THE OPERATING CODE  |  002

Preparation Drives the Result

I've spent a lot of years watching what happens when a job isn't properly prepared before the crew gets there. Sometimes it's missing material, drawings that aren't ready, customer approvals that haven't been received, or somebody forgetting to confirm access to the site. Other times, it's a combination of several things that should have been worked out long before anybody was scheduled to start.

A good superintendent can usually find a way around those problems. I've done it plenty of times. You move people around, adjust the schedule, locate missing material, make phone calls, and figure out how to keep the job moving. That's part of managing construction, and there will always be situations where you have to adapt to something unexpected.

But I've come to believe there's a difference between being good at solving problems and continually being expected to solve problems that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Just because your people are good at fixing problems doesn't mean your organization should keep giving them the same problems to fix.

Recognize When the Problem Starts Before the Job

When the same issues keep showing up on different projects, with different crews and different supervisors, I believe it's time to look at how the work is being prepared.

If crews are consistently arriving without all the material they need, we should understand why that material wasn't available before the work was scheduled. If engineering questions are repeatedly delaying projects, we need to look at how drawings and approvals are being reviewed. And if supervisors are spending large portions of their day tracking down information, we should ask whether that information could have been provided before the crew arrived.

Those aren't necessarily failures by the people in the field. Sometimes the problem started much earlier, and the crew is simply the first group that has to deal with the consequences.

I've seen how much time can be lost when somebody arrives ready to work and discovers that something important is missing. The superintendent has to stop what they're doing, make phone calls, coordinate with other people, and figure out how to keep the crew productive while the problem gets resolved.

Sometimes you can rearrange the work and keep everybody busy. Other times, there isn't much you can do until the missing information, material, or approval becomes available.

Either way, the problem is now affecting people who were expecting to spend their day getting the job done.

Understand What Poor Preparation Costs

There's a financial side to poor preparation that I believe deserves more attention. When a crew is standing around waiting, you're paying for labor that isn't producing the work you expected. But even when the crew manages to stay busy, the problem may still be costing the organization money.

If a superintendent spends half the day finding material or chasing approvals, that's time they're not spending managing the work, helping their people, checking quality, or preparing for what's coming next. And when you start moving crews around to accommodate one delayed project, you may create scheduling problems somewhere else.

One missing item can affect more than the job where it was discovered. It can change customer commitments, interfere with subcontractors, delay another crew, or create additional trips that weren't included in the original estimate.

Those costs don't always appear as a separate line on a report. Sometimes they're buried in additional labor hours, travel expenses, schedule changes, or reduced productivity.

That's why I don't believe preparation should be measured only by whether the crew eventually finished the job. We should also understand how much unnecessary effort it took to get there.

Make Readiness a Consistent Expectation

I believe preparation needs to be more than something we expect individual superintendents or project managers to handle on their own. When you're responsible for several crews and projects, there should be a consistent understanding of what needs to be ready before people are committed to the work.

That includes verifying material, confirming site access, reviewing drawings, identifying outstanding approvals, and making sure the crew has the equipment and information it needs. The specific requirements may change depending on the project, but the expectation should remain the same: understand what you're sending people into before you send them.

That doesn't mean every detail has to be perfect before work can begin. Construction rarely works that way, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons to start a project while other items are still being completed. But those decisions should be made with an understanding of what's ready, what's outstanding, and how the unfinished items could affect the work.

There's a difference between making an informed decision to proceed and discovering after the crew arrives that nobody verified whether the job was ready.

I also believe the people responsible for preparing the work need to communicate with the people who will actually be doing it. A superintendent or foreman may recognize something in the drawings, material list, or proposed schedule that somebody preparing the job didn't consider. Giving them an opportunity to review the work beforehand can prevent problems that would otherwise become much more difficult to resolve in the field.

Learn From What Goes Wrong

I'm not suggesting we can eliminate every problem. We can't. Construction is full of surprises, and there will always be circumstances nobody could have reasonably predicted. Equipment fails, conditions change, and unexpected issues come up even when everybody has done their part.

But there's a big difference between dealing with something unexpected and repeatedly dealing with something that could have been prevented.

When the same missing material, unanswered engineering question, or scheduling problem keeps delaying jobs, correcting it on one project isn't enough. Somebody needs to understand why it's happening and whether something in the preparation process needs to change.

Sometimes the answer may be better communication between departments. Other times, it may involve clearer responsibilities, earlier reviews, additional training, or simply making sure somebody verifies that the necessary work has been completed before a crew is scheduled.

Whatever the solution, I believe we should be learning from those problems instead of accepting them as something the field will always have to work around.

I've never expected construction to go exactly according to plan every day. That's not realistic. But I do expect us to recognize preventable problems and make an effort to keep them from becoming normal.

I'd rather have my superintendents spending their time leading their crews and solving real field problems than repeatedly correcting failures in preparation.

Good preparation gives people a better opportunity to succeed before they ever arrive on the job. And when an organization makes that preparation consistent, it becomes easier for every crew and every project to benefit from it.

Preparation builds confidence. Good systems make that preparation consistent.