welcome everybody out to podcast number 1170. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to you about what it means exactly to say that we're ready for an activity. Stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction Podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life, and expect more. Let's go! Welcome everyone. I hope you're doing well. Like I said many many times before, I'm sorry for being a bit behind Bootcamp took it out of me. I must be getting older. On Tuesday, Wednesday, I literally barely made it through and I was like, "Hey Brandon, I may or may not need your help." And he's like, "Hey, I'm coming Thursday anyway." And when he came, I was able to give at least half of the presenting stuff to him. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, homie, this is such good help." And then by the end of Friday, I was so tired. I was about to have a meltdown. And then I fell asleep. Then fell asleep early that night. Then fell asleep yesterday morning, mid-morning, and had like a coma nap. And I've just been recovering ever since. Those camps take it out of me. But we had the best freaking group of people there. The training flowed the entire time. I mean, it was just amazing. Just, just, just, just absolutely amazing. So I'm really excited to get a little bit caught up on the podcast and at least get up to 1172 before the weekend's out. And I'm excited to talk about this topic that's coming from the new book. And before we do that, let me just give you some feedback from our listeners real quick. Jay Money, I wanted to thank you for what you do. The guidance I have received through your Bootcamp YouTube and podcast have helped me be a better builder and gain confidence. I took a big step this summer and accepted an offer that is hugely beneficial for me and my family. I've been implementing several of the industry practices that you teach and it has been well received. For all you have done for my career, I give you my word that I will use what has been given to me to better the lives of trade partners, field teams, and everyone pouring their hearts into our projects. I'm not sure what I could help with, but I am here for anything on we go. I responded to that this morning. That really like melted my heart. You know, these people who come to Bootcamp and who send these messages and who are making these changes, like really, really mean it. Right now we're publishing videos on a weekly basis from Josh Young's project out in Virginia. And like when you look at the things that he's implementing, you look at the things that Brent Elliott at DPR is implementing. I could keep going on and on. You look at some of the Mortensen jobs that I've been able to visit and actually just got a really neat video from one that I'm not able to share because it's under an NDA. But like you we're seeing jobs popping up everywhere with operational excellence. And that doesn't have anything to do with me just to be clear. The point is that we have great people, great systems, been good building going on. And I would just recommend like going and finding those and being a part of it and doing exactly that and helping to share the excellence of link instruction. Let's go ahead and get into the podcast this morning. I am writing the book Talk Steering in Control. And there's 17. Well, so let me explain something here. But when it comes to constraints and roadblocks and make work ready checklist items, we're really doing some in-depth research on which items need to be on these lists and making sure that it's kind of as much as a human being can do, that it's inclusive. And there's a section where I'm talking about looking at planning a week that we're planning. And the point is when a trade partner says, "Yes, we're ready for something. This is what it means." And there's really at least 17 different things. And I want you to know that I've gotten lists from, and love all of these lists. I've gotten lists from LCI. I've gotten lists from experts in Europe seriously. I researched chat GPT. A lot of different resources. And here's the list I'm going to go through one by one. And I hope you enjoy them. Okay. Number one, conditions of satisfaction. That means for an activity, you know what the conditions of satisfaction are. That means you know not just the safety and quality parameters, but you know what it looks like to really be successful. And what the conditions are from each entity, you, your company from a production and cost standpoint, the successor trade partners and the general contractor fitting everybody into an optimized system, what satisfaction would mean for everyone. Two, a support team. And this is really, really, really important, more important than probably I can explain, or even many listening to this podcast can realize. But a trade partner, especially a foreman, needs to have not only the onsite construction project team, that's the PM, the super, the field engineers, oh my gosh, so important project engineers to help them with details, the confirmation of RFIs, the reviewing of submittals, but also, and this is where it gets really important, their own internal project managers and support staff. To make sure that materials are on the way, RFIs are being written, payments are being made to vendors, all of the things that they need, we can't just dispatch a foreman and a crew without the support team. Number three, primary planning. That means that the work package, the crew is about to go execute, has a plan, and that they know exactly how they're going to approach the work. Let me go ahead and skip on to number four, contingency planning. In addition to the primary planning, there's contingency planning plan, BCDF, for if something goes wrong. Oh, this is so good. And not just what will they do if they experience different circumstances or if they have an impact, but also if there is an actual stop to the work, what will the crew do for workable backlog, or like let's say maybe there's a weather day, can the crew focus on prefabrication or do something else that makes money that will create evenness and be able to absorb or overcome stops and restarts? A really, really great concept. Number five, the crew has all of the materials. So when a trade partner or a foreman agrees to activity or for a work package and says, yes, we can do that, that means that they have the materials or the materials are on the way, and they can be broken up by zone and inspected. Six, equipment. And this is important because you need the equipment in order to save the human body. If there's better equipment, like for instance, like if you could put a human being behind a 90 pound jackhammer all day or for multiple days, it may just be better to go get a bobcat with a breaker on it and call it a day, right? So making sure not only that you have the equipment to get it done, but