Why do This?

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Cooperation.  It’s just a way to think about your project.  It’s how it gets done in your mind.  It’s why you’re doing it.  It’s why I’m doing it. 

If you think about construction management in a cooperative way, others will too.  And we will all get more done, we will have less contention, and we will all make more money. 

I’ve tried to call it an organizing principle, but the organization is all inside your mind as you look at your project. It is the organization of how you look at your project. 

There you are.  This big, hulking thing is in front of you.  This project. You have placed all the best people around you that you could.  The others on the project have all their own trepidation and interpretation, just like you are feeling right now.  They are all looking inside themselves for the approach that has worked in the past and they are rethinking how to do what they did before.  And no two projects are the same. From conciliation and failure to triumph and success, they are possibly having a sleepless night, just like you are.

But you are the leader this time (hang in here .  You get to set the tone.  You know that cooperation, a sense that we are all in the same boat, will be the most rewarding approach for all of us.  Whatever happens, the project will get built, the only question is, “and will we all find the best way to serve the project, while keeping our own interests intact?” The way to do this is cooperation. 

Richard Sennett, a professor of sociology at New York University and at The London School of Economics wrote a book called, Together in 2014.   He reviews in elaborate detail, every aspect of cooperation in humans and other species.  He begins at the dawn of recorded history and the birth of the individual.  It is exhausting.  I was completely bogged down during his analysis of the Renaissance, but during that period, cooperation was developed as an admirable human trait along with the rebirth of art, literature and, to our great benefit in the construction industry and architecture. 

Highly useful in Dr. Sennett’s book is a detailed analysis of the precise behaviors, in conversation, in meetings and in writings that are the skills of cooperation.  Specific behaviors, such as accepting the existing level of disagreement of a topic, mutual respect made extant, and the currently popular, active listening.  Since he gives precise description in his work, he makes the mandate for cooperative behavior all the more obtainable.

I promise you that I will include specific exampiles soon.

100% more women. YES!

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Dive is a great resource for information that is often interesting. The latest article to catch my attention is: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/report-finds-more-women-building-construction-careers/585883/

“The number of women in the position of construction manager increased 101% from 49,400 to 99,400, making that the third fastest-growing job for women overall.”

One of my biggest complaints about construction was that there were few, if any, women. When I was a project manager for a $35 million project in
San Jose, CA, I appointed an amazing young woman, Constance Reidinger, PE as assistant project manager and lobbied for her to replace me when it was time for me to move on. I regularly tell stories about her preparation for meetings, her self-guided ferocious work ethic etc. She started her own business, https://www.riedingerconsulting.com/ about 20 years ago and is still going strong. But she was, and is unusual. You don’t have to be a go-getter like Constance to contribute to the construction industry, and earn good money. But, it helps.

My thoughts are that if we create a certain percentage of women to crews and management, this analysis will become obsolete. Someday women becoming project managers won’t be such a phenomenon, that articles are written about them. It is quite a phenomenon now, just imagine the third fastest growing job for women overall is construction manager! Excellent.

The women could provide a benefit from a more cooperative viewpoint. I mean that the organizing principal of construction may actually shift from companies who build things and the money they make; to the projects themselves. If I might take a minute to remind us all, especially for those of you who are newcomers: It is the project that we are here to build, not our own wealth or ego. The time has past for the ego-agrandisment of the MasterBuilder and it is now time for the modern manager to eliminate waste and be cooperative in that effort. I’ve got my money on the growth of women in the workforce and running the companies of the future of the construction industry to achieve this important change.

Construction Delay from the Virus

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I started a post earlier today but was caught off guard by a notice in Engineering News Record (ENR) In an excellent article, “Companies Offer Free Tech During Covid-19 Slowdown” ENR describes an astonishing database of delayed projects free from ConstructConnect, a Cincinnati based company who tracks hundreds of thousands of construction projects every year.

They have a database showing the kind of delay, revised Bid Date, Project Name, Category of Project, Stage of Design or Construction, Value, Location by City, and Timeline delay. There are 300 projects in the Southern California delayed by various amounts in their database. There are 5 more characteristics shown for a subscription fee, but the data that I just mentioned is free. It is overwhelming.

The construction industry has never had anything like this. I have lived and worked through four or five slowdowns in our industry over my long and checkered career. The industry has never recovered from anything like this although recovery is what we do well. All I can say is please wear a mask, especially if you live in California, or anywhere in the country, these project delays are going to cost our state enormous costs that will take a decade or more to recover from. And, I’m only talking about one industry.

