You've seen it all before – workers waiting idly on site, subcontractors arriving early only to leave and return later – because a delay has made the site unavailable for their specific jobs or the necessary materials haven't arrived yet.
These things are very common and whenever scenarios like these happen, time is wasted, conflicts arise and complaints arise. In turn, more non-value-added activities result in resolving errors and delays.
Considering that almost 2/3 of the work involved in delivering a construction project consists of non-value added activities, it is crucially important to focus on the root causes and how to fix them. For example, most project managers have their programs and schedules locked in MS Project. To adjust them to ongoing website improvements, they need to check updates coming from WhatsApp messages, emails, text messages, meeting notes, and calls. Because these sources of information are all disparate and not connected to related scheduled tasks, project managers are typically buried under a mountain of unnecessary administrative work.
If you could cut or even minimize the amount of time wasted on non-value-adding activities, imagine the time and focus you would be able to dedicate to critical tasks. Think about the impact this could have on your project, your profitability and your success.
Common types of construction waste
When talking about construction waste, most people only think about materials or equipment that were damaged, overused, or lost during the construction process. Many people forget about the non-value-added processes that waste so much time and resources. To understand non-value-added activities, let's first define what a value-added activity is. A value-added activity is any activity that meets any of three criteria:
- The activity is being paid for by someone
- The activity is carried out successfully the first time (without unnecessary rework)
- The activity has a defined and useful impact on the function or form of the final project
If an activity does not meet any of these three guidelines, it is considered a non-value-added activity and, therefore, wasteful.
However, most construction stakeholders – from the project owner to the site manager and site teams – tend to ignore these important criteria, exposing the project to waste and failure.
Here is a list of typical types of construction waste:
- Downtime and delays between on-site tasks
- Materials damaged, misplaced, or lost because they were purchased too soon or stored incorrectly
- Unnecessary movement or transfer of vehicles, equipment and materials from one location to another
- Unnecessary travel or movement of field crews (the time needed to walk from one part of the site to another, or back and forth with drawings, etc.)
- Do more work than required by the client
- Overprocessing – using too many steps to complete a task
- Additional costs and rework caused by defects
Of course, construction waste is not just about materials. Construction waste encompasses a multitude of activities that do not add value to your construction project. Unfortunately, most construction professionals would say that it is normal to experience this type of construction waste. It’s no wonder delays, complaints and a toxic blame culture still permeate the industry.
Reducing Onsite Waste in 6 Simple Ways
1. Create and build your plans with who will carry out the work.
Eliminating waste in your construction project always starts with people. To establish reliable and efficient workflows in your project, you need to have transparent sharing of information and clearly defined objectives between those responsible for executing tasks, supported by your entire team.
You also need to standardize your processes, as they guide you in mapping your construction workflows and allow you to identify areas for improvement. Standardized processes are your main weapons for improving the quality of your project, avoiding disputes and guaranteeing your margins.
2. Plan in more detail as the day of the execution phase approaches.
As the day of planned tasks approaches, plan jobs and workflows in detail, combining a real-time view of resources with a real-time view of all site activities. Detailed planning with real-time data helps you and your teams successfully align everyone around your milestones and give everyone an understanding of what's next.
3. Identify and eliminate task blocks as a team.
For your teams to be successful in delivering their tasks, it is important that they have an overview so that they can minimize delays and avoid interruptions. For this to happen, it is essential that everyone on the project team has full visibility of the project. A real-time, shareable view of everything happening in the field allows you to identify and address emerging issues and changes before they can impact project flow. The faster your teams can make informed decisions, the easier it will be to eliminate waste in your project.
4. Promise only what you can deliver.
Be realistic and transparent about what you can and cannot do. Not only will you build trust with your client, but you will also establish a positive and consistent culture of collaboration. But how can you promise what you can deliver? By standardizing your processes, you have a well-established benchmark that you can measure when starting a new project. This is how you can promise what you can deliver.
5. Deliver what you promised: Monitor whether promises are being kept and learn from interruptions in workflow.
Another important parameter to be defined in your construction company along with standardized processes are milestones. Milestones are markers with which you measure your project's progress. Milestones help you stay on track and manage subcontractors, and let you know if you're behind.
6. Collect feedback and updates and readjust accordingly as a team.
It's important that you move your project communication to the cloud using a tool that helps everyone on your team work together while giving them full visibility into your latest project information. This allows you to receive and provide feedback and updates to everyone, wherever they are, allowing everyone on the team to readjust accordingly if problems or issues arise.