the equipment to get it done for men and women. You know, one thing just a quick side note here, in the book Invisible Women, which is actually more impactful than the book, How Big Things Get Done. If anybody's ever heard me rant and rave, or and actually how to win friends and influence, influence people, if anybody's ever heard me rant and rave about the importance of those books, you'll know that that's a big statement. In Invisible Women, it talks about how certain types of equipment will end up with a situation where women can have like seven times, up to seven times the amount of injuries from a piece of equipment, because it's not designed for a woman's body. So one thing that I would really like to say in our industry here is we also have to make sure that we're being inclusive of all different body types with the equipment that we plan. Seven, tools. You've heard me say this before, but tools don't cost us money. Lost labor hours do. If the crew needs the tools, get them the tools. Number eight, the tool kit. This means not just having the tools, but having them together in a kit, in a game box, in one of those punchless carts with Paul Acres, lean foam, organized, shadowboarded, whatever it is they need, not just having the tools all spread around, but having the tools in the right kit so that they can do their work. Number nine, information. If you're going to go do the work, that means plans, specs, all our fine answers, submittal information, and then for me, preferably your quality checklist or your quality visual. So a foreman does need to make sure that he or she is staying because you're going to look six weeks out to make these tasks ready. And a good rule of thumb for me is that we are reading the plans and specs six weeks out to make sure that everything is complete. And we're writing those RFIs out a well and enough time so we can have the information by the time we install the work package. So when you're saying yes, this is ready, that means you've reviewed the plans and specs, you've written any associated RFIs and you're ready to go. And even if you don't have the RFI back, well, that's a close one. Like if you get around like week three and the RFIs not back, I would probably list it as a roadblock. Okay, 10 permissions. This could be anything. This could be a confined space entry permit. This could be a dig permit. This could be a hot work permit. This could be an actual permit for the work. This could be permission from the overall global team. Whatever it is that you need, get it, you need the permissions to enter a space. Number 11 layout, this is a big one. And it's pretty commonsensical. We all know to ask for it or to get it, but we don't often think about it when we're in our preparation meetings as a part of the last planter system. And I really think that we should. And when I talk about layout, that means you have primary, secondary and working control, grid lines are snapped and labeled. Benchmarks are networked, accurate and labeled, and that you have the layout for your crew and that it's checked. You know, somebody said something to me the other day, I think at a boot camp, which I really, really agree with. By the way, everybody, I know that as I get older, there's like little pauses and gasps and swallows in my speech. And I'm doing the best I can. I don't know what's wrong with me from a physiological standpoint. I got allergies. I'm like coughing in the background, like swallowing, having like different reactions when I talk, like breathing in too much air. I'm a mess. Anybody who's listening to these podcasts, I just want to know that I love honor and respect you. And I'm doing my best to make sure that that doesn't happen. Anyway, so somebody in a boot camp the other day said that making sure that you have a really, really great layout, layout individual on your crew will do more for production and flow than almost anything. And I was like, yeah, you know, I've experienced that when you have wall framing going on, you got to have a good layout crew and keep that consistent layout crew all the way up through the building that will do more to make work ready than almost anything else. 12, the preceding task. This is self explanatory. You might not know exactly if this is working well until you get close to it. But a contractor should watch from a friendly standpoint and a supportive standpoint how the preceding crew is doing consistently and watch it all the way up until the start of that task. 13, safety planning. That's pretty self explanatory. Make sure you can do the task safely. And I'm just not just talking about little things. I'm talking about like, okay, well, let me give you an example. There's a, let's say that there's an overhang for a concrete deck. And there's, and you're supposed to be doing work down below for the site, let's say, or for a canopy or something. But there's a lot of high bay showing, a high bay form work, deck form work, up above you. And that concrete crew, you know, you're in their like field of work and something could possibly fall on you, right? It's a major thing that people didn't see because it's hard to visualize the decks. That's something that you're going to have to see and start making sure that you have the safety planning and that you can access that area generally for your work. 14 quality planning. If you're following the trade partner preparation process, you should be pretty good to go with this one. This one means that you literally have met three weeks before, at least, and that you know the quality expectations and have a checklist or a visual board showing what's expected, and you're ready to go. 15 standard work that your crew has trained, and they know how to do this task from a standard work perspective. 16 that they have received any additional required training that your crew has, or that it's scheduled in 17, and this is a big one that you have space. If you remember Kevin Rice, the other day talked about the different things that you need from a constraint standpoint, it'll always be that you have to have the as one of those components, the space. So you'll always need that you always have the resources, right? The people, the resources, meaning the materials, and the space, and you'll always be constrained by one of those three at a minimum, so make sure that you have enough space. And so that's the end of the list. I recommend, oh, this is so good, putting this on a poster and putting it up on the wall where you do your meetings and saying, hey, when we say something's ready, it means that all 17 of these items are queued up, and ready to go. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. On we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders, and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing, and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast. [Music]