It's July. It has been a long time.

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I have been a little unsettled about the public health crisis, of course. I live in LA and the pandemic situation is even worse than ever, as far as the statistics go. You have heard all about it, you aren’t reading this for news on the health crisis. This disease is a disease of uncertainty. Not a good thing for the construction industry, and I haven’t been able to write coherently about it. Here are some serious concerns.

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Flag Waving

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The responsibility of the industry arises partly from the amount of consumption of resources. We, the construction industry are the fifth largest industry in the country in terms of overall budget. $ 1.2 trillion, yearly. Employing 6.7 million people. That is only 4% of Gross Domestic Product but 6% of the employees. It takes a lot of people to build a building and that is a good thing. Except now when there is a shortage.

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Setting Sail on a New Sea.

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My observation is that this idea: that science and technology have no conscience of their own is universal in its application.

Indeed, our utilization, in the construction industry, of science and technology has no conscience of its own. We gobble up an immense amount of time, materials and energy providing our product. It is a conscience that is needed- a new conscience, driven by our intention to set sail on a new sea. This sea will have of limited resources, dangerous industrial processes, increasing demands of the societies that we serve and an aching need for an organizing principle.

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Cooperation and Lean

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Lean Construction is the way of the future. It is going to dominate the process of efficient construction, Lean will lead the industry out of the long, painful, wasteful past into the bright light of the future. If you don’t think so, just look out your window and count the number of Toyota cars you see. Lean Construction is essentially the Toyota Way adopted to the construction industry. In one of the few brilliant sea changes in construction, two fellas created Lean out of whole cloth. Their stories of the founders, Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, are now legend in the Lean Construction Institute.

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Time for Some Serious Talk About Waste

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Waste is the enemy of the Lean Construction movement. They are incredible in their systems and organization for construction projects. I attend their meetings and local group (Communities of Practice, COP’s) as much as I can. The presenting reason for eliminating waste is, of course, saving money. As, I have discussed previously, my first introduction to Lean was a “Superconference” presentation in 2011 by the designers and builders of the Mission Bay complex for the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. In an amusing sidelight for me, my Granddaughter was born there in February 2019. (she and Mom are doing fine)

This is all fine, in fact, wonderful. In the presentation in 2011, the team was estimating, I think, about $ 950 million. The original engineer’s estimate was, I think, about $1.2 billion. They were looking at a $250 million savings over the engineer’s estimate.

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Entering a negotiation, from Program on Negotiation.

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PON is the Harvard Program on Negotiation. This is an extraordinary program with a rich and long history. I republish their discussion about first impressions to give you a taste of the resources available to build cooperation. Believe me, even in the most cooperative constructions sites, there will be much negotiation needed. I’m just saying, let’s do it well.

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/tag/pon/

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A Lean Coffee

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The Lean Coffee was the most organized meeting I have attended in years. It was a generally skilled set of attendees. all interested in Lean, but there are many topics to be discussed in everyone’s projects and Lean in general. With a very organized system of selecting topics, one got the feeling of a Lean job site. These were skilled busy people with problems or issues to discuss and they wanted to get the best use of their time.

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What is a novice blogger to do?

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The construction world is moving toward significant improvements in the areas of my concern. Lean Construction is growing quickly. Articles and seminars about coordination, collaboration and cooperation are growing as well. National attention has angled over to politics and I am as susceptible as anyone. The next series of posts will be much more focussed, positive and informative about the reason that you came to a website named cooperative.construction.

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Training, Little by Little.

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I get many ads per week for seminars and webinars, I'm sure you do too.  There is a slight trend toward training for cooperative activities.  I watch for every movement toward cooperative behavior because I am positive that eventually the construction industry will move in that direction.  I hope with the advent of fabulous electronic project management control tools, we will be able to advance cooperation as quickly or faster than the bulk of the industry.  To accomplish that, training will be our main tool.  The following solicitation shows this activity.  It will be presented by the Judicial Council of California in September 2018 in Sacramento.  Note that we in the industry are still trying to prove that cooperation is somehow better.  Of course, it is better, we are the slowest of our species to embrace that. 

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Author's Notes about the Origin of Coop Constr.

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This general concept of Cooperation being a new organizing principle for construction or other large projects, was developed while I was a Masters Candidate in Architecture at CalPoly San Luis Obispo, in 2012 through 2014.  I discovered that Cooperation was an organizing concept for certain set of new school projects built in California in the period. 

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