By Stephanie Pretorius, Senior Consultant, Intent Group

Lean in construction is still well behind manufacturing in terms of uptake in New Zealand. 

There are some key factors affecting the pace of change, including lack of an industry standard for ‘what good looks like’.

Construction has just begun to realise the potential benefit that comes from a focus on continuous improvement to processes, maximising customer value and improving throughput.

How can construction pick up the pace and make sustained progress towards performance improvement?

Construction is a collaborative industry that has a number of recognised issues. A joint initiative between Government and Industry was started last year in an effort to address known issues and kick-start closing the gap towards better performance.

The 2019 Construction Accord sent a clear signal that sector transformation is needed over a three-year span with improved performance being the goal.

Downer’s Transport Services Northern business is an excellent example showcasing ways to actively realise the intent of the Accord.

One of the objectives of the Accord is to lift performance through better business management practices.

Downer started an improvement journey in 2017 that was aimed at introducing better practice and creating a stable foundation for continuous improvement (CI).

Their culture was transformed over the last three years as the business pursued CI with dedication and commitment.

While it is still the beginning of their journey, they have made remarkable progress due to strong leadership and wide team engagement towards the new direction.

The initial driver for the business was a step change in culture with a focus on continuous improvement to better protect intellectual property across core processes within the business.

Setting an intention to be significantly different in three years, the Northern Leadership team embarked on a transformation journey.

The goal was to develop the capability to step-change performance, and create and open, a collaborative improvement culture that will provide a strong foundation for performance improvement in the mid to long term.

Cascading the direction, the team initiated a programme of change that included establishing daily management systems across multiple sites, redesigning core processes, cascading direction via strategy deployment and more.

The Downer team created a regular cadence for improvement with oversight by the Steering Committee that allowed the business to adjust the pace of improvement to a manageable workload for the team.

What they achieved was a remarkable culture change created from an unrelenting focus on providing the systems and processes that would enable the business to systemise improvement.

 Processes are how the work gets done, and a process focus is integral to getting better performance. Key achievements include:

• Seven business priorities successfully cascaded across the team empowering widespread action.
• Team moving the dial on what made a difference for Downer through responding with alignment.
• Systems for team communication embedded in daily practice.
• Daily meetings established over multiple sites, four geographic locations, and with three levels of clear visual performance escalation.
• Core processes significantly improved.
• Leadership confidence and active coaching of teams increased significantly.
• Growing the internal capability to manage CI.
• Overall, leaders rose to the challenge, utilising visible forums for leading their teams, creating engagement and alignment, and setting expectations.

Downer have built a great foundation for performance improvement. Getting a good start and creating momentum early on allows the business to keep moving in the direction of getting better every day, while building the internal capability to persevere with focus.

 Of course, there is a long road ahead that never ends in a final destination when it comes to continuous improvement.

In terms of how to pick up the pace and create a step change  Downer have demonstrated that it is possible to make a positive change to management practices and establish core systems and processes that let the business thrive.