Firefighting versus Lean Construction - Dan Fauchier

Dan Fauchier  0:00  
As I was analyzing the data forensically the all the documents in a project, there was always one moment when it started going south. And if that has stopped right in and caught it and fessed up to it and talked about it, they wouldn't have had that, that disaster of a project. All of the stuff that rippled out from that would have and usually it was in a daily report wasn't in the minutes of the meetings and all that it was in a superintendents daily report or a trade contractors DAILY Report, that thing was there. And and you could you could trace what the you know, what happened after that and, and just how it compounded. Okay, here's why. In the early or the mid 90s, when I was a project manager, my title for this particular company was director of project management for with Western US and Latin America, very impressive title. I chose it myself as a condition of employment.

Felipe Engineer  1:03  
Well done, Dan.

Dan Fauchier  1:05  
On the East Coast, was another guy whose title was not director, he, we were going to be peers, but he was not director. So they said, well, we can't make you a director because Tom would call him it's not it's not his name. Tom is a manager and he's not a director. I said, Well promote him. Because in order to do what you want me to do here, I got to be at the director level. So I said, Okay, Tom got a big promotion out of it now. And Tom was interesting guy, I finally figured out why Tom was so popular in a company. Tom was a consummate firefighter, he could fly in on the next plane to somewhere and solve a problem. And everyone would go, Tom is amazing. Look, he did it again. What I finally figured out after a couple of years of watching is that he would hire people who were not really up to the task. So he would let them fail so he could fly in and save them. Now that that is a firefighter. It's good to be here to see you. I enjoy being with you, Felipe.

Felipe Engineer  2:09  
Yeah, let's get so excited that we just talk over each other the whole time. Welcome to the EBFC Show, the easier better for construction podcast. I'm your host Felipe Engineer Manriquez. This show is all about the business of construction. Today's episode is sponsored by...

Sponsors  2:29  
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Felipe Engineer  3:42  
Today's episode is sponsored by construction accelerator...

Sponsors  3:46  
The design and construction industries come up with and build great things. But we also build in waste in how we do those things, in our interactions in our contracts in our logistics. So what does this do for our bottom line, or our next project, the best firms maximize their value by removing that waste, and only doing what's essential to the work what makes them money. Construction accelerator will train you to see the waste and give your teams the lean tools and experience to remove it immediately. All online. Construction accelerator is made up of three to nine minute videos that can be watched again and again, in the field, at the office and at home. All broken down by topic. need to learn pool planning. We have videos on the process, how to set up a room and how to kick off a team need to set up a target value delivery project. We discuss all the aspects of TVD especially cost or maybe you just need to brush up on five as well. We have videos on that as well. You can download and print reference materials to use on site to immediately translate watching into doing subscribe today at tri ca now.com. Let's build an industry not just a project.

Felipe Engineer  4:58  
Today's show is also sponsored by the Lean Construction Institute. LCI is working to lead the building industry and transforming its practices and culture, its vision is to create a healthy and thriving industry that delivers outstanding project outcomes every time for everyone. Check the show notes for more information now, to the show Dan! As promised, I've got your book right here. Bless your heart. All right, money in my pocket. Dan, I was looking at this book again. And and I was thinking some of the things that I've gone to other resources to put my head back in. It's right there in the appendix. It's just right there. Very well done. Thank you. Very well Dan. How many years has it been since this book came out? Then?

Dan Fauchier  5:46  
A couple? I think, 2019 I think it was, was it just 2019 like it was just yesterday. I could be off a year. I don't know. I could be off everything. Pre COVID or post COVID it's just...

Felipe Engineer  6:04  
It's 2017, Dan.

Oh, there we go. What's the copyright? I looked on the back of the cover. According to you off co author of the book with Dave onstop. You didn't start your Lean journey until 2009.

Dan Fauchier  6:16  
I started being lean coach in 2009. But I was in 2008 is when I met Greg howl changed my life. Worked with Glen Ballard. And Iris Tomlin and, and Kristin Hill and just like, you know, Dean Reid, I mean, my goodness, all the all the all the people that we know that know this, Victor Sen. Vito, they were all all part of that. That one project, giant project in Sacramento. It's pretty cool. Greg Hall,

Felipe Engineer  6:50  
I was just talking to somebody from LCA just this week. And, you know, we were saying Greg and Glenn just sparked off so much change across the industry, that we're still feeling the effects right now

Dan Fauchier  7:02  
from Greg how I learned everything. He he was, he was, he is genuinely my, my original mentor. And all these people I mentioned are, are included in that. But it was a personal relationship with Greg, as it was with everyone that knew him. humility, I learned humility from Greg, in the in the face of not knowing everything, you know, I learned one of the things I learned from Greg was the power of the ever curious mind. He was curious about everything. He had an easiness with learning that, that transmitted to the people around him, and approach to learning together with other people. And the thing that I that I really love about Greg Howe, and I'm still working on this one, is that somehow he had a way of making you feel like you had a special relationship with Him. And that's a unique skill. And and it was genuine. I mean, everyone did. And How big does your heart have to be to be able to do that? Scott to be gigantic?

Felipe Engineer  8:21  
He was a force on you, Dan, because you later became a force on me. And yeah, and so many of the friends that I have mentioned, Greg how to is a powerful mentor. Yeah. And as well as Glenn as well. Yes. To many others, the other two are still cranking it out.

Yes. So go on, then. Yeah, he's very much working in the public sector trying to transform the government. And I think he's caught on that. companies do follow what governments say to some degree and that you can get a little more change that way.

Dan Fauchier  8:52  
Yep. I mean, it, there's all these pieces that have got to fall into place to really launch forward like this. But yes, agree. 

Felipe Engineer  9:00  
We've got, you know, people waking up every day, every day, Dan, with just complete amnesia, and they don't have the experiences that we had. And it's just not the same world every day with with all the people joining the industry. So yeah, it's kind of good to take a step back, like we do on the show and have a long conversation about some of the things that that we just take for granted. We've been after for so many years, and for some of us over a decade. Yeah. So with that, Dan, go ahead. No, no, you go you go you go I...

Dan Fauchier  9:30  
I was gonna say that you have you have an ability to to pull ideas out of people's minds that were just kind of sitting there but not really expressed. I've watched in the in all the different podcasts of yours that I've watched it they're clearly unscripted. But I but I've watched you just just pull and listen and and it's a good talent though. I respect it.

