scope, a one line definition of the scope, the FIWP number, and the Planned Value in work hours.

A table of Contents: This is a basic function of all good technical documents, provided so that the reader does not have to read the whole document to get the answer that they are looking for.

Constraint page: This page will list the constraints in order, showing the status of each one with a final sign off column for QC, Safety and the Superintendent. A note of warning: There is a temptation to get all of the stakeholders to sign off on a FIWP before the work is released. This will effectively choke the process and add weeks to the development cycle. The only signatures required are for Quality Control, Safety and the Superintendent.

A detailed scope of work: the level of detail here will change based upon the experience of your workforce. In Alberta we are privileged to work with a mature workforce that has at least 7 mega projects of experience over the last 10 years and tradesmen that have all graduated from government run apprenticeship programs. We don’t need to tell this workforce the details of a simple rigging lift. At the other extreme if we were building a petrochemical plant in a third world country that has had very little economic activity, we should probably include a diagram that shows a clevis, sling and softeners for a steel rigging plan. Ultimately, the level of detail in a FIWP develops based on the feedback that a WorkFace Planner gets from the Foremen.

Safety Planning: The true value from this page comes when the Foreman utilizes it to create and maintain a culture of safety around the scope of work. There are standard safety documents that should be added to every scope of work, however the Safety representative that reviews this FIWP should also use it as a way to focus the Foreman’s attention on specific dangers that are present in the work identified. This could be in the form of a toolbox talk that references the type of work being executed or a heads up statement about the latest injury statistics. Ultimately, the Foreman is responsible for the safe execution of work and this section should be used as a means to help them prepare for that. As a two-way communication tool, the FIWP is also alerting the Safety team to the imminent path of construction.

Quality Planning: The Quality Control team should use this interaction with the FIWP as a means to communicate directly with the Foreman on specific activities. The best way to do this is to extract the portion of the Inspection and Test Plan (ITP) that is relevant to the scope and highlights the places where the Foreman will need to get signatures, notify inspectors or implement holds. By adding the documents required for turnover, the QC team can effectively utilize the FIWPs to facilitate turnover from the first day of construction. As the FIWP is returned from the field, the QC team extracts the completed documents and replaces them with copies. The original documents are filed under their system number in the QC office. If there is a problem with the documents, it allows the QC inspectors to