Here are a few lessons learned with respect to improving construction productivity, and overall life-cycle management of the built environment. Job Order Contracting Lessons Learned Regarding Improving Construction Productivity …
- First and foremost, the primary issue impacting low productivity and poor life-cycle management of built environment is the need for higher levels of leadership and ownership on the part of real property Owners.
- Secondly, robust LEAN collaborative project delivery methods have proven capable of delivering approximate 90% of renovation, repair, and new construction projects on-time, on-budget, and to the satisfaction of all participants. Thus, a road map to improving the woefully low productivity associated with the AECOO sector is there for everyone’s use. (Note: examples of LEAN Construction Delivery Methods include Integrated Project Delivery, IPD for major new construction, and Job Order Contracting, JOC for renovation, repair, and minor new construction.)
- Data is certainly important, especially actionable detailed transparent and objective sourced information, shared among all participants (FM, contractor, AEs, building users…) at early stages and throughout end-of-life. That said, data is meaningless if not interpreted and applied properly.
- As to technology, it is NOT THE SOLUTION, it is simply an enabler with respect to rapid, more consistent, and lower cost deployment of robust LEAN processes.
- Continuous education, improvement, and collaboration drive better outcomes.
Focus must be upon building strong leadership, competency, and collaboration internal to an organization and doing the same with external service providers.
WHAT NOT TO DO….
JOC is a collaborative construction delivery method. It is NOT solely a procurement method. Is also should NOT be used to bypass traditional procurement methods to simply save time or approve project that otherwise would not have been approved. Unfortunately some sectors such as County, State, and Local Government are notoriously poor facilities management practitioners and many agencies have corrupted the use of JOC. This fact readily demonstrated if one take the time to review the many publicly available independent and internal audits of JOC Programs in this sector.
Conversely the Federal Government and Higher Education, for the most part, deploy JOC properly and have reaped the available benefits.
RULES TO LIVE BY…
Deploying JOC, and any collaborative LEAN construction delivery method properly, does indeed solve many AECOO industry if used properly. All, however REQUIRE the following…
Job Order Contracting Lessons Learned Regarding Improving Construction Productivity
- Focus upon Outcomes
- Best Value Procurement
- Collaboration
- Common Data / Information Environment (examples- Uniformat, Masterformat, Omniclass), Work Breakdown Structure, Common Line Item Cost Data
- Financial Transparency – Detailed Line Item Tasks, including Full Descriptions in Common Terms/Plain English and Labor, Materials, and Equipment Breakdowns
- Shared Risk/Reward
- Operation/Execution Manuals as part of the Contract
- Multi-party Agreements
- Defined Roles, Responsibilities, Deliverable, and Outcomes
- Continuous Improvement
- Ongoing Annual Training/Certification
- Monitoring / Audits
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Supporting Technology
- Checklists, Audits, Status Reports, Plans, Forms/Documents – Budget, Resource, Communications, Training, Cost Estimating, Project Delivery, Project Management, Progress versus Goals, Procurement/Payments, Implementation/Deployment, Milestones, Change Requests, Project Closeout…
- Early and Ongoing Communication Among ALL Participants from Concept through Warranty
- Detailed, Mutually Established Statement of Work / Project Scope
- Compliance with Contract, Rules, Regulations, Statutes
- Quality Control/Quality Assurance Plans
- Negotiation-centered Dispute Resolution
- Current, Actionable Information
- Oversight and Leadership without Excessive Management and Control
Learn more…
Peter Cholakis, 4bt.us