Felipe Engineer  9:57  
I respect it. Tell the audience who is is Dan Fauchier?

Dan Fauchier  10:01  
Oh my goodness, we've we've been working on that for decades of I've been in construction for I, I'm gonna fess up 45 years designing construction that includes a few years in development when I was hiring architects and engineers and contractors, but all of that together 45 years, I was a project manager for the most most of the first part of that. And a darn good, but I was, you know, I was very efficient at managing waste. I had great record keeping. I could, you know, I could tell you who screwed up where and when and all that. I was even a claims consultant once upon a time, I don't tell people that very often,

Felipe Engineer  10:51  
Oh, no wonder you have such special skills with recognizing things. 

Dan Fauchier  10:55  
That's the negative side. But I got into partnering. But you know, and a lot of the lean community doesn't understand or appreciate partnering, because they think it's touchy feely, and it's really not. nb, you know, and it's a cottage industry for some of that. But a big buyer and I, working with a guy named Tom Brasher, Tom and Marsha Brashear up in the state of Washington, developed alignment partnering, which is a very different kind of thing. And it's it's very lean, as it turns out. So our first lien job, this one in Sacramento, with with all the saints of lien, we were hired to be the partnering facilitators on that project. And we told them, You don't really want just partnering. I think that's how we we made it in the interview. It was we said that you think you just want part, you don't want just partnering, you want facilitated interaction, collaboration? You know, we started describing that, yeah, that's what we want. That's what we want. So that that's that started the Lean journey. Now that's a good heritage. There have been some books written down where they describe lean people with a capital L. Yeah. And I would put you at one of those capital L big L. For sure. I mean, you. You've written a book about it, and it's good. It's a good book, people, I highly recommend you get it. I actually had a one time Dan, I had three copies of this book. Wow, I had the one that I bought. I still have the one on Kindle. And then I won a copy at the design form suite. It might have been a quote, like, Who said this quote, and I think it was a Deming quote, I got that right. So you're gonna get natural. Yeah, I'm a huge fan. As I think you are, too.

I am very much yeah, that's very cool. She gave maybe PG gaming and Joe Rambo

Felipe Engineer  12:55  
Dan doesn't get it doesn't get the notoriety. I know demigods. For some reason,

Dan Fauchier  12:59  
though. It's kind of a little brother of the whole thing. I don't know why. But there's a there's a Duran Institute or something like janee. There is. Yeah, that that really is the kind of the keeper of a lot of the wisdom of the two of them. And Walter Schubert and you know, all that whole gang. I worked for a company in the mid 90s. That this is before all the things we've just been talking about. But I as a project manager, I worked for a company that had big Deming posters up everywhere, but they didn't follow a one of them.

Felipe Engineer  13:33  
Which is ironic because Deming said, throw away your posters and slogans.

Dan Fauchier  13:37  
Yes. So that's all the head of the whole thing. Somebody had come through a few years before and sold on these posters. And they thought it was, you know,

Felipe Engineer  13:46  
yeah, posters and visual workplace, not the same. Not the same thing. Not even close. No, and people listening, we absolutely want to take a pause for a second and just thank the listeners, the viewers, the watchers, get your hands dirty. People like to say, I'm glad that you were a project manager. I too, was a recovering project manager. From your perspective, Dan, and you're working with, like the, you know, big players in the industry, do you think COVID killed or tampered or hindered lean implementation across the United States?

Dan Fauchier  14:16  
And that's the word that's that's the phrase, I actually put that phrase out there. I'm, I'm gonna accuse you of stealing it from me. Just but it's an idea that whose time has come? We did. We did a couple of webinars and so much stuff on did COVID kill lean? Because I started, you know, talking to clients and, and colleagues and they were suffering from it. Yeah. And so actually through LCI, we convened what we now call the gang of 16. And we went out to 30 people and said, would you would you help us understand what we need that you know, the impact of COVID on the industry on your program? Would you just collaborate with And 16 said yes, and there are 16 of the most wonderful people I've ever met. And, and so you know, and so we came out with an understanding of, and what we found, what they told us told each other was that for about half the people, maybe not quite half COVID had a serious negative impact. One classic example Drake contractor, the executive said, we've got to pull in our horns, we've got to cut expenses. So you decide how you want to do that. And they decided that they would keep all the people on this on the payroll, and they would cut travel and training and literally everything else coffee, whatever they had to cut, they would cut to keep the people, which is respect for people, right? That's very lean approach. But it meant that there was a damage to the program. So a number of people suffered those kinds of things. But the other half of the people lean was the answer that they had needed anyway. And they were already on an acceleration path. And lean was perfect for COVID. Because it helped them reduce additional waste, and quickly turn on a dime with the supply chain issues and all that stuff. So I mean, it was really a remarkable kind of experience. And two different sides of the same world.

Felipe Engineer  16:25  
You mentioned some trade partners, I'm sure there's some mix of general contractors. What have you heard from the design community on that part? Where did they fall on one side? Or do they

Dan Fauchier  16:33  
very much the same thing, first of all, designers, as a group tend to struggle a little bit with how to implement lean, not all of them. I mean, there are guys like, like boulder associates, and you know, our friends there, that that really got it figured out. And they now it works. But you know, Romano, Nickerson and people like that. But the interesting thing is that this gang of 16, after a couple of meetings, we came up with a list of five major things and with some definition of each, that we that we would recommend that the organizations do to pull lean more deeply into the organization of the 16. People, about three of them were architects and engineers, three of them were were trade contractors, three of them were owners, and the rest were GC. So it's, you know, nine and six, kind of like twice as many GCS as any one of those groups. But that's kind of the makeup of LCI to after we develop that with everyone as input, the designer said, let us take this and reword it a little bit so that it makes more sense to the architectural and design community. Because there's some words in here that don't work for us. And if we're gonna want this to be irrelevant, we need to do this. So yes, it it. It is an impact for designers, it is a different language. And we have done a moderately good way of translating construction centric,

Felipe Engineer  18:01  
and where can people get access to this ascend list?

Dan Fauchier  18:05  
It's a secret right now. Um, we're waiting for the designers to come back with the design version of that. I've got a copy I'll share with you. The gang of 16, I'll have it. And it's something that the the plan is to offer it up to LCI. Maybe it debuts at Congress. If, if our focus is accepted?

