This month, we offer a smorgasbord of project controls topics. There has been a recent resurgence among construction publications about lean construction. Concepted by the International Group for Lean Construction in 1993, the theory champions efforts to improve construction processes by adding value, meeting customer needs and lowering costs. More precisely put, it is a "way to design production systems to minimize waste of materials, time, and effort in order to generate the maximum possible amount of value."1 Larry True argues that the concept is not new, but has been business as usual for the companies he has worked with over the past 20 years.
John Jurewicz and Northwestern master's student Thomas Sheehan offer an in-the-trenches perspective on Building Information Modeling. Although BIM has the potential to save time and money, if the trades don't know how to model properly, those savings will be eaten up by errors, say Jurewicz and Sheehan. In this month's BIM column, they address the problems that can occur when tolerances are not adequately factored into a model.
How well do you know your project's risks? Doug Findley provides a visual guide for implementing a risk provisioning process for any project, as well as steps to evaluate and mitigate it, if necessary.
And finally, Gordon Aronson has noticed a decline in the use of true CPM scheduling. Is the practice dead? He hopes not. His article lauds the effectiveness of critical path scheduling and issues a call for more CPM training.
1. Koskela, L., Howell, G., Ballard, G., and Tommelein, I. (2002). "The Foundations of Lean Construction." Design and Construction: Building in Value, R. Best, and G. de Valence, eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, Elsevier, Oxford, UK.
