Lessons Learned from the Make Ready Process in a Hospital Project

Kevin Britt1, Thais da C. L. Alves2, Dean Reed3 & Brian Gracz4

1DPR Construction, 5010 Shoreham Place, San Diego, CA 92122, USA, Phone +1 858/597-7070, [email protected]
2Assistant Professor, J.R. Filanc Construction Eng. and Mgmt. Program, Dept. of Civil, Constr., and Env. Eng., San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA, [email protected]
3Director of Lean Construction, DPR Construction, Redwood City, CA, [email protected]
4DPR Construction, 5010 Shoreham Place, San Diego, CA 92122, USA, [email protected]

Abstract

A previous paper (presented in the IGLC 19) described the journey a Construction Management team on a large hospital project had to go through to set up the lookahead process and the Last Planner® meetings. This paper presents in more detail how the team specifically managed the make ready process and the constraint identification and resolution process related to building a ground-up hospital in California as well as discusses lessons learned during the project. The team distilled a number of lessons learned which are summarized in the paper under the following main headings: need to change participant’s mentality from a hard-bid to a collaborative environment through alignment; build a high performing team; the right processes and tools are useless without respect for the people; create a culture to promote continuous improvement; and understand the team’s needs to create pull and reduce cycle times through the SWAT process. These lessons learned are discussed and illustrated with examples from the project and linked to Lean concepts that whether implicitly or explicitly helped the team to successfully complete the project.

Keywords

Make ready process, healthcare, lessons learned, high-performance teams, value

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Reference

Britt, K. , Alves, T. C. L. , Reed, D. & Gracz, B. 2014. Lessons Learned from the Make Ready Process in a Hospital Project, 22nd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , 257-268. doi.org/

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