Felipe Engineer  18:31  
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I'm on the abstract selection team, Dan, and it did not come into my mix. I didn't I didn't see it, but I only each of the volunteers just gets a slice. So we can't do your own stuff. I mean, something like that is just perfectly ties into facilitation. So you kind of removed yourself and just created a venue and environment where the gang of 16 could come together. Now, what's that, like, Dan, when you're working with facilitation,

Dan Fauchier  18:55  
it's exhilarating. It's, it can be very challenging that I mean, that was a super positive kind of group. And they were, they were mostly lien champions and the people that you know, that really, really do this stuff on a daily basis. So it was a little easier for that group too, to get together and talk through it. If anything, the facilitation skill there is to stay out of the way right and just to kind of guide it so that no one dominates and everybody gets a chance to weigh in other other project facilitation is very often tensor, more tense, I don't I'm an English major, I was just make that word up tensor, tensor. And there there are times when you know that people get in their silos and somebody said something that hurt the feelings and they went down to the personal level on something and so there's conflict or, or the things really stressed. There's team out there that that's just like the budget. I mean, these days the budgets are horrendous. Sleep tight. And schedule has always been tight or at least for a long, long time, but budgets have gotten unreal. There was one team that that they won, they launched the budget that had been proposed in the RFU. The RFP was cut by 25% day one that's how they started their their project using

Felipe Engineer  20:20  
that's a that's advanced owner graduate studies, right? That's a job by 20% and advanced is 25%. Yeah, right. How do you get by 20 is good an extra 5% greater five, this

Dan Fauchier  20:31  
this cut the half of it, but I mean, they did it, they use target value delivery, and use the lean alignment partnering and they they pulled it off and it's about to come to

Felipe Engineer  20:44  
fruition if people are wondering because a lot of people really don't know what target value delivery is. I highly recommend you go to Dan's website the

Dan Fauchier  20:53  
quick URL is try ca now ca for construction accelerator. Dry ca now.com yeah there's no statute you and I know and love Stan Jim statue did three amazing five minute videos on set based design and he took an hour and a half of material that he gives it lean design for him and and he worked with Kyle Martinez, my colleague and and condensed it down into three five minute videos. Very high graphics. Stan is not his face doesn't have his cartoon face does but is a cool cartoon. But his you know, it's his voice though he's rich, buttery voice and these ideas that are just so clearly explained. You're right it's it's a great series and then the whole target value delivery thing that is the the integrated component was set based design is all their all their cluster group stuff all that

Felipe Engineer  21:57  
I just was pulling a group of preconstruction people recently, somewhere in the country will let it be anonymous. And I asked them who can give me the definition for set based design? And in a room of 10 people? Zero. Wow. And it's 2021 Wow. And then also asked, Who knows? What's the difference between target value delivery target value design? And I've asked that of a mix of architects owners, general contractor trade people and there you start to get like 20% or less.

Dan Fauchier  22:26  
Yeah, yeah, that no, they've been around at the time that the LCI did the conversion from target value design to target by delivery. So if they were around at that time, they may have gotten gotten the noise of it.

Felipe Engineer  22:39  
That's why I say both just because some architects just refuse to acknowledge that that someday we actually build something and it should be every

Dan Fauchier  22:48  
architect they know this building Come on.

Felipe Engineer  22:54  
I've had quite a few I'm gonna get almost point you back to a couple of guests on my show some architects and and the word they refuse to say delivery delivery only target value design,

Dan Fauchier  23:05  
even designs get delivered. So I don't

Felipe Engineer  23:08  
the objection would be I don't know either. I love that. So the resources they're really good I watch it I learned from that site. Cool. It's it's very Allah LinkedIn learning. For those old enough to remember like lynda.com style Kyle Martinez does a great job of putting those years and curating the videos together so and and i'm not trying to make it like sales commercially, like but yeah, you get video, you get the audio experience of listening. And then each one of the modules has handouts to cause some people like to learn by reading as well. So

Dan Fauchier  23:39  
highly coupling learning with action. You know, very early, there are action items to put what you learn in the video into action. Little test some of the reason cartoon video quizzes, in some cases, Andy Fulton did a great job on on a whole bunch of the videos at Collin MD really work together on that. You know, Rene Bustamante was the one who really designed the program. Somebody called it the other day, somebody called it the, the Reese's Pieces of lean. And I like Yes, I love that.

Felipe Engineer  24:12  
But not so sweet that you'll get a cavity. A lot of the people that don't like lean or have had a bad taste in their mouth with with trying lean in the past and often Dan, members of like yourself and your team go into projects to help with like showing people how to do lean and yeah, and this whole idea, I think there's this like theoretical part that's completely disconnected from the gumba or the work occurs. What can you tell me about a story about going to the gamba? What's been ioco connecting that action that you've talked about in your videos back to doing something?

Dan Fauchier  24:44  
Well, I don't know if this answers the question, but I'll I'll pull apology.

Felipe Engineer  24:48  
I'll tell you if it doesn't.

Dan Fauchier  24:50  
I'll answer the question I want you to ask me.

Felipe Engineer  24:55  
That's called the redirect. Ladies and gentlemen. facilitator move.

Dan Fauchier  24:58  
So this is 2000 And 11 john Wayne Airport. It was terminal C, which is the Southwest terminal. And Southwest was expanding and they needed all these gates, late May of 2011. It had to open for the for the holiday season for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because that's when airlines p six said they had five months worth of work left to do. And they had three months left to do it in because they had to finish their drop dead date was September 9 of 2011 p six was telling that they they simply couldn't make it and so they decided, let's you know, let's let's pry last blender. I mean, we're we're behind the eight ball here, which is very often how companies come to last planner or learning or anything else that's good, is like, you know, they

