In this podcast we cover:
- A question from a listener.
- What KPIs are recommended.
If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free and you’ll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I’d appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).
Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:
· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg
· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt
· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured
· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw
Welcome everybody out to podcast number 11.56, this podcast is going to be a direct response to a question from a listener. 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. I am still in the Waymo heading home. I got 29 minutes left. It's a pretty quiet ride. I know that you can hear little things here and there in the recording. I do apologize for that and I appreciate you being patient with me. I really do. Let me go ahead and get started by reading some feedback from our listeners. Great book, easy to read, life-changing perspective as to what level of superintendent you are and want to be. I've been a builder for over 40 years and a superintendent for over 25 of those. The content and effort put forward by JS and the team was an eye-opener for me and got me off my ass to do better and live a remarkable life. The podcast YouTube and the Seems Like or Wait and the content that seems to be limitless. If you're a superintendent or want to become part of a winning team in construction, then this is a must-read. This man has changed the trajectory of my career in a positive way that continues to expand God bless Jason's ass. Thank you so much. That's so sweet. Oh my gosh. I feel like I could leap tall buildings right now. I love that feedback. I'm so glad that people can benefit from it. Boy, can you believe that it's been five years of just grinding on this stuff to get this content out? This is wild, man. I love that feedback. I've got a comment from a listener and we're going to address the question right now, but I do want to say I'm super excited to be with everyone. We've got a couple of things coming up. The Super PM bootcamp that I really want to add. It's literally a life-changing event. It'll be the last one this year. If you want to come like really take your performance to the next level, please come out and hang out with us. And then obviously the tech production system courses. And I'll see any of you at the LCI Congress coming up in October. Super fun. All right. So here we go. This is what I was sent. Hey, Jason, I hope you've been doing well. I've been listening to your podcast since you reach out to connect, and I'm very glad you exposed me to it because I have thoroughly been enjoying the content. The daily short topics are perfect for listening for me when commuting to work. Additionally, the content is very relatable as most of the items are applicable to almost any project in the construction industry. I'm also excited about the Discord that you and your team recently started. I think that will be a great way for us to connect with many different people in the industry so that we can all contribute to elevating the industry and reach each other. I'd love to get your thoughts on something though since I've not found many topics on your podcast. I started working for a relatively bigger GC a few months ago to help stand up their project controls department. Essentially, our goal is to establish processes and guardrails for our projects so that they operate consistently as our company continues to grow. We aren't dictating to them that they need to do X, Y, and Z to get something done, but we are outlining processes so that expectations are the same for everyone and giving them tools to make current processes more efficient. Our main project management software is Pro-Core, so that's where a lot of our project-related data comes from. One of our initiatives going into next year will likely be establishing KPIs to make sure projects are following current processes and delivering the results we expect or are getting help if they need it. I would love to get your thoughts on this idea in general or if you have specific KPIs that you think we should consider. Some examples we are considering is length of time for RFIs and submittals to be reviewed and finalized, how many quality safety and quality inspections or teams doing each month and likely some schedule and financial-related metrics. Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated. Okay, so I was a little bit intimidated by this podcast, not this podcast, this question, because this is the person that sent it to me is already on a good path, and the other thing is I don't want to flippantly answer, so I've thought about this quite a bit. So let's talk about these one by one. Working with the GC to stand up their project controls department is amazing. This will allow them to scale, set standards, and get everybody on the same page. The process is in guardrails for projects so that people can operate consistently is a thing. I've always said, well not always, but ever since I knew about it, I said find your operating system, train on the operating system, hold people accountable to the operating system. If you create the operating system or your production system and don't train on it, nobody's even going to know what you're talking about, it'll just be a document. If you create your production system or your operating system and you train on it but don't do field walks, then people will know you want it but do whatever they want. Anyway, if you create your production system or your operating system and train everybody on it and then hold them accountable and measure them with KPIs and keep performance indicators and do monthly field walks, it will implement even if it takes three to 18 months. I know that's a wide range but every company is different. So he goes on to say, we aren't dictating to them, they need to do X, Y, and Z to get something done but we are outlining processes so that expectations are the same for everyone and giving them tools to make the processes more efficient. I love this. This falls into the pattern of establish the process, find the missing holes, make sure that everybody knows and that is the minimum baseline. If somebody wants to improve it from there, they can but they have to at least meet the minimum standard. So that's absolutely amazing. Our main project management software is Procore. That's where a lot of our project-related data comes from. That's great. Procore has a lot of data and education behind it. So that's