Batson-Cook 'Leans' Into a Future Building Plan
Hammered by the Great Recession, many contractors across the Southeast, and nationwide, have become "lean and mean," paring down staff and other assets to succeed in today's new construction economy. But one contractor, Batson-Cook Construction, is getting lean and not-so mean, by utilizing lean construction methods to build nearly a dozen prototypical high-rise apartment projects across the Southeast and Texas.
In 2011, the contractor, along with its development arm, Batson-Cook Development Co., competed for and won the assignment to build a series of towers for Atlanta-based Novare Group. To meet the developer's delivery schedule demands of 12 to 14 months per project, Batson-Cook pitched using lean construction methods to erect the multifamily towers, usually 23 or 24 stories tall. Together, the 11 SkyHouse projects have a collective value of more than $650 million.
The resulting construction program is an unusual case study in the implementation of lean, the production management-based project delivery system that emphasizes continuous improvement and efficiency. By building this big batch of significantly similar structures in succession, the contractor is living out the method's tenets of lessons learned.
The firm's jump into lean was born of near necessity.
"We were like most construction companies," recalls Randy Hall, president and CEO. "We had 'leaned' up to the point where growth was another set of problems to solve. We had dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2011 … and we were having to rebuild our company."
Currently, the contractor is in the midst of building six SkyHouse projects in Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Tampa, Dallas and Houston.
Two projects that recently topped out—the $72.4-million, 26-story SkyHouse Buckhead, in Atlanta, and the $56.3-million, 23-story SkyHouse Raleigh—are the latest lean case studies. The structures feature exteriors of precast concrete and stucco for the first two floors, with a window-wall system going up the building from there.
Trial and Error
Curt Rigney, a senior vice president with Batson-Cook, says the lean approach has altered the company's processes and mind-sets.
"It's a different way of thinking for us and a lot of the subcontractors," he says. "The subcontractor community is used to being dictated to as far as what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. With lean, we're bringing them into the fold and saying, 'How can you get us there?'"
More specifically, a subcontractor-led planning process, called "pull planning," creates the construction plan and schedule. Getting introduced to this step can jar some, as it did James Rivers, a superintendent with Wayne J. Griffin Electric, who first encountered lean on SkyHouse Raleigh.
"I was nervous when I [first] saw the schedule," he says. From the first planning session, though, it started to click.
"You see the whole workflow happening," he says. "You start at the end and work back toward the beginning, which is the opposite of what we usually do. And you see how everybody's tied together."
Each project's construction plan follows a now regimented time line: a three-day-per-floor cycle to erect the concrete structure, then four-day cycles for both interior rough-ins and finishes. The teams have since honed their processes to live up to that schedule, but it didn't work out that way from the start, says Tom Thrasher, a project executive on the Buckhead job, his sixth SkyHouse.
Early on, "we found that when we got to the top of the tower, we lost that cycle duration," he says. As a result, the three-day structure cycle ballooned to 10 days, and the four-day finish cycle slipped to 16 in places.
"Our productivity dropped off so much that we feel that we could've [completed construction] six to eight weeks sooner" if that first project team could've kept to the original schedule, he adds.
The culprit: Because contractors weren't completely finishing their tasks in each segment, at a later point crews were getting spread out for extensive go-back work.
Since then, Batson-Cook has worked with its subcontractors—or "trade partners," in lean parlance—to tighten down the floor-by-floor work schedule.
"We've started to implement BIM 360 and a lot of checklists to make sure we've finished all of the work on the floors as we go up, keeping the tower short, so to speak," Thrasher says.
Another key has been to further break down trade work into even smaller batches, says Tom Underwood, project executive in Raleigh.
"Each trade is in a four-day cycle to get a handful of activities done," he says, with an emphasis on repeating tasks daily.
With typically 16 units per floor, the idea is for each trade to complete its work on four units per day. Because the overall rough-in sequence is 35 days, and the finishes cycle is 50, a single trade may have multiple four-day activities.
"By doing the small batches, it helps you stay tight and develop a flow," says Rivers with Wayne J. Griffin.
Also, contractors have trimmed schedule by literally implementing the lean concept of eliminating waste. With minimal or no laydown areas at the sites, the plan is for materials to be delivered directly to the structure and installed nearly immediately. Loading the building with pallets of materials is not allowed.
Hammered by the Great Recession, many contractors across the Southeast, and nationwide, have become "lean and mean," paring down staff and other assets to succeed in today's new construction economy. But one contractor, Batson-Cook Construction, is getting lean and not-so mean, by utilizing lean construction methods to build nearly a dozen prototypical high-rise apartment projects across the Southeast and Texas.
In 2011, the contractor, along with its development arm, Batson-Cook Development Co., competed for and won the assignment to build a series of towers for Atlanta-based Novare Group. To meet the developer's delivery schedule demands of 12 to 14 months per project, Batson-Cook pitched using lean construction methods to erect the multifamily towers, usually 23 or 24 stories tall. Together, the 11 SkyHouse projects have a collective value of more than $650 million.
The resulting construction program is an unusual case study in the implementation of lean, the production management-based project delivery system that emphasizes continuous improvement and efficiency. By building this big batch of significantly similar structures in succession, the contractor is living out the method's tenets of lessons learned.
The firm's jump into lean was born of near necessity.
"We were like most construction companies," recalls Randy Hall, president and CEO. "We had 'leaned' up to the point where growth was another set of problems to solve. We had dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2011 … and we were having to rebuild our company."
Currently, the contractor is in the midst of building six SkyHouse projects in Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Tampa, Dallas and Houston.
Two projects that recently topped out—the $72.4-million, 26-story SkyHouse Buckhead, in Atlanta, and the $56.3-million, 23-story SkyHouse Raleigh—are the latest lean case studies. The structures feature exteriors of precast concrete and stucco for the first two floors, with a window-wall system going up the building from there.
Trial and Error
Curt Rigney, a senior vice president with Batson-Cook, says the lean approach has altered the company's processes and mind-sets.
"It's a different way of thinking for us and a lot of the subcontractors," he says. "The subcontractor community is used to being dictated to as far as what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. With lean, we're bringing them into the fold and saying, 'How can you get us there?'"
More specifically, a subcontractor-led planning process, called "pull planning," creates the construction plan and schedule. Getting introduced to this step can jar some, as it did James Rivers, a superintendent with Wayne J. Griffin Electric, who first encountered lean on SkyHouse Raleigh.
"I was nervous when I [first] saw the schedule," he says. From the first planning session, though, it started to click.
"Materials come off the truck and get installed," says Mike Waddell, Buckhead project manager. "It's easier to deal with."
Some contractors are further eliminating waste by pre-assembling some components. On the Raleigh job, for example, the electrical contractor pre-manufactured panels and box assemblies.
The Buckhead and Raleigh SkyHouses are on similar schedules, with the North Carolina contract heading for a January completion, and the Atlanta job wrapping up in February. Both are tracking slightly ahead of their original schedules.
Looking Ahead
The SkyHouse program has proven a nearly ideal education in lean, says Batson-Cook's Thrasher, the Buckhead project executive.
"It's the perfect example of how lean can work, because it's a repeat building over and over," he says, adding: "If you don't learn from your mistakes, you're not practicing lean."
Thrasher, who calls the lean experiment a "game-changer," says he plans to implement some of the processes on other projects. "You definitely can see how it would help out a job and improve coordination."
Meanwhile, Hall, the Batson-Cook CEO and president, thinks lean represents the future for his firm.
"Lean is a cultural shift," he says. "To change a company's mind-set takes time; I don't see us going back."
