In our daily lives at home, school and work, we often find ourselves in a routine -- following habitual, well-known steps and patterns -- to help take the hustle and stress out of regular, repetitive activities and provide a sense of order. We also do this at work to streamline how we handle business processes, deal with contractors or customers, maintain our facilities and more. In many cases, this is a good thing, but there's also a point where routines can become problematic, holding us back from making changes to improve our lives.
For example, as I commute to work each day, although I have a routine, my route has evolved over time -- sometimes slowly, other times very quickly. As major road construction is scheduled; routes open and close; roadways expand from one lane to two lanes, four lanes and even superhighways; toll roads emerge and accidents occur, I also need to make changes. If I was to take the same exact route I did 20 years ago, my daily commute would be slow, congested and inefficient now that there are better, faster options available.
Driving work performance
There are parallels between this scenario and the construction, maintenance and turnaround world. How we "travel" to our tasks can have a significant impact on schedules, costs and productivity. For example, to get to our work during a turnaround, we use various kinds of access equipment, including scaffolds, mechanical lifts, rope access and a variety of unique options, which are many and ever-evolving. As an industry, providing access to crafts can often be 30 percent of the cost of the work being performed -- a substantial amount.
In our industry, we have all invested heavily in driving performance by improving processes, tools, equipment, training, workforce development, project management and even planning. This has had an impact, but the challenge we often have with these efforts is that they can be siloed among specific parties. As a result, reforms like these often produce less than the desired result overall.
Identifying the common denominator
Our industry has started to recognize that a lack of planning isn't the issue in and of itself, but perhaps rather a lack of coordinated planning as a group -- aligning the common denominators across all crafts and functional services, clearly defining scope of work and maximizing access to improve productivity across the board.
For example, if we return to our driving analogy and add more people to the car -- family members or friends who need to be dropped off or picked up -- the complexity of the route increases and the need for planning becomes more critical. In this case, the driver needs to understand the bigger picture: where and when everyone needs to be picked up and dropped off. If the driver doesn't have a good understanding of everyone's needs and priorities, or if various passengers take turns driving without knowing where each person in the car is going, there would be a lot of chaos and wasted time and effort.
Sometimes on jobsites it can feel like there are too many drivers in the car. When individual service contracts move forward to the field execution phase, each stakeholder's schedule and constraints can begin to pile up with everyone waiting on each other, wasting time and money.
Plan early to increase value
Work access as a common denominator across many crafts and services in the field provides a great opportunity to align stakeholders, increase productivity and glean real value. The concepts of advanced work packaging and workface planning are being adopted more and more and treated as best practices by many leading companies in the industry. Engaging access earlier in the process allows for improved and innovative access solutions to be developed. With the advent of today's 3-D design, models, laser scanning, drones and more, when we engage access engineering early in the process, we can virtually plan for all critical scopes, align users early regarding the strategy for performing key services, and eliminate the siloed approach to accessing work areas. We can reduce the amount of access equipment required, because various crafts can effectively share them. We can also eliminate the resources required to keep modifying and adjusting work access items, which are ineffective due to siloed planning or a poor understanding of scopes of work.
Moving forward, there are three channels that can be addressed to fully capture this value:
- Leverage your service providers in the constructability and strategy phase of your project. Earlier engagement allows for "what if " planning, the development and design of alternative, more effective approaches and engineering validation to occur. Often this can occur in a virtual environment leveraging 3-D surveying/laser scanning, 3-D design models, photos and more.
- Engage the entire population of stakeholders, as we all affect and impact one another's plans, directly or indirectly. If we have a consistent approach for planning and an overall project-level work access plan, taking into account the typical constraints for all field personnel and their activities, there will be fewer individual access solutions and less rework to make various access items viable for each contractor and all individual users. Dedicating teams through formal assignment, retraining or redirecting resources will also drive that alignment, whether for the entire project or the critical scopes.
- Focus on a robust work access solution versus a bid. Finding a provider that can deliver a robust solution versus a bid is paramount to the process. Often the work access provider will be required to help drive this change, developing an all-encompassing process and then delivering on those plans out in the field. This may include contract alternatives, which drive strategic and tactical planning, accountability and visibility focused on eliminating waste, improving tool-time and productivity, and ultimately increasing value for the project and client.
With aligned constructability, a comprehensive strategy for work access, robust work-face planning that aligns all crafts' work access needs and dedicated/retrained teams, we can improve our approach and increase efficiency. In addition, we will reap the benefits of less user standby, solutions designed to increase the productivity of multiple crafts and, most importantly, better safety throughout the project. Lastly, having sound work execution and project management will help not only validate this approach but also provide key insight to additional or ongoing areas of opportunity. Robust project controls and alignment for all stakeholders involved, including work access, will foster the kind of change that will allow us to drive into a better future.
For more information, visit www.brandsafway.com or call (800) 558-4772.
