Plans for 2010

Thursday, 31 December 2009

Hi

Happy New Year

Back in November British Airways offered me the opportunity to pitch for an "opportunity grant" -- I botched the pitch but the grant application process got me thinking. Here are two of the answers I failed to submit:

  • describe what your business does
  • Tell us about your company's specific goals and objectives in 2010

Describe what your business does

The Change Business Ltd (TCB) is a lean construction consultancy helping design & construction organisations and their customers use lean thinking to deliver more value for customers, clients and end-users more safely, faster, cheaper, with higher quality and with less impact on the environment than is possible with conventional construction methods.

Construction is primarily a social process and we work with construction teams and those that manage them to create a climate and a culture that is conducive to a healthy socio-technical system within which the work can be done.

We use lean and systems thinking to improve the way projects are delivered, the way design and construction organisations are managed and the way the whole industry is operated. [BAA used aspects of lean thinking on the construction of T5]

Lean construction is an adaption of ideas developed in Toyota to the requirements of project-based production relevant to design, construction, ship building and ship repair, software development and the like.

Tell us about your company's specific goals and objectives in 2010

By the end of 2010 we want to have:

  • had fun and made a difference here in UK and in the world
  • completed a book "Lean Construction: people and production" for Wiley (with Prof Tariq Abdelhamid at Michigan State U in the US) aimed at reflective practitioners and graduate students.
  • two more major clients
  • launched an international action-learning program in lean construction aimed at middle and senior managers in clients, design & construction enterprises with a faculty team from around the world (this programme will draw on some of the experience that contributed to BA's Graduate Induction by Self Managed Learning programme in the 1980s).
  • explained the benefits of lean construction to state government minsters & civil servants in an African country with a view to supporting local and national development
  • launched a research project with Loughborough University and a range of other research institutes across the EU looking at Who makes money out of the process waste in construction?
  • run another successful Conversations with lean constructorsTM Study Tour to the US
    influenced at least one government to rethink design-bid-build procurement requirements so that they can get more value from their construction budgets and to be helping them put the ideas into practice in their country
  • attended one or more of the Training within Industry Summit or TWI courses in the US, the 18th International Group for Lean Construction meeting in Haifa and the Lean Construction Institute 12th Annual Congress in the US so that we can keep up with the latest thinking in our field
  • two additional members of staff to enable us to address a wider range of issues and to service more clients
  • supported the formation of at least one new national Lean Construction Institute affiliate

I wrote the above in late November and early December and I put his out there now in the belief that someone reading this may be able to help create some part of the dream I have outlined above.

What fascinates me is that already things are starting to happen:

in the three days around the winter solstice I received more enquiries about new work than in the preceding three months

Who knows what 2010 will bring. You now know what I'd like it to bring.

What do you wish for? What do you want to have completed by the end of 2010?

Whatever it is, this comes with best wishes for you

Alan