By Mark Breslin, United Contractors CEO
Productivity in our industry, for the most part, sucks.
Part of it is your people. Part of it is you.
Most of it can be improved. But it is going to require a focused effort.
A recent study of major capital construction projects showed that on average, most craft workers are actively on their tools just over about 50 percent of the time on an eight-hour shift.
The remainder of the time is eaten by things like waiting for materials, start and stopping for break times, extended breaks/early departures, wrong tools available, poor planning delays and related.
So here are ways to improve productivity for your field operations that can help everyone from sucking this construction season:
1. Emphasize productivity. Every week on every job we emphasize safety. Everyone knows it’s important, and now we have a culture of zero accidents and injuries expected. How about using those 50 meetings a year to deliver a message on the importance of productivity and staying on task and pre-planning. There is no limit, but you have to push the message to create behavior change.
2. Pre-job planning. The best job process I have seen is where the person who bid the job confers with the person who is going to build the job. That means foremen need to be involved. That gap in communication and coordination is costly and often ends with office vs. field finger pointing instead of productivity and profit enhancement.
3. Goal setting. Spend some time this season discussing the importance of daily and weekly production goal setting by foremen and superintendents. How to do it, and how to communicate it to their crews.
4. Accountability. Just as safety is all about accountability, so must personal effort and performance. It’s always “boss before friend”. No one gets slack cut just because they’ve always been here. No one gets entitled because they hang out with their foreman. No one gets to roll in 25 minutes late two times a week.
5. Invest in technology and the training to get it right. A lot of companies have good technology, but the learning and adaptive curve for the employees is all over the place. And a lot of Baby Boomers kind of refuse to adapt at all. Give people the time and resources to learn it well-and use it effectively.
6. Incentivize your foremen to ask their crews for ideas on better, faster, smarter, safer. Engaged and involved employees produce more in all workplaces.
7. Provide leadership training. Focused on continuous learning and upgrades for your PMs, superintendents and foremen (see UCON programs specifically geared for PMs, foremen and senior managers). The younger generations of leaders today are hungry to learn and improve. Many companies are seeing significant returns and improvements in retention on this investment of time and money.
8. Emphasize positive reinforcement. Praise and recognition is the number one motivator in the workplace. This is almost absent in rough and tough construction environments. Do it. Teach it. Make it part of the workplace culture and leadership value system.
In closing, there is one more critically important way to improve productivity. But you have to be open to change.
Productivity in the end depends on the people. The systems they operate within can dictate results in a big way too. We have a lot of people in this industry willing to work their asses off, and many times they are limited by systems, policies or management. It is senior management’s role to move these obstacles out of their way. So for the final strategy, starting today, do what I try to do and ask these two questions over and over.
1. What do you need to do your best work?
2. What stands in the way right now of you doing it?
Careful though.
If you ask, you have to be prepared to act. Gaining on productivity means gaining on engagement and effort, too.
So be committed to it and you will see the gains that can make a big difference to your schedules, quality and bottom line.
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