(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Welcome everybody out to podcast 1212, the title of this podcast will be how to help your bottlenecks. In it we're going to cover techniques to help your trade bottlenecks and to help your zone bottlenecks and specific step-by-step instructions on how to do so. So if you're into that, please stay with us.

We're going to be doing a construction podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life, and expect more. Let's go.

Okay, everybody, I'm excited. I'm in a Waymo on my way to the airport. I'm jamming. 

I'm excited to have this done for you. I love you all. Let me go ahead and read some feedback from our listeners. 

Thanks, Jason. Lean fundamentally respects human nature and the continuous self development of everyone in an enterprise, even the temporary enterprise that is the construction project. Yes, CPM is harmful. 

More importantly, CPM doesn't work. It comes from a past world, one that is top down authoritarian and sees people as replaceable and CPM is intended to be used in a world that is rather stable. The truth, the future is not just uncertain. 

It is unknowable. Our construction projects need a system of replanning by the people delivering the project. Well, I love this. 

I love this. I've been debating so like when I'm writing a book about CPM that I might just put in the drawer and not do anything with because I don't know how it's going to be received. I don't really care how people feel about me, but I want it to have the right effect. 

But I'm looking into the research and there's not a lot of backup for this, not a lot of research papers and not a lot of books as I would have expected. So I can fit everything that I've found in my backpack and I actually have it with me as I'm at the airport and studying things and going through these different concepts. So really quite interesting. 

I don't know that there's enough information to go do like a cited research paper data study based book. I think it's going to have to be mostly Jason encouraging people to think for themselves, which I think it's going to end up that way. But I love that intro and I'm really excited for everything that's going on and I'm excited that you're on this podcast.

So let me go ahead and head into this. I talk a lot about trade bottlenecks and zone bottlenecks, but I don't talk a lot about how to fix them. So I made a list here. 

It's the fixed trade bottlenecks. You adjust the work package and the crew composition. Let me give you an example. 

Like if you have a three-day activity, then the next one is six, then three, three, three, three. If you map that out zone by zone, the six-day duration replicated on a finish to start throughout the rest of the zones is going to slow you up and be your bottleneck. You can split that crew up into two smaller crews working in succession into two three-day crews and it works beautifully and get the overall phase to go faster. 

And so my bottom line is you can add train labor, you can change the crew composition, you can split how the crews are organized. I remember when studying civil crews, if you lose your foreman and your equipment operator, it will really slow you down. You know what I mean? So like one person's missing and you don't have another operator or if the foreman has to go become the operator, their productivity could cut in half, right? So adjusting, making sure that you have a good consistent operator, a backup operator, a foreman and a lead person, and then the right people and the rest of the crew in the right positions can be key, not can be, will be key for productivity. 

So if you have a trade bottleneck, adjust the work package and the crew composition. The other thing you can do is improve the training of workers and shorten their end zone cycle time. One of the things that I love doing is a first-in-place study or a mock-up and seeing how well they do it. 

Let me give you a quick story on this. At the Bioscience Research Laboratory for the Steel, it was quite complex and we had a great steel installer, but the mock-up took three times longer than they thought. And at the end of it, they were like, yeah, I think that was just the mock-up. 

I don't think that's gonna manifest itself out in the field. And sure enough, it did. And I kicked myself because I should have just paid attention. 

That was their base duration and did they get better from there? Yes. Did they improve their training? Yes. Did they shorten their end zone cycle time? Yes. 

But the base was still the base and then improvements came from there. And so if you ever want to fix a trade bottleneck, consider your base duration, what it will take as a standard, as a projection, but always try to improve your end zone cycle time by providing additional training, adjusting how things are done from zone to zone, doing a reflection with the workers, always improving. Another thing you can do if you have a trade bottleneck is just respond quickly with all the right communication. 

Go on high alert. Anything that they need. Get it to them. 

RFIs answer it. Emails respond to them. Radio calls per cup.

Like if you have a trade bottleneck, it doesn't mean that they're bad people or that they're doing something wrong. It means they have the longest time or the most amount of risk or the hardest situation or whatever. It means we should help them. 

Another thing that brings me to that is that it consider a task force meeting. Task force meetings are there to help out where until we're back on track, you form a little task force with all the people that can actually help. And you do this daily until you're out of the woods. 

Another one is help with needed resources that are appropriate. So if the job site has access to the forklift or to the crane or to diesel or to some lumber or whatever it is, like if you can help with resources and have it be financial and contractually appropriate, always help your trade bottlenecks in that way. Now one thing you can do that doesn't cost very much money is prioritize their problems in all of your meetings. 

So you could even address their stuff right away and say, hey our trade bottleneck is such and such, let's make sure that we're covering your items first. How can we help? Have you been waiting on anything? And that's a huge thing that you can do. And then the one last thing for the trade bottlenecks is make sure they're first up for logistical resources like the crane, hoist, forklift and any access. 

I remember at the research laboratory again we had concrete going up and the concrete cores were crucial and we had a delivery system and DPR has a really neat little delivery system schedule that they follow. We had one that was first come first serving. We had the time block based on the actual concrete operations going up with shear walls and columns and the decks obviously. 

When the crane and the hoist and everything would be utilized and I mean this was huge for us. We had to do it where they were first come first serve and so if you have that same situation please prioritize them. Now let's go on to zone bottlenecks. 

A zone bottleneck means that there's a zone that's super complex that everyone struggles with that slows everybody down. One of the things you can do is adjust the zone size and make it smaller and level it out with the others. This is probably the easiest.

Another thing you can do is improve the access to the zone. If it's a difficult zone make sure you have good human and equipment or crew access. Another thing you can do is make sure that zone expectations are very very clear. 

I love the concept of having area boards where it communicates where valves are, where shut offs are, where benchmarks are, where the different lay down areas are already planned. You know common information. Stencil the like I showed in a lean superintendent video when I went out and visited Robinson Morton it showed that the wall types the ceiling heights all of the devices were all marked out on the ground. 

I mean it's not new stuff but make it easy and clear for people to understand through visual systems in the zone. Organize it to create flow. If it's really difficult to flow through there can you can you organize it in some way to create flow? One example that comes to mind if you're doing overhead MEP and you have some priority walls is there a leave out that would make access easier in the zone? Improve the quality of the layout in the zone. 

This is a huge one. Layout and control is crucial for us to make any kind of progress. We have to be able to stay out ahead and to have accurate grid lines accurate benchmarks for all of our people. 

One simple thing that I thought the other day and I actually sometimes with these I add my own stuff and then I asked chat GPT to research on the internet some other ones. This is one that came from that improved lighting. I never thought of that. 

And then obviously build in quality with visual indicators like they talked talked about from Josh Young and the Robinson Morton team. They do some really cool stuff with that. So anyway there are a lot more ideas than what I just gave you right there but the bottom line is if you have a trade or a zone bottleneck it's not that we just know it it's that we are now going to work to help them in any way that we possibly can. 

So I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and on we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders, and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing, and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. 

We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction podcast.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)