Today’s marketplace is one of global purchasers and intense competition. It is essential for manufacturing businesses of all types to benefit from any strategy to improve their ability to respond to market changes through efficient capital improvement projects. Probably one of the most significant factors that can help them achieve these goals is relieving the cost of capital associated with construction. Manufacturing leaders are under more stress today than ever before. This means that they need to bring products to market and switch existing product lines quickly and cost-effectively if they want to enhance their competitive benefit.
 
The construction industry is still mired since the middle of the 20th century with little to no productivity betterment. The construction industry has had trouble to translate technology advances into improved productivity, held back by archaic and highly litigious contracting methodologies that encourage behaviors that are certainly not in the best interest of improving the speed and cost-effective deployment of capital improvement projects.  Over the same time period, the manufacturing sector has had appreciable productivity improvements because of the acceptance of new technologies and manufacturing methods, such as Lean Manufacturing, that have resulted in the construction costs of bringing new products to market becoming a more substantial share of the overall capital improvement project.
 
While senior stakeholders can question new and unfamiliar concepts, the potential benefits posed by LPD are worth investigating. Here is an overview of LPD, with particular focus on implementing Conditions of Satisfaction.
 
ESSENTIAL LPD ELEMENTS
 
As with any kind of methodology, LPD has certain elements that are essential to its success.  These elements define LPD projects and assist those using the approach. Because LPD centers around collaborative work, as an example, selecting potential collaboration partners early in the project is a very important step to take—this helps unite construction and design teams with the owner of the project to help promote the shared vision and goals of the project.
 
A collaborative work place between the aforementioned parties lends itself well to Target Value Delivery (TVD), another essential of LPD projects. TVD is a perception that utilizes early collaboration to include budget and constructability requirements as the project is designed rather than waiting for this input at a bid meeting or, even worse, in the form of change orders.
 
In addition to these elements, Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) along with collaborative contracts that emphasize shared challenges and rewards decisively factor into LPD. An essential element, however, comprises of determining conditions of satisfaction.  While LPD is a technique that could be used with any sort of project, it works best with projects where early collaboration helps clearly and firmly establish shared goals for the project.
 
CONDITIONS OF SATISFACTION (COS)
 
As mentioned above, conditions of satisfaction are essential to the success of an LPD project. Some awareness into exactly how collaboratively develop them for your project:
 
First, there should be a strong vision of success that all team members share and can clearly articulate. These conditions of satisfaction must certanly be co-developed by the Owner and the Project Partners with the intent that the agreements are commitments to one another, not just for between the Owner and the team. The goal is to promote behaviors that create a team-oriented culture that has proven to result in improved project schedule and budget performance, as well as greater satisfaction amongst the project stakeholders.
 
A CLEAR VISION OF SUCCESS
 
Under the conditions of satisfaction, teams need to have a clear vision of success.  Mostly, there are just about 10 to 15 CoS identified on a project.  As with traditional delivery methods, there have to be a CoS that addresses budget, schedule, and safety objectives.  Then again, limiting it to those traditional measures would fail to put in place the important elements that help teams really collaborate.
 
Some examples of CoS that would depart from the traditional measures would be items like (“Project Conditions of Satisfaction (CoS)”, Lean Construction Institute):
•             Everyone is profitable
•             Number of RFI’s
•             Number of Change Orders
•             Number of Punch List items
•             Percentage improvement in productivity
•             Exceptional teamwork
•             Quality at acceptable levels the first time
•             Total Project Transparency
•             Strong Stakeholder Involvement
•             Rapid Mitigation of Existing Condition Discoveries
 
Give consideration to a case scenario of a plainly articulated vision beneficial to LPD.  Project decision makers had a large volume of Owner requirements that were well-developed. They provided the project team (CM, Designers, Trade Partners) with these requirements, and the team, in turn, built the conditions of satisfaction on a comprehensive review of those requirements.
 
Because project leaders and team members made it possible to collaborate early on, this potential issue was identified at the outset and a new answer was developed. The Owner agreed to re-organizing some of the parking and allowing a lunch tent close to the work in order to provide better project access for the construction group.
 
Through this process, project stakeholders understood the larger picture and recognized that there were particular issues that had to be driven by the project team and there was a clear cost benefit if they were able to accommodate that particular condition.
 
REAP THE BENEFITS
 
LPD is a fruitful project execution method that can help improve the time and cost efficiency of many various types of projects. If decision makers, constructors, and designers can come together to build a collaborative project from the outset, it is now possible for today’s manufacturing businesses to revolutionize the way they approach projects – and to enjoy the benefits as a result.
 
This article is originally posted on TRONSERVE.COM