Do You Work Around Inconveniences On Your Construction Projects?

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​A few months back my wife was away for a couple of weeks visiting her mother. I had a few maintenance items to sort out around the house and needed tools and various items from the tool cupboard in the garage. Unfortunately, my wife had left her car parked too close to the cupboard so I couldn’t open the cupboard doors properly. It wasn’t easy getting to the tools and other items I needed in the cupboard, so I had to be careful that the cupboard doors didn’t bash her car and scratch it. Since I had a few things to fix I was in and out the cupboard several times over a couple of days. Now, of course, the easy thing would have been to re park the car further from the cupboard. This would have made access to the cupboard easier and there was less chance of damaging the car. Indeed, the couple of minutes it would have taken to re park the car would have been less time than I lost working around the awkward access to get the tools I needed.
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You might laugh at my stupidity, but I’m sure that everyone has had a similar situation. We’ve all put off fixing the light that’s not working or repairing the door handle that’s falling off, or fixing a sticking door or jamming window – even when these repair jobs would probably only take a few minutes, maybe ten minutes at max. Instead, we live with the problem for days, weeks and even months. Where the problem is irritating us daily, possibly costing us a minute every time we have to fumble in the darkness or wrestle with the sticky door, where we have to slam the door to get it closed, which eventually starts cracking the door frame and damaging the paintwork. Often the cost of the repair and the time to fix the damage caused by not fixing the item straight away becomes far larger – making it even less likely that we’re going to fix it soon! What are we waiting for, all the lights to blow and the house to fall down?

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Are there obstructions on your construction project?

​Of course, it’s the same on many of our construction projects. Construction material is stacked in walkways and rubbish is allowed to accumulate where people work. Everyone has to step around and over the mess. There could be several workers walking the route every day and they all lose a few seconds, even a minute, working around the problem. Then there’s the safety risk, somebody could trip and fall. There’s also a chance that the stacked construction material could topple or fall over and be damaged. Yet, it’s too much trouble to tidy the area. But the ten to twenty minutes that it would take one worker to tidy the walkway and work area is far less time than is lost over a week by all the people having to negotiate the obstacles.

If you look around on your construction projects this analogy is repeated several times over. Indeed many could start with their desk, office, and filing systems. A good sort out and tidy up might take a Saturday morning, but it will save you countless lost minutes every day searching for misplaced documents and missing papers. But, there’s more than just the time lost, there’s also the risk that an important item will be missed or overlooked in the chaos.

Then if you look at our project stores and construction material storage areas I wonder what you will encounter? Are they tidy and well planned, where construction tools and materials aren’t being damaged and can easily be found? Or, are things just dumped in an untidy heap? Is anybody interested in tidying things?

But, it doesn’t stop there! How are the crews working? Do they have the right construction equipment, or are they making do with equipment that’s not quite right for the job? Maybe battling with tools which are blunt or under-powered? How much time and money is that costing? There’s also the risk that the equipment is damaged, or worse, that there’s an accident. Isn’t it better to rather have the right piece of equipment, and sharpen blunt items or replace them with new sharper blades? It might take a few minutes to organise and cost extra money, but, this will almost certainly be less than the time and money saved by using the right item.
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Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to work around a problem, rather than fixing it correctly. Often when we do try and fix it we do half a job, a patch job, just to get things moving again. We always make the excuse that we’re too busy and don’t have the time. Is it just because we are lazy? Maybe it’s because we like to tell ourselves that we’re busy? Yet, common-sense (which doesn’t always seem to be that common) should tell us that living with the problem and inconvenience costs far more time and money than fixing the problem would. That, anyway, fixing the problem often doesn’t take that long. But, furthermore fixing the issue now, will remove an inconvenience, it will improve safety and it will often prevent an item being further damaged. Undoubtedly it will improve productivity!

Improving your construction project?

Get out onto your projects and see what the irritations are. Where are the stumbling blocks? How can productivity be improved? 
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​This article was first published on the ClockShark website. To visit this website and continue reading the article click on the link above.
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