Facility managers are all too familiar with projects that are delivered over budget and late. This project pain impacts all areas of FM — more funds spent on projects does not add more value but results in less funding available to invest elsewhere including talent, material or capital. Late projects have a significant impact on operations and financial planning.

These project pain points tarnish all involved notwithstanding the ensuing adversarial blame-game.

This is not new or restricted to any one geographic location. Project pain has plagued planning, design and construction projects for decades.

Projects are complex — by the very number of elements and activities that need to come together in a defined time frame delivered by a whole lot of strangers.

What can be done differently to achieve better results? How do owners move from pain to gain?

For the last 20 years, lean principles and methods have been applied within the building industry. Lean is an outcome of the total quality management (TQM) and Toyota Production System which dates back to the 1930s. The fundamentals of Lean Project Delivery are:

  1. Generation of Value

  2. Focus on Process & Flow

  3. Removal of Waste

  4. Optimizing the Whole

  5. Continuous Improvement, all within the principle of respect for people (more collaboration — less adversity)

These fundamentals apply to the whole project delivery team. Value generation begins with meeting the customers’ requirements. Supporting these fundamentals, lean projects use several methods, tools and systems-thinking to deliver better value for all involved. Many case studies have been written and continue to document improved results. This is great news for owners. Lean is no longer a bleeding edge approach with inherent risk of the unknown, but is a leading edge better practice. Lean as a quality process is also being embraced by organizations and companies internally to improve over-all productivity performance, customer value and the bottom line.