Felipe Engineer  25:45  
need to that's how I got involved with clean, so

Dan Fauchier  25:48  
they get in trouble. You know, pain is a prod to understanding. Yogananda says so, uh, parachuted in behind me enemy lines, the first day was so fun, because the superintendent said Good luck with this. Because these, these trade foremen are really kind of annoyed at each other. I mean, fact there's not even kinda, they're at each other's throats. I don't know if that was the phrase you use. But that's that was the meaning. There are very few areas to work in, we haven't been able to condition the interior spaces yet. So there's all kinds of work that's got to be done, and we can't get there. And so they're fighting over spaces. And they keep coming to the jobsite earlier and earlier each day to get ahead of each other to get in to grab a space. But you know, last planner, all you have to do is explain and get people facing a wall and give them some their own color of sticky. And say, let's let's figure this out. And you start at the end and you start pulling backwards. And there were no harsh words. There were no arguments, they collaborated. And they were doing things like Well, look, what why don't you go in first and get that, and then I can come in behind you. And I'll have more more work room to room to work and conversations that had never been uttered on that job site. before. It's it's transformational. But you don't, you know, you can be in all the last planner classes you want and read all the books, even the really good ones you want. And thank you very much that that you want. But it's not the same as going to the gamma, the gamma teaches you everything, everything and and that was an example of you know, you could you could read about it, you can look at the at the CPM schedule and all but none of that matters, talk to the people go to the place, make it work.

Felipe Engineer  27:35  
And that's all the gamma means. It's just a Japanese word meaning where the value is created. I talked about this with Joe Domino who wrote the lean builder and he says, I love when you take a look, Joe to He's like, when you take these, these tasks are these pieces of work that people have like it's their work all the energy all the charge, when you put it on the board, and they can go look at it, Let's all stand a look at the board. And now the problems are on the board. And then no longer is no longer the problems here on me

Dan Fauchier  28:03  
that have facing each other and looking at each other as the problem. You're facing the wall. And you're looking at the the need, you know, what, what is the issue here? How can we work? How can we figure this out? You know, I had one of the earlier experiences with coaching. Last planner was a swinerton job at a hospital, an active hospital, sharp hospital. And the after a few weeks of working together. The superintendent said you know what I like about this more than anything, I thought he was going to tell me that, you know, our PPC is up for you. And he said no. Now when I wake up at two o'clock in the morning, and I can't sleep because of a problem that I'm trying to solve. I know that there are two or three other foremen waking up at two o'clock in the morning. I'm trying to help me solve this problem. We are genuinely a team on this. And that's the best thing about this. And I went Wow, that's pretty cool. First of all, that is very good. Let's try to avoid, let's remove constraints and try to avoid those problems and keep

Felipe Engineer  29:02  
you up that's super tender. Realizing that there are foremen that he's hired, or his company's hired, holding themselves accountable. I want to hear your thoughts about accountability then because I know that you often go in and people are like, it's the blame game. Yeah, you you kind of uncover some different things that they might not be aware of

Dan Fauchier  29:22  
accountability. I mean, the the classic accountability metric is PPC people, some people call percent plan complete. I call percent of promises complete. Because a plan is just like some amorphous thing, a promise that's personal. And and I think that accountability as be as personal as far as possible. But when it comes to keeping PPC, you want to keep it as a team and not count the end of at least not talk about the individual company your performance, PPC because that's when that kind of us them things starts breaking out and I've seen it I've been on on job sites where that was the problem, they couldn't get people to come to the weekly work planning, because they didn't want to be called out as you know, the bad guy. And that's because they were doing exactly that when doesn't work. But accountability really requires absolute clarity. I can't be accountable for something that I'm not clear on, that I'm supposed to be doing or that I know how to do or whatever in constraint removal. Our, our mutual friend, Colin Milberg have a SKM associates in Boston. Colin is really good at this. And he taught me and not very long ago, that it's a it's a course that he does for, for AGC that, that make work ready. And the constraint identification really requires visualization that it and I hadn't thought about that. And it's he's right, that if you really want to know, if there are no constraints leading up to the beginning of that activity, or in the middle, or wherever, that you have to literally step yourself through each one of those things, and there's a checklist and all that, but you have to mentally go there, just like it's virtual reality or something, and here's what I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do this. And so he does. And I helped him do it. He does visualization exercises, with superintendents and foremen, and people to, you know, first kind of on a simple thing like making coffee, but then ultimately on on the project itself, and visualizing clearly stepping through all the things you're going to do. So the accountability requires that kind of clarity in order for us to really them to be held accountable. And I

Felipe Engineer  31:45  
want to just reiterate to every single general contractor listening now, every single trade partner, every architect, every designer, everybody without exception, every consultant selling last planner facilitation services, every single coach, hobbyist, amateur or professional, do not count. Individual PPC, yeah, unless you want your project to crash and burn on purpose. Yeah, and Oh, I forgot the owner community, every single owner do not incentivize individual PPC, unless you want to award a breakout on your site.

Dan Fauchier  32:26  
Now, there's one exception if the I was on a project of fairly large project. And I'll tell you about it in a minute. But in this in this because I want to it's so cool. The in this particular, this team wanted to keep PPC by individual by company by team and a huge project 27 housing units, three hospital buildings, big kitchen, all kinds of stuff. It's a prison hospital at Stockton, and they wanted to keep it individually. I said, Okay, I know you're going to do it anyway. So I can't tell you don't do it. Cuz you have the data. But don't tell anybody. You can know in your own head, you know, that the plumber ain't, you know, pulling his weight or whatever. But I'm sorry, plumbers, I just picked you out random.

Felipe Engineer  33:18  
You can say electrician.

Dan Fauchier  33:19  
It could be anybody. It but but don't front of off in front of the group and don't embarrass them and don't like cold them. Yeah. So. So they that's what they did. And it was okay. Because it told them where they could could go to give additional help. It guided management in that in that sense. But so this project, can I tell you about it? Yeah, please. Alright. So it's, the whole thing was a billion dollars. This is the thing that was built, this billion dollar project was what was built out of what was supposed to be $7 billion of projects in that Sacramento thing we were talking about. So you know, that came to fruition in 2009. And the state was broke, but they had a million, I'm sorry, a billion dollars stashed away somewhere to put this into, and so they were able to fund it. So it was done as a design build. And it was one of the it probably was the biggest design build that the legislature had ever okayed and fund they said started off as 24 month and about six months into it. When they finally got the funding, they said the legislature has given us funding, but now we're six months late. So you only have 18 months to put the 473 million votes. So please, somebody and I know who said sure. Okay, we can do that. And off they went. So now fast forward. I mean, they they were bringing they had 120 5% of all the block masons in California, were parking their pickups in there. Pick up a lot in their in their lot. Every day for a period of months, when this thing was going on, it was a huge project. So now fast forward, it's it's 18 weeks before punch list, they are ramped up to doing $1.5 million a day work in place. 1.5 million a day work in place. And they realized they would have to double it. To make the schedule, they would have to double it in six weeks, in order to hit that 18 week, punch list. milestone, again, brought in last planner. Girls are getting this they're

Felipe Engineer  35:41  
Cool and cool. Beyond encore, we're not gonna make..

