Saturday, September 30, 2023
Starting the Day: Spending money, but what is the return?
The start of each day is a tremendous opportunity to either succeed or fail. This is determined specifically by the frontline supervisor. Getting started is the key to reaching maximum efficiency for any task.
When crew members come to work, many are not in the frame of mind to begin efficiently working. They are still thinking about being tired, what they did the night before or perhaps a personal issue. Often times they have it in their minds that their supervisor will take the first of the shift to get set up and prepared and then they eventually "work up to really cranking." This assumption is the result of current and past experiences.
Many employees have come to work for a long time and have learned to work within a system that does not utilize proper preplanning. They have grown accustomed to being told what they need to do in the morning and then spending time planning the task, finding material, gathering equipment and then getting questions answered. This is the very cycle we are attempting to change.
If layered management is used correctly, the crew members report to work with an installation plan waiting for them including finding all the material and equipment they need in one place. The material should be organized and marked for easy identification and ultimately in the work area. This will allow the crew the opportunity to begin work quickly and begin producing almost immediately. However, having the installation plan ready and the material pre-staged is not enough.
The crew has developed habits over time and simply having the material ready and the plan in place will not get the crew members to a productive level. The frontline foreman must be with the employees at the start of the shift. The frontline foreman must be familiar with all the details of the installation plan and know exactly where the material and equipment are located. The frontline foremen must then meet with their crew members in the morning and explain the work for the day. Throughout the day, the frontline foremen work with the team getting them started in a productive manner. The beginning of the work shift is not the time for doing paperwork.
A supervisor that allows his crew to start the day without him, is burning man hours but is getting nothing for the investment -- "the wheels are spinning but there is no movement." Superintendents and supervisors must make it clear to all frontline foremen that they are to be with their crews at the beginning of the day, at the beginning and end of breaks and lunch and at the end of the day, at a minimum. Of course, if the superintendents and supervisors are doing their part, the frontline foremen should be able to be with their crew members much more than this.
Here is a thought to ponder: Imagine a job site with 25 workers. If each worker requires 1 hour to reach a point where they are producing efficiently, then we are paying for 25 man-hours per day but not receiving a return for that investment. How much of an increase in productivity would we see if we cut this startup time in half? We must always remember that the purpose of everything we do as Jobsite management is to make the electrician in the field as productive as possible. Another way of saying this is the electrician is our customer. We must meet our customers' needs in order to meet our production requirements. This means we need to make their job as simple and efficient as possible. Having your plan written, the area laid out with markings on walls, etc. and all the material staged in the work area before your crew gets there, will have amazing impacts on your job. Try and see. You will also find that your crew appreciates you much more. You can do this by writing written installation plans, including material, and then having an apprentice stage the material for the task in the area where the work will take place the day before. You can also do this by prefabbing your work. Prefab will do some of the planning for you, prepare detailed installation plans and the material will come to you as assembled units, easier to manage and stage than individual pieces.
Safety and efficiency work together, not against each other.
We can all be a little frustrated with the balance of safety and efficiency. We all recognize that everything we do in the construction industry is schedule-driven and budget-driven. We also need to keep everyone safe. How do we balance all of these things? We have to change the way we think. We tend to use a paradigm that applies safety rules and requirements causes us to be inefficient. That is not true. Safety and keeping everyone healthy make us all more efficient. Here is an example, every time we go up and down a ladder we risk, slipping, falling, twisting an ankle, or something else. Each trip up a ladder we can avoid reduces risk and makes us safer. However, we often create extra work and extra trips up those ladders because we don't plan ahead and think about what we are doing. Each time you go up a ladder to make up a junction box, make sure you take a box cover and a label with you. Never make up the box and leave the cover off. Someone, maybe you, maybe someone else, will have to go back up that ladder and put that cover on if you didn't do it while you were there making up the box. We also take a risk every time we walk across a construction site. We have to be aware of hazards all the time, they are all around us. Knowing this, we often cause more walking across sites and risk. How? Every time we have to go get material. The supervisor should be providing you with a full list of all the material you need to perform your task, and they should have the material staged in your work area before you ever arrive to do the work. If they do not, talk to them about that and ask why. Here is something we can all do to prevent extra trips......anytime you take a cover off a box or panel, immediately put the screws back in the screw holes. Doing this ensures you know where the screws are when you need them and eliminates hours of people walking around looking for them. Also, for junction boxes, don't remove the covers and store them. Take them off, and replace them with two screws so that the box can be accessed but the cover is there. You will also eliminate looking for and replacing covers. There are many ways to be efficient and safe. They work hand in hand.
It is all up to us as leaders. We can either push a job through with sheer force of will and leave a lot of money on the table and take a lot of risks, or we can think things through, get prefab involved everywhere we can imagine, preplan and write written installation plans, and stage material so that our crews can be efficient, and we can be even more successful.
Thank you,
Ted "Smitty" Smith
Director of Education and Loss Prevention
E Light Electric Services, Inc
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