There are many barriers, and obviously the first thing is that you have to understand that there's an alternative to the way we are currently practicing project management. You have to be willing to question and be willing to see that there may be other opportunities to pursue, that may be better. That requires a level of self reflection that not everybody's willing to engage in, or that people are not encouraged to do often times. We are told to do what our boss tells us to do, and not question what our boss tells us. And in lean, it's just the opposite. because that's what we try to encourage people to be identifying problems and to be problem solvers, and celebrate mistakes, and celebrate breakdowns, and learn and establish a system of continuous improvement. But, not everybody in current practice likes to be critiqued and likes to see changes happen. So that's a huge benefit. >> So lean is based on another mindset in cooperation to traditional management. We still struggle to explain all what is there in Lean However, these barriers can be overcome and there is a definite penetration of lean in project management in construction management. And along with accumulated experienced that the diffusion rate will be increased. >> The first answer could be, It's changing the way people think and do their culture, do their work, or the culture problem. Sometimes it seems like it's the motivation problem. So why should I change? I've been doing this my entire career. I'm an expert at what I do. But I think if we step back from that, the bigger issue is that we, all of us, have come into our profession and practice it in where I would call the cost world. So buildings are unfortunately seen as cost, it's rather expensive things that need to be built, to preserve some purpose, and so there are design people over here. Architects and engineers, who have that function, and then there's the builders, the general contractors, the specialty contractors, the CMs who must control the cost and the time. And so that's takes us away from the real focus on value. We don't actually learn how to focus on value, we learn how to focus on cost. And schedule. Which are important. I'm not saying they're not, they're critical for us. But unless we understand the value that we're creating and work with our customers in whatever delivery method that they are willing to work in, and we focus on what is the value, what are you going to do with this building? What are your dreams for this building? And all those questions unless, we are willing to step up and do that, then we stay focused on cost and schedule and we tend to use the non lean tools, tools that are just not based on creating a flow of value, I think that that's actually the biggest barrier. We have to shift our thinking. [FOREIGN]. >> My view is that lean is fundamentally cultured. In fact there is some, there is really interesting tension here. That I think that lean is It's a social democratic movement in an industry that is driven by capital. >> Mm-hm. >> And so there's a clash of two cultures here. And I think that the clients represent capital, the big contractors represent capital. And what we're trying to do with the lean movement is to make a social democratic change here which is much more inclusive, which is more trusting. I think the other thing is that the clients, both private and public, have over the years, they have become more and more risk averse. And we're trying to turn the trend here. So we're saying to clients, we need you to sit in the room with us to talk about risk and opportunity on a weekly basis. Don't just ask us for a fixed price and push everything onto us, because all we'll do is just keep adding in for risk and everybody adds in for risk. One of the reasons why construction is has a lot of potential for more innovation and efficiency is to deal with the risks in these large complex projects in a much more realistic way, where the client is sitting in the room and getting to understand what the real risks are and how to best manage those risks. Now what's happened some how we've had a trend over the last maybe 30 to 40 years were basically all that risk has been pushed down. Almost to a level were can't be managed. And it's just been completely unrealistic. So now we're realizing that to manage that risk properly, rather than just pushing down risk and saying I want a fixed price, what we need is to engage everybody to talk about the risk, to understand what the possible solutions are and come to up with solutions that best manage that. For that we need the client in the room and that requires trust, and that's the challenge. >> The first thing we recognize is that the construction industry is a very conservative industry. In that the spread of ideas is not very quick. It's unlike perhaps the medical area where people are reading research papers, where people are keeping up to date all the time the latest developments. In construction, the vast majority of engineers, perhaps, but certainly foremen and other supervisors, the package of knowledge that they go to work with and they essentially work with for the rest of their lives, it's the formative years when they may have been in a bachelor's degree in construction, or civil engineering or construction. But then, more importantly, the first 3 or 4 years of their life on the construction site, very much form their attitudes and their approach. And all of those, over time, have been attitudes that include conflict that are very risk averse, both commercially, and structurally, and attitudes that require discipline. And lean construction requires a great deal more collaboration, and it does require a lot more thinking about flow and about concepts that are a little more abstract and less concrete. And so the anticipation of lean construction throughout the industry is dependent, not only on learning and so on, in special courses which are very difficult, but it's to a large extent, dependent on educational institutions, universities, teaching courses, perhaps just like this one, and then those people going out into the street, they're reinforced by being exposed to the lean practices in their company, which slow to spread. And then perhaps later in life, when they reach positions of higher authority, be able yo suggest, dictate to an extent, that those should be the standard practices and not the old traditional conflicting practices.