Dan Fauchier  35:43  
you go and our CIP scheduling getting us there. So we introduced it, and I'm not going to go on with it. It's six weeks, they were hitting $3 million a day work in place. And bottom line, they finished five weeks early. 3 million a day work in place.

Felipe Engineer  36:01  
It's double the production. Yes, double double. Yeah. And for people that don't know what sips is, it's a version of tact scheduling.

Dan Fauchier  36:10  
It kind of yeah, it's a This one was an Excel. And it's a waterfall schedule with people moving from building to build trades moving across different areas, as short interval production schedule is what the acronym means.

Felipe Engineer  36:22  
No, there's one GC that uses it exclusively that I won't name their name right now. It's the one GC Dan hasn't mentioned yet. Okay. And they're also we're not part of the gang of 16. Oh, interesting. All right. I'll tell you, I'll tell you after the show, Dan. Oh, yes. So that's awesome. That's actually, if you want to know what contracts are, I'm talking about. It's in this book here by my friend, Jason Schroeder, and calls out the sips you know, who's famously known for doing stuff. Look at that. Look at that plug to Jason Schroeder. Yeah, this book right here. Jason's amazing. Yeah, as you know, speaking of books, Dan, what a perfect transition. It's almost like there was some planning put to this. 

Dan Fauchier  37:00  
Oh, there were planning and I know there wasn't?

Felipe Engineer  37:03  
How do people that don't know and have these experiences? What's a way for them to gain knowledge in in a team environment?

Dan Fauchier  37:11  
One of the best ways I've seen is the study Action Team.

Felipe Engineer  37:16  
Oh, it's that damn it? Well,

Dan Fauchier  37:18  
let me let me tell you LSAT study Action Team. It's usually a group of six or eight people, you'd maybe have 10. But you want to keep the small teams so they could people, you know, six to nine. It's this the scrum numbers six to nine is the right number of people, right? Oh, well,

Felipe Engineer  37:37  
well done. Dan. Shay, ladies and gentlemen, recently trained as a scrum master by your

Dan Fauchier  37:44  
Grandmaster by my favorite Scrum Master

Felipe Engineer  37:47  
Scrum a, he's a two time Scrum Master. He's twice the scrum charm.

Dan Fauchier  37:53  
So this group of six to nine people, six is good. Get together in the on a maybe it's once a week used to be for an hour, nobody has an hour anymore. So now it's 30 minutes, they'll get together and they'll agree to read in advance. one chapter of a book or a few videos or in in, we've developed some some study Action Team guides that combine a chapter of a book and videos using to second lien or that other one you were holding up that isn't the one we just held up. And and

Felipe Engineer  38:26  
proprietary.

Dan Fauchier  38:27  
Yeah, that one, combined the the chapter and the videos together because some people don't read, you know, right. And that's that's been the thing that's been off putting for study action teams for a lot of people is I don't I'm sorry, I don't read. I do. But I'm talking about somebody else. And and so they're able to do both of this. And then after they pull out what their big points were in what they've read, they go right into the action piece of how can we put this lesson into action right now on this team on our project? What can we do with this information? And so that's the end because it's a discussion. Now you've got some reinforcing going on? What do you got?

Felipe Engineer  39:09  
I wanted to show a book that I call danfo. Shea some years ago, and I said, Dan, I want to learn about problem solving. And I'm tired of not knowing how to do it well. And Dan recommended this book to me, man, managing Hitler managing to learn and this book has been incredible. It is launched. I just, I've got to study action teams going with this now. And I've had just countless executives going through this with us at our company and we'd lead sessions and we we partnered in 2018 with the lean Enterprise Institute and LCI lean construction Institute did a joint training in Virginia. And I got to that's where I met Kristen Hill for the first time in person after reading so many of her posts. All right, and it was on that book. That book brought us together. to action,

Dan Fauchier  40:01  
that book came out in, I think 2008, at least that's when Greg Howell found out about it and said, I just found this amazing book on eighth reason. And, and, and he said, you know, and so Digg buyer and I, Nick and I were partners at the time on this project, co facilitators that time. And we did a study Action Team with Emily, you know, Greg's daughter, who was working for us also. So the three of us did a study Action Team on managing to learn. And it is such one of the cool things about this, and I, I have no idea how to write a book like that. Because he wrote it, there are parallel parts of the page. Right? And right one is the, the thoughts and role of the champion, the the A through champion, and the others the thoughts and role of the mentor. And you can read one and then go to the other, and it's just so

Felipe Engineer  40:57  
yeah, shows. Like, there's black and blue ink. Yeah. Yeah. And the black ink is the the hero and the blue and the blue ink is the boss. Yeah, the mentor,

Dan Fauchier  41:10  
the mentor, what a beautiful way of writing a book from two different perspectives. Hollywood does it sometimes with different clip cuts of movies and things, but I've never seen a book written that way. So that's cool. Yeah,

Felipe Engineer  41:20  
it's the only one that I've ever seen too. And I found out I had a guest on my show in season one, Katie Anderson, she wrote a book about learning to lead leading to learn. He co Yoshino and he is actually the ken Sanderson character in managing to learn. Oh, he was he was Ken Sanderson. And I got to meet him. And it was like, such a cool thing to meet somebody a character, that. And now, the next time I meet Stan Chu, again, because she was also on the show, I get to meet somebody who was a cartoon and now as a person.

Dan Fauchier  41:54  
Yes, cartoons. Dan is a really good cartoon. It's a it's a cool cartoon,

Felipe Engineer  41:59  
I got to see this what is what is go see lean operations? Like how Why are so many people keep talking about this? I hear people inside of some large healthcare companies, and they use this go see vernacular all the time. Yeah. What are they talking about them.

