Turner Construction Company Holds Summit Meeting to Advance Lean Culture
New York, NY (PRWEB) April 17, 2015 -- As part of a broad commitment to continuous improvement, senior leaders of Turner Construction Company gathered at its Sibley Memorial Hospital project in Washington, DC, to participate in a Lean Leadership Summit.
One key concept that guides a lean approach is that of going to the “gemba” or the location where work is underway. In that spirit, the centerpiece of the summit was a tour of the Sibley Memorial Hospital project where the company’s use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and lean construction methods shaved weeks from the construction schedule.
The Sibley team used BIM to design and pre-fabricate modular corridor rack systems to house the mechanical, electrical and plumbing elements for each floor of the hospital. The 157, 20-foot racks were modeled, and then built and assembled off-site and delivered for installation. The use of modeling software combined with lean methods enabled the team to begin precisely assembling ductwork, cabling and piping early, at approximately the same time that construction excavation started. The original schedule allowed four to five weeks per floor for installation of the rack systems, but with the modularized racks, the team was able to complete each floor in four to five days.
“I’ve been in the industry 31 years and this is my first project where the team has fully embraced lean practices and the results continue to surprise and impress me,” said Joe Kranz, project executive. He continued, “With enhanced communication and collaboration, we’ve witnessed an improvement in our entire workflow. Used in concert with BIM, lean methods have helped individual building processes go better, which has helped drive overall efficiency and accelerate our schedule by two months. It has also yielded improvements in reliable commitments from subcontractors, allowing for more efficient planning of the work. The prefabrication of corridor racks and patient room headwall units jump-started the interior fit out work as soon as the concrete re-shores were removed.”
The summit also included a presentation by Chip Davis, chief executive officer of Sibley Hospital, who discussed the hospital’s Innovation Hub as the home for training on Lean and Six Sigma practices as well as creative design thinking, which will help the organization build capability for both incremental improvements and more “out of the box” innovations.
Addressing the importance of building a culture ready to embrace innovation and a lean management approach, Zach Rosenberg, chief executive officer and co-founder of the St. Bernard Project facilitated a discussion about organization cultural development, high-impact innovation, and leadership.
About Turner Construction Company
Turner is a North America-based, international construction services company. Founded in 1902, Turner first made its mark on the industry pioneering the use of steel-reinforced concrete for general building, which enabled the company to deliver safer, stronger, and more efficient buildings to clients. The company continues to embrace emerging technologies and offers an increasingly diverse set of services. With an annual construction volume of $10 billion, Turner is the largest builder in the United States, ranking first in the major market segments of the building construction field, including healthcare, education, sports, commercial, and green building. The firm is a subsidiary of HOCHTIEF, one of the world’s leading international construction service providers. For more information please visit http://www.turnerconstruction.com.
About HOCHTIEF
HOCHTIEF is one of the most international construction groups worldwide. The company delivers complex infrastructure projects, in some cases on the basis of concession models. The Group operates in the transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure and social/urban infrastructure segments as well as in the contract mining business.
With about 53,000 employees and a sales volume of more than EUR 22 billion in FY 2014, HOCHTIEF is represented in all the world’s major markets. With its subsidiary Leighton, the Group is market leader in Australia. In the USA, the biggest construction market in the world, HOCHTIEF is the No. 1 general builder via its subsidiary Turner and, with Group company Flatiron, ranks among the most important players in the field of transportation infrastructure construction. Because of its engagement for sustainability, HOCHTIEF has been listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes since 2006. Further information is available at http://www.hochtief.de/press.
Christopher McFadden, Turner Construction Company, http://www.turnerconstruction.com, +1 (212) 229-6145, [email protected]
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