The article recounts the experience of applying agile approaches in the construction world, specifically on a construction worksite. Despite initial resistance, team leaders began to organize the work of their teams independently, using visual planning tools. The worksite leader (product Owner) together with his process management team to the foremen improved the visual planning boards. This has led to an improvement in the method and internalization of the agile culture. A beautiful achievement that makes it clear that the agile approach can be understood and internalized and received at all levels
Agile cross functional construction teams
Topic of this article is an account of what happened last week at a construction worksite, within which we are experimenting with the Agile approach, under the sponsorship of ANCE-Verona.
These Agile approaches, which originated in the software world and have been appropriately rethought for application in the construction world, are based on a great deal of interaction among the people involved.
The agile approach relies on teams of people who can self-organize to do their work with great autonomy.
The positive experience that took place with the planners and urban, architectural and executive design professionals, who are high school and college graduates, was by no means taken for granted with the people at the construction worksite.
The world of construction is a very concrete, practical and often tough world. The people I have met who have the role of site manager tell of a very stressful life with constant unforeseen events and a very parceled job.
Subcontracting exalted this parcelization and was accompanied by the employment of so much unskilled labor.
For this semi-detached house, I saw a board at the construction site indicating as many as 27 companies that will be involved, from the excavation and foundation to the mailbox.
The skills are very diverse and the team is really cross functional.
Fortunately, these companies do not work at the same time, making it possible to have a “variable geometry” team with a very small number of companies simultaneously involved.
The ramp up of the agile construction site
We expected that it would not be easy, and in fact I remember the first meeting in early February this year with the foremen of the different companies involved in the construction.
Site leader (Product Owner) Fabio Miglioranzi with my support explains to the different foremen how the visual planning works with scoreboards and post-its.
The best part comes when he asks them to plan their team’s work for the next 2 or 3 weeks so that it fits in best with the work of the other teams.
The team leaders look at us a bit quizzically.
One of them, a middle-aged person with at least 20 years’ experience in construction, blurts out saying something like…it would take the site manager of yesteryear to tell you what to do day by day!
We all remain silent for several seconds, and it occurs to me to ask them if they want to be treated like laborers by a site manager who acts like a corporal.
I don’t know what chords I touched, but this statement of mine triggered a surge of pride, and the person who had spoken responded to me by saying that he would know very well how to organize the work of his team. All the other team leaders nod and confirm this, and then I urge them to do it right away.
The team leaders became active, and after a few minutes the person who had spoken began proposing to form a whatsapp group with other colleagues. Something has moved in them as they begin to plan for the next few weeks.
I’m back after almost a month and a half to see how the site work is progressing.
Also with us were site managers and contractors who were concluding a training course, sponsored by ANCE-VR, that included the agile approach in construction.
Construction site leader Fabio Miglioranzi and his team of construction process managers just hung the boards they use on the duplex’s concrete walls to show the class.
First, Fabio, almost apologetically, shows me a board of the medium-long term planning that he, together with his team and the team leaders, have modified from what I had proposed to them.
I feel that he feared that I might resent him, and instead it was an incredible joy for me to see that these people had done just the method and improved it.
This reminds me so much of Shu Ha Ri, the Japanese term for the steps in the process of learning a martial art.
Fabio and his collaborators have now become masters (Ri) and have internalized the agile culture by going far beyond the method. I complimented them, how good they are!
During the meeting, one of the “students” from the training course, visibly surprised at the way this way of working works, asked to return to the construction site at the time of the most critical phase of the installation.
Therefore, it is not over, and I give you the continuation of this story until this critical phase of construction and others are addressed.