Dan Fauchier  42:15  
Just back to gamba. For the most part, it means don't just think about the problem in the abstract, or think about the opportunity or the process or whatever, go see what's actually happening in in a three, it's, it's you got to do the go see, if you really want to diagnose what the current state is. Go see what the people are actually doing, how they're actually do processing this information or, or where the problem is, or whatever it may be. And, and immediately, I mean, one of the big things about problem solving, is that you can't wait. Because you you need to swarm it, which is the way Alcoa used to talk about it. And I and Steve spear talks about swarm the problem. Because the people's memories need to be fresh. Their observations need to be fresh memories, fade, witness statements change, you know, in any detective story over a period of time, if if you don't look at it, right, that's why when there's a crime scene, they immediately begin interviewing the witnesses because their memories are fresh. And and and they'll change the go see means right then see what what's happening. Talk to the people who are doing it. And don't just imagine what it is or, or go from your own observations.

Felipe Engineer  43:36  
There's a big movement now about Toyota kata that was made popular by Mike Rother, who wrote in a book with john shook as well called Learning to see value stream mapping, which is a book I'm sure you've read, Dan, I'm sure you've read it. It is good stuff, you know, for people listening like Why should I Why should I write down stuff to do problem solving and a three problem solving is for complex problems that involve more than yourself. So it's not for everything, you don't a three everything?

Dan Fauchier  44:02  
No, it's really great for collaboration on problem solving. It's great for decision making way back at that other IPD project in 2008. With with Greg and others, the design team did a all the cluster groups did a series of a threes on each of the options that they were looking at they had analyzed them and then and then they would summarize their study in the a three and and then pack them together and put an a three on top of it. And you know, in summarize what they were recommending that be use, it's wonderful see a wall of a threes, because all the information in the world that you could want to know about that particular thing is right there.

Felipe Engineer  44:43  
Right there. I've even started seeing some people use a threes to formulate rfis on complex mechanical issues. Recently in design. I've got a handful that I've seen on our company. Yeah, and even one of the Mechanical specialists that we have at said that they were going down a path and the three that they knew the owner didn't want. And when they went through the a three process and collaborated, and everyone was heard, because they, you know, they didn't offer up a single solution, they offer up a series of countermeasures, right? The owner, who was the most reluctant to pick the option that everyone thought was the obvious, saw the light and said, it's clear, and you guys have done the research and you're not married to any one of the solutions? Go ahead. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, we received a change order. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was for added services. So it's okay. 

Dan Fauchier  45:36  
Well, you know, what that's, that's taking the set based design approach to an RFI, that's just really, really smart. Identify the sets, what are the choices for the for the mitigation measure, right, which is kind of like the same thing.

Felipe Engineer  45:49  
It is. And sometimes some of those advanced things, Dan, you know, you do have to just hire a coach or bring somebody in that has some good expertise. I know a company that benefits by having an internal coach quite a bit. But for, you know, other organizations that have to hire some outside help, what kind of return do people get for coaching that they use, at least in the larger, more complex role of designing construction that doesn't use coaching? annually? What, what is the pool for coaching and so many different companies that What do you see in them,

Dan Fauchier  46:18  
I just ran across a study literally a few days ago, that was talking about and this, this was a study, it was a Harvard study of executive coaching, that the ROI was 5.7 to one five times the benefit compared to the cost. Coaching accelerates learning. But if it's really good coaching, it really accelerates learning. Because really good coaches care about the people. They don't just go in, and they're not just the sage on the stage, you know, talking about stuff they don't that's not coaching, that's saging.

Felipe Engineer  46:56  
That's profit.

Dan Fauchier  46:59  
Yeah, whatever. Yeah, right, exactly. Like Old Testament. It but a really good coach really understands the person, but maybe you're going through something today, you know, this may, some may have happened on your way to work, or before you left for work or whatever, whatever. And, and just presuming that you're the robotic mentee, here is not it's not coaching. That's, that's kind of cold and impersonal. Right? So really good coaches, get to know the people and understand them. There's a great deal of emotional intelligence involved in that. And they're vulnerable. They again, I go back to Greg, how Greg was a really great coach, because he's so darn vulnerable. Yeah, the first time I met Greg Allen, and I've written this in, in one of my members remembrances of him. First time I met Greg, in Sacramento, he was in a classroom with about 10 of us. And he was describing for the small group, what lean was really like, and it was like our first entree to it. And he was kind of doing it off the top of his head, which is how Greg worked. And, and so he was, he got to a particular point, and he just stopped. And then he sat down. And then he did this. And if, you know, Greg would run his fingers through his hair. And he said, I'm going to declare a breakdown. I have no idea where to go from here. I have no idea what to tell you next. It was a transformational moment for me, because I had never seen I would never do that. At that point. You know, I would fake it man, I would change the topic or something. I had never seen someone just say, you know what, I'm screwed. I have no idea what to say next. It was so vulnerable. So real. And will lifting was sitting right there. And they'll say, Well, why don't we do this and, and so we got it out. And so he was back up at the, at the board and he was off and running. But that's that kind of vulnerability, that kind of realness of as a human being is really what makes a good coach.

Felipe Engineer  49:08  
I think there's something to that on the ROI for sure. We've seen quite a few companies and there's quite I mean, I don't want to name any consultants names, but there's some big famous household name consultant companies that that talk about those types of returns. And if anybody's I mean, really what you're looking for is it's mentorship, you're getting mentorship and and mentorship always pays off.

Dan Fauchier  49:29  
It does. Yes. And there are plenty of other studies. I just didn't come on with them. I just happen to have been reading that one. But the whole idea of of a connection with someone it there there are some people I can't coach because I can't connect with them. I know not too many. I guess I'm I'm pretty open. I know. You know. Yeah. I mean, they're just they're not available.

Felipe Engineer  49:56  
Yeah, it just they won't open up. You can feel them at a at a Distance like you approach and you can feel them turning away from you. Yeah, I know.

Dan Fauchier  50:06  
Sometimes you can see it in a in someone's body, you know that the pain of being a human being ends up getting stored in the muscles that we use. So before, if you're someone who works outdoors a lot and young tradesmen or something, though it would be stored in the big muscles of your leg or your arms or something. And if you're someone who works in an office it stored in your face, or in your back, I saw, I saw a design consultant one time, early 30s, sweet woman, bless her heart, she was literally hunched over and it wasn't from, you know, physical deformity it was because her muscles were so had storing so much pain, that it you know, she was she could barely move, she was almost immobile, in terms of being able to walk, you know, casually in common. And, and so you're looking when you're when you're working with someone, you're looking for evidences of, you know, that there are other things going on that maybe we should end up talking about, this isn't psychological counseling, just to human beings, being human beings.