great. One of our initiatives going into next year will likely be establishing KPIs to make sure projects are following current processes and delivering the results we expect or are getting help if they need it. All right, let's stop right there. So a couple of things that you've heard from me before but I really want to address is that, and I said this just, I think, oh, maybe I haven't said it, is that in well-built they say the value of a KPIs directly correlated to its ability to drive behavior or the value or for its ability and to create value in the change that it triggers. I've got that a little bit wrong but the KPIs need to be designed with that in mind. If you start measuring just financials, just net profit, just financial figures or just your overhead or things like that, then that's going to drive behavior that cuts investments and really could lead you towards tanking the project. Another example, if you do earned value management, which I did a video on today, that will drive you into a productivity spiral because you're increasing work and process above capacity and it will tank your project. So be very, very careful that any KPIs that you create aren't going to inadvertently tank your project. I have a list of KPIs that I've recommended before in the past and I do think that I'll mention them here, but one of the main things that I want to mention is that you, well, you've already heard me say this before but I want to say it again, is that you need to be looking at the leading indicators, not just lagging indicators. Lagging indicators are a lot of times behind the A-ball. They're not soon enough. There's not a whole lot we can do about them. Leading indicators are things that you can track that are leading to the right behaviors on a project and they're absolutely fantastic. So I do have some KPIs suggestions here that I'll go through right now. Okay, let's start with quality first. The use of a point of release chart, and I do think that this can actually be something that's connected through Power BI, we'd have to figure it out, but whether or not project teams are using a point of release chart for their quality process, the percentage of pre-construction meetings held, the average score of the pre-construction meetings when done, and how many crews are installing according to the visuals. And another one you could actually add is number or percentage of held first-in-place inspections. So for quality, what you really want to drive is that we're following that trade partner preparation process. We are hosting pre-construction meetings and that we are following the guides that we've created in an initial inspection. Those are leading indicators. We will have to get a little bit creative on how we track that, but those are absolutely fantastic. Another one that I want to talk about is pull plans. So you can track, and this can all be set out in the original production plans, because all of them are set. Like you could literally start the job knowing when all of the pre-const meetings are happening. You could start the job knowing when all of the pull plans need to take place and how many that you have. So you could measure against it how many have been successfully done. Okay, so let's go into the the TAC plan. If you really want to measure some cool stuff for your TAC plan, measure your remaining buffer ratio, meaning do you have enough buffers to finish the project. Your percentage, basically, it's your perfect handoff percentage. It needs to be above 80. You can track your percent plan complete. As long as you're using TAC, it'll be real. You can also check your roadblock removal average, which is actually a pretty fantastic measurement. These are leading indicators and we'll make sure that the project team is actually basically using the system. One other thing with the TAC plan is you can track the successful number of projects that are successfully going through a fresh ice meeting and are going out the door 100% out to the field with a 100% bedded production plan. For your financial projections, you obviously are going to track anticipated gross profit. The number of dollars in your risks and the number of dollars in your opportunities obviously track your contingency and that at a minimum. There are other things that you can do, but I think as a company, you should really spend some good detailed time putting together a beautiful financial projection sheet. Okay, your risk and opportunity register. This is good. You can measure the percentage of risks debated, the percentage of risks gained, or you can actually do like a financial board. Kate and I have been watching the mole or the trust and they're always talking about the prize pot. You can measure your risk and opportunity registered by how many dollars you have in unmitigated risk, how many dollars you have in unclaimed potential financial increases. By out log, I would measure the percentage of projects using a by out log, the percentage of trades bought out ahead of schedule on time to start the submittal process. Your procurement log, I would measure the percentage of projects using a project log, or sorry, procurement log properly on a weekly basis, the percentage of supply chains that began early enough to support work, meaning how well is this going to be measured. You could also have a KPI around the risk for your long lead procurement. I think it could be a really, really, really nice thing. The other thing that I would really like to see is the overall team health score. These are really, really good KPI's. Now, when you're talking about measurements, if you do the monthly field walks, then you can literally take the first planner system book and I have scores around each of the components at the end of the sections and score each project and score every project in your company every month and that will do more to drive behavior than almost anything else that you could possibly do. I would totally dig seeing you do that. So we said, length of our visance submittals, that's not as important as actually getting them done ahead of time, but it's fine. How many quality safety inspections are happening out in the field? I, you know, that could be okay. I would probably focus more on implementing zero tolerance from a safety standpoint and from a quality standpoint, probably focus more on the interactions in the explanation at the crew level and track rework and obviously the financial and schedule related metrics in here. So this individual is on a good start. I hope that's helped. This has helped everybody to understand this a little bit better. 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.
