Leaning into Lean Delivery

Tammy McConaughy is part of CRB’s inaugural Fellowship class. In her role as Fellow – Lean Delivery, Tammy leads the implementation of lean principles into project processes to improve project delivery and deliver more value to customers. In the article below, Tammy shares her career journey and how her passion for lean delivery has grown. You can read more on lean delivery in her Insights blog “The definitive guide to lean for design and construction teams.”

Finding a Career in Construction… Accidentally

I kind of fell into construction by accident. In the early 2000’s, I was working at GE Modspace when it was bought out and I was going to be transferred. I didn’t want to move my family, so I found myself without a job and five months pregnant with my third child, not necessarily a comfortable place to be for a working female.

After Jessica Joy was born, I found myself working for a mechanical contractor. I started as a receptionist and was quickly promoted to a Project Coordinator for their Energy & Retrofit division, and before I knew it, I took on the Tenant Improvement & Special projects and Plumbing departments. That role was where I fell in love with construction. I had great leadership that encouraged me to learn, ask lots of questions and be a part of projects.

I remember being on the rooftop of a very tall building in downtown San Diego, swapping out the cooling tower for a more energy efficient one. I was in the trench helping to rig up the old cooling tower for the helicopter to lift out and to tighten bolts when the new one was lowered in. Being a part of those hands-on experiences reframed the way I look at buildings. I left a mark, and I had a handprint on the pulse of that building, a building that will be standing for many years to come.

I started to explore how I could apply lean within the organization, so I obtained my Six Sigma black belt. My qualifying project was on a warranty process that saved the company $120k a year on labor plus material. They were sold and let me learn and apply that knowledge as I wanted with regards to lean and Six Sigma.  

The reviewing committee of my black belt project commented, “You were able to show competency in the Six Sigma tools and methods. Your project shows a richer understanding of lean methods.” This prompted me to see how I could further implement lean in the construction industry. I got involved with the Lean Construction Institute, San Diego Community of Practice, and helped to stand up their first industry day.

Through this experience, I found myself wanting to make lean my full-time role. I found that role on the streets of Fortaleza, Brazil, where I met my former mentor and boss. We were both there for a Lean Delivery conference where I was presenting on an industry white paper. Six months later, I was working as a Lean Specialist for JE Dunn Construction. This would start an eight-year journey that led me to CRB. You never know where your next opportunity will come from, so when a CRB recruiter reached out to me, I figured it would not hurt to have a conversation. I am sure you can guess what happened from there.

When Lean Aligns with Personal Values

It is funny; everyone thinks my passion is lean delivery, and in a way, it is. More accurately, lean delivery aligns with my values and my passions as an individual.

My personal values of:

• Continuous learning & improvement – I am a hoarder of information. I love reading self help and self-improvement books.
• Grace for myself and others – I allow the space to be authentic, to make mistakes and to learn from the journey we are all on.

These along with my passion for coaching and mentoring others to be the best versions of themselves align very well with lean delivery.

Lean delivery is the avenue to pull together that love for the built world, my passions for coaching and mentoring others and my fascination with figuring out why we do the things we do. I get to ask questions like:

• Why do we design a certain way and how does that affect the overall process?
• What is frustrating about the way we design?
• If you could improve it, how would you? Why don’t you?

I also get energized talking to people about lean delivery. I am leading two lean champions cohorts that are comprised of 12 CRBers learning about the principles and mindsets of lean delivery and not the tools. We must think differently about the way we do work before we apply the tools. That thinking can be as simple as asking why we do it this way.

Why Lean is Critical for Business Success

Lean delivery can be done on any project no matter the size, contract, design or construction. Lean delivery is about engaging the team to deliver the best value. I know we already do that at CRB, and we do a great job. We could utilize a lean delivery approach and work on improving our team collaboration, or maybe we need to improve our collaborative planning that would allow us to create an even better result. Lean is hard. It is not easy. And it is not a silver bullet that will solve everything. 

Ryan Schroeder, CRB's President, frequently talks about our company being a learning organization. At its simplest, lean delivery is applying our key learnings to our core business and project execution to increase value to the customer. There is always room to improve, and lean delivery gives us the framework to be consistently improving and increasing the value we are delivering our customers. Remember our customers are internal and external. We are delivering value internally as much as we are externally.

It all starts with me (and you). What can I do today to be one percent better? How can I continuously strive for improvement? One way to do this is to start with a plus/delta at the end of the meeting or the end of your day.

• Plus – what worked well or brought value?
• Delta – What did not work as planned or can be done differently?

From this exercise, make an improvement and see what happens.

Read more on lean delivery from Tammy on CRB’s Insights blog.