Felipe Engineer  51:15  
When I first got into this type of role, then I had quite a few people break down, just when you you're making that connection, and you're just talking about what we want to do with lean, like, like you said in the book, you know, it's about giving the customer what they want, at the right amount, just at the moment they want it. You know, that simple concept about why is respect for people, one of the pillars of the Toyota Production System. And the person and I we're just having a casual conversation about just those principles, because they were commenting on like, you're fanatical about the principles. I was like, Yeah, they enable, they enable everything to happen. Like I could tell you give you a checklist and say, do this, then do this, do this, but you might not ever get it to work with another person, because you don't have that first part. And the person just suddenly, like, just burst into tears. And we were like, in a very public place. And I said, I just said, Come here. And we just, you know, had have had a moment and, and then when I was over, they said, I can't believe I did that. And I said, happens all the time. I was like, if you ever go to the movies with me, you'll just see me. You'll have you'll have to hold my hand. Yeah, exactly. I took my son down to see Disney or Pixar is inside out. And he would come out of the theater and he's like this the last time I'm going to movies with you, dad.

Dan Fauchier  52:41  
When he wants to shake hands now.

Felipe Engineer  52:45  
No, he'll still hold my hand. We walk outside. Okay, across the street every now and then I have to snatch it like kind of quick. Yeah. But it's okay. He's a good. He's a good kid. We all go through that. Yeah. But I think, you know, a lot of people in our industry. And I don't know if this is true about our industry, I've only worked here and just dabbled a little bit in manufacturing. People think sometimes we're just not allowed to be emotional, Dan, I know.

Dan Fauchier  53:09  
I don't. I don't get it. I mean, I I guess I do get it because back in the day, am I project manager day that, you know, you wanted to come off professional, but I think I've always kind of been just a guy, you know, human being. And, and I've understood that, you know, I, in my, my very first career, I was a minister. Did I retire? No, he

Felipe Engineer  53:33  
never told me that.

Dan Fauchier  53:34  
I don't talk about it much.

Felipe Engineer  53:36  
Forensic consultant minister I've had this is not your LinkedIn profile down.

Dan Fauchier  53:42  
It's not gonna be I was in the restaurant business once. Anyway, I've had many careers i was i was in prison. Okay. Bump, bump Bump as a counselor.

Felipe Engineer  53:55  
How's waiting? I

Dan Fauchier  53:56  
said someone in the scrum cask Class A couple of weeks ago. Yeah. I said to someone. So so when I was in prison, my nickname was dance and dance because I was doing this stuff. And, and she, you know what? They were just kind of, it's kind of fun just to watch these drop up. And then as a counselor and administrator Oh, okay. Yeah. But no, as I was a I was a minister. So I kind of started out as the one who listens. Apparently the one who talks a lot too. But confirmed. But But as one who listens and one who cares. And you know, and with a lot of feeling there. So maybe that kind of teed me up for for that for you? I don't know. You just come by it, honestly.

Felipe Engineer  54:44  
Yeah. I just that's just the upbringing I had that. created that it's, it's tough for people to make those connections, especially where we're into this. Let's categorize everything like personality types and strengths finders, and it introverts versus extroverts, you know, red versus blue, all these different things. But you know what? What's interesting about extroverts and introverts and construction aside the fact that almost 99% of superintendents are introverts. That Yeah,

Dan Fauchier  55:16  
I think that being introverted is the great secrets, the big secret in construction. And I say this, as I'm confessing, I'm an introvert, I have I learned at a very young age, very young age, that I needed to appear to be extroverted in order to survive. That was my defense was, was to be glib, and, and you know, and that sort of thing. And my mom, when I was five years old, gave took me to a lady down the road, we were in the farm country, and she gave expression lessons they called it so teach you to get up on stage and do a reciting your side of thing or whatever. So I gained confidence there. But But I learned that you can, you can keep you can stay safe inside your introversion by by being extroverted. But then you have to be careful not to like never feel anything, and or really never Connect. But yeah, we did a study Action Team with several other coaches. And in most of them internal coaches, to companies a couple of years ago and people that you actually know. And we did we read a book about introverts and extroverts as one of our books we were reading, and we all thought we were confessing a secret that we were introverts and everyone in the group was an introvert. Wow. And everyone said to each other, I can't believe that.

Felipe Engineer  56:56  
Yeah, like, most of the heads of businesses are introverts. Yeah, it's a I'm an extrovert, the capital E danzel. Disclaimer, it is our extreme extraversion is we're almost off the scale. It's, it's Oh, wow. Yeah. I was like I tell people all the time. Like, it's, it's to the point where I don't know what I'm thinking until I say it out loud to another human being. And then I find out what I'm thinking at the same time you do. Yeah. And I've had, I've had some introverts send me literature that says that extraversion is a abnormality, and it's a mutation.

Dan Fauchier  57:37  
Based on the statistic you just gave me, that would appear to be potentially true.

Felipe Engineer  57:41  
Yeah. So I don't know the validity of those studies, Dan, because I as an extrovert, they didn't say it out loud to me, so I just throw those away.

Dan Fauchier  57:52  
My daughter's a psychologist, I think she would disagree that it's something abnormal. She that they're introverts and extroverts. Well, I have two grandkids twins, a boy and a girl. And, and one of them's an introvert and one's an extrovert. And the extrovert acts like an introvert and the introvert acts like a director. So I have no idea what's going on.

Felipe Engineer  58:15  
Now that sounds right. You know, since we just admitted that we don't know everything, then let's talk about something else that a lot of people don't know. why don't more people embrace lean from your perspective?

Dan Fauchier  58:28  
Oh, man, Joe, Joe had some great ideas about why people don't embrace lean. And I like his ideas a lot better. So just insert his clip, and we'll

Felipe Engineer  58:37  
just but yeah, we'll put a link to the clip that Dan's talking about Joe gum runo. On the podcast, talking about how to convince a skeptic or how he deals with skeptics about embracing living.

