Foreman's Daily Huddle.

Who's calling the plays?

Have you ever heard your field managers say, "Things change too fast around here to plan" or "As soon as we plan, the owner or contractor changes something and our plan becomes useless?" It may have been reinforced by a project manager who stated, "We don't have time to conduct pre-job planning on this job, the owner wants us out there today." Many people in the construction business really believe that you cannot plan in an environment with so many quickly-changing variables. Can planning work in this kind of setting? The answer is yes!

To find real-life examples of where planning can and does work in extremely unstable environments, look at the strategies used by football teams. In the NFL, teams watch game films, practice and plan for the opposition all week in preparation for a three-hour game on Sunday. Using logic from above, players might try to argue that they have no control over the plays that the other team runs, the crowd noise, the weather or injuries. Therefore, planning is useless if things happen differently than what we anticipate.

One could also rationalize that it doesn't matter what play we call or what we do in the huddle because if they blitz us unexpectedly, the plan was a failure and a waste of time. Why then do teams huddle before every play, and why do teams call time-outs during the most critical parts of the game? The answer is simple. They take this time to plan!

While it is true that many variables on a construction project cannot be controlled, there are as many that can be controlled, or at least heavily influenced through effective planning. For field managers to truly embrace the concept of planning, they must first realize that a plan is not perfect. Does every play called in the huddle produce a first down or a touchdown? Absolutely not! Therefore, it is safe to say that many of the plans in the field will not produce the anticipated results. That's why it's critical for the team to huddle again before the next play as new information is identified regarding the variables.

Planning will only be effective if it is done on a consistent and systematic basis. This is why you may hear comments like: "We tried planning on this job once, but it didn't work." Remember, teams still continue to huddle whether they are losing or have a commanding lead.

In comparing the "real world" to the football example, a correlation can easily be made between the week of planning before the game and the pre-job planning that should take place before our construction team ever hits the field. Should we expect our quarterback or field manager to perform well if we send him into the game with absolutely no preparation or preplanning? However, superintendents and foremen are handed sets of incomplete plans and given directions to jobs that were supposed to be started yesterday, with little or no insight into the jobs other than what they find when they get there. In addition, the planning must continue throughout the game, as the opposition changes strategy, key players get injured, and your initial plans fail to produce the desired results. This ongoing planning must be done during brief huddles, half time, and time outs called at critical stages throughout the game.

One simple planning tool that you may want to consider is the Foreman's Daily Huddle (FDH). This process allows the team to look at job variables daily and make plans with the best information available at that time.

What is a Foreman's Daily Huddle?

FDH is a formal planning process used by the best foremen in the industry. The FDH requires the foreman to take three to five minutes before starting work each day to meet with his crew to create a plan for the day, communicate the plan, and solicit ideas from the crew to improve quality, productivity and safety on the job. The basic philosophy behind FDH is that the team, not just the foreman, should be involved in establishing the plan and goals for the day. In addition, FDH also involves all crew members in identifying and implementing improvements in quality, productivity and safety.

Why does FDH work?

When the plan and goals for the crew are established only by the foreman, the crew has very little "buy in" for the plan. Therefore, if the plan fails or the goals are not achieved, the crew did not fail, the foreman did. After all, it was his plan, not theirs! The reasons that FDH works include:

* Teams will always do a better job of identifying and solving problems than any one individual. Relying totally on the foreman to see and plan everything on the job will cause you to miss opportunities for improvement seen by others on the crew. Four sets of eyes are always better than one!

* If crew members have no input into developing the plan and establishing the daily goals, they will have very little accountability in carrying out the plan or achieving the goals.

* Everyone wants to be a winner and contribute to a winning team. No one wakes up in the morning with the intention of going to work to fail. Contrary to what many people believe, money is not the most powerful motivator. Several researchers have conclusive evidence that having the opportunity to be involved and feel like part of the team is a very strong motivator. Everyone wants to feel like their ideas matter.

* FDH makes everyone on the crew responsible for looking for opportunities for improvement in the areas of quality, productivity and safety, a responsibility traditionally held only by the foreman.

* It teaches people to think! In the traditional construction environment, the foreman "tells" the crew what they are going to do, how much they are going to do, and what resources they are going to use to do it. This type of one-way communication never teaches crew members to think on their own. Therefore, very few new "thinkers" are developed, and the crew has trouble functioning in the absence of the foreman.

How does FDH work?

The foreman calls the entire crew together for three to five minutes every morning to get input for developing the plan for the day. In order to get this input, the foreman asks several questions to get the crew involved in the planning process. The questions should include the following:

* What does the crew see that would allow us to be more productive on this job?

* Based on what we will be working on today, how much should we target to get produced? (This should result in specific and measurable quantities, not a response of "as much as we can by quitting time.")

* Does anyone see anything that concerns them relative to quality or safety that we should change or correct?

After collecting this input, the foreman and crew should agree to the production target and any actions that need to be taken relative to improving quality, productivity and safety. The foreman should then write this plan down in a daily log or pad. At the end of the day or the next morning, the foreman and crew should evaluate how they did compared to the plan and then review the plan to ensure all action items were addressed.

Remember, the production targets will not be achieved every day. If the targets are challenging, yet attainable, your crew will probably produce better than the plan 50% of the time. If the plan is being achieved more often than this, your production targets may not be challenging enough. If the production targets are not being hit more than half of the time, your goals may be too unrealistic.

By implementing a simple planning system that includes pre-job planning and FDH, you will begin to see a simple but predictable result - the more planning you do, the luckier and more productive you get. As the saying goes, "you only play as good as you prepare." Your team can be a consistent winner if you develop a planning system that requires people to plan both before and during the game. Now get out there and play!