Dan Fauchier  58:49  
It was brilliant. First of all, I think, inertia, in in the universe is a powerful force. Yes. And lean requires that you're not being heard. It requires that you do something requires that you become more that you can prove that you you know, and and inertia is a powerful force. So if you're not someone who, who if you just want to sit, you're probably not going to do much in the world of lean. The other part of it and that for this from the superintendent perspective, is a lot of superintendents I used to be this guy. When I was a manager, we're our firefighters. You know, it's exhilarating to be a firefighter. It's addictive, and it's rewarded. If you can parachute in behind enemy lines and fight a fire and put it out you will be celebrated with floats and parades. promotion is and your future soon. Yeah. Also some human beings, kind of like contractual conflict. They you know, and I'm sorry to say that a lot of my friends who are construction managers are in this camp. You know, people who hire themselves as the agent for the owner, they pound the contract, they looked at the contract, and some people take it to the next level. Now, some contractors do that to none of the people you and I know. And none of the people you and I have ever worked for except one, in my case. And if I told you that company in that person's name, you would you would recognize it immediately say, Yep, that's right. No, but they will look at conflict as the moneymaker. You know, it's the old, the big, the big ship, the big yacht is is called Little, the little dinghy behind the big yacht is called the contract, the big yacht is called change order. Yeah. And, and there are companies that, that kind of do that. So that kind of conflict, I knew, I knew it actually knew a company, when I was in, in claims. That was I was working for the owner at the time, and their contractor, literally waged war, and the initials of the company were W, A, R. And it was it was a person's name. But that was, that was what it spelled and they lived up to it. credible, but waste can be profitable. That's the other part of it. When we start talking about eliminating waste, if you've got a contract that pays you based on the number of people, you have to assemble, in order to execute the contract, why not waste more? Why not be a clerk of the works and and waste a whole bunch of you know, of the owners money? And just keep track of it and tell him Look how bad these people are being? Yeah, so I...

Felipe Engineer  1:01:34  
I know there's, there's a line know, a general contractor that does a lot of work and one of the western states, and when you sign once you sign the contract, the owner signs a contract, they get a letter instantly from their lawyer, and they start the lawyers just finds all the problems in the contract, and they start nickel and dime and the the client even before they do anything. Yeah. And they're still in business today, making a good living.

Dan Fauchier  1:02:00  
Making a very good living. Yeah, flying jets. Yeah, no, I it's, it's a dirty side of the business. I couldn't handle being a claims consultant for very long. Because it just, it just didn't feel right, I could just see all these silly fights over that could have been prevented on a particular day by just talking about it. Right. So but yeah, it's it's, so I think that's another reason that that some people will not do the right thing. And not do lean will not reduce waste, because they get paid for it. They're making money on it. And and that's too bad. But sooner or later that will change. It's changing, you know, we know, well, it is. And the interesting thing to me, which by the way, was also part of the reason we organized the gang of 16 was that when we I did a calculation on lcis, membership, all of the contractors and trade contractors, and architects, when when you if you list all of them, I have the list. And and you do too, but the rest of this in an Excel spreadsheet and put their 2019 gross volume in the US separately separate column in internationally. And then forget about that column because we're just talking to us. And and then employee count. And then in the last cell, the source for your information, which were the big ones is E nr, right, right. If you if you do that work, you will find out that 29% of the gross dollar volume in the US have non single family housing, have everything else is done by LCI contractors. Wow. 29%. So if the people who already know about this already represent 29% of the marketplace, non single family marketplace? Why isn't 29% of all the projects? Why aren't they leave? And the answer is because it hasn't been pulled deeply in through all the organizations. And and so what do we need to do? And that was the question that we posed. The other question we posed to the gang of 16 was what do we do to pull lean deeply into our organizations, so we can hit that 20 because that's the tipping point. That's it packets before that. But you know, if you if you read the book, the tipping point, if you can get it, like if you're there, yeah, then that's where the industry is going. And it will be there. It's just taking longer than we thought. 

Felipe Engineer  1:04:34  
even in that 29%, and you have to get saturation inside each of those member organizations. And since you and I both know the world is fractal. In those, any one of those companies, you don't have 100% saturation, you get a couple of the more influential ones and you got a couple of clients, a couple of clients that are listening out there. You can accelerate this and get more bang for your buck and have a greater experience are all people in volved also included coaches included like Dan to

Dan Fauchier  1:05:04  
let's, let's all Let's all have a better time.

Felipe Engineer  1:05:07  
Yeah,

Dan Fauchier  1:05:09  
yeah, you sleep better at night, you don't work as many hours because you don't work on waste you work on value, and 40 hours is going to do it for you. You don't have to miss your kids soccer game or baseball game on Saturday because you're at the office or on the job site, because you don't have to spend your time wasting your time.

Felipe Engineer  1:05:32  
Right. I've even heard from from clients that work for owners, that they're having meetings on the weekends as well. They're burned out. And there's a lot of big serial clients that are burning out project managers every single day.

Dan Fauchier  1:05:48  
But I mean, that's not respect for people. And there are some companies that expect all of their employees to work 60 hours a week period, I'll pay you for 40 you work 60 right. And I that's because we haven't recognized and cleaned up the waste. You don't need to work 60 hours and you're not as good. I mean any study plus your own life will tell you that that's too many hours and and all the other 40 aren't as good because of the extra one. Yeah,

Felipe Engineer  1:06:20  
that's called diminishing returns. Yeah, that's what happens. Yeah, you want to bring your best self here just like we did for this podcast. Damn. It has been amazing having you on the show. And I cannot believe how fast the time went by land the plane. Let's land the plane. Dan, can you get the last word?

Dan Fauchier  1:06:36  
I'm genuinely honored to be on your podcast, Felipe. It's ever since I started tuning in. I've been a fan. I I hope you cut out all the bad stupid parts.

Felipe Engineer  1:06:52  
Those are the parts I just put the beginning.

Dan Fauchier  1:06:55  
Okay, right to find something that's gem worthy somewhere in there. But if you don't, you can just cancel me and say it was it was a wonderful time to be with you.

Felipe Engineer  1:07:06  
Thank you, Dan. Very special thanks to my guest. I'm Felipe Engineer Manriquez. The EBFC show is created by Felipe and produced by passion to build easier and better. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, everybody. Let's go build!