Lean Construction

       A jinx can be broken……as I have learned through out my child age while reading the Fairy Tales. But in real world, I found it quite tough to break or disrupt any activity which runs in a loop. I would like to explain my own words as I am also not able to comprehend the thing I have said. I just attended a seminar on LEAN CONSTRUCTION….a very touchy issue with the Civil Engineering (though it’s used more for other industries). Lean Construction as they said “is a philosophy which is obviously not an option”.

       To start with Lean Construction I would like to explain its meaning as I have learned as it’s something like that you are using your geezer in such a way that the last drop of water coming out of it is hot and for this you need not to waste any extra electricity. So now you must have got some idea about how difficult it can be to follow it. Through out the seminar I could listen only to three words- VALUE, MINDSET & WASTE        . Value is a very difficult word to explain and somewhere having a very deep meaning. So I would like to go with the other two biggies- Mindset and Waste. These two things can be interrelated with each other and I think that is the best way to do some justice to these biggies. A thing I will call it WASTE if it is of no use for me or for my MINDSET.

 So I have the veto to decide? 

       Recently I came to Mumbai for my 1st job in prestigious Real Estate Company. I confronted the most talked about issue in Rising India- the boom in infrastructure and housing. These things as they appear are bigger than my amateur thoughts. But I could easily figure out the contrast that I have never seen nor expected in my small town- the multi-storied buildings, the new face of urban India. Here I could find the so called basic amenities as well as the modern luxuries. But I still found some void that cannot be filled. Later I confessed that you can’t have everything you want and compromise is the best way to avoid it. Sorry I forgot to tell the story that made me realize this fact, it all started with the first cricket game I played here. We didn’t have playground so compromised with the landscape area of our society. For first time in my life I have seen a landscape which is 20 meter above the existing ground level and this is our playground. Though we played there for two weeks, once I asked my colleague whether there are trees at the landscape level or not and I saw his eyes filled with doubts. Then he honestly told me that he had not seen any. Next day when we inspected and we found that yes the landscape has some trees too no matter that they are there just for showoff. It instantly reminded me with the fact that why can’t we see the earth’s rotation!

      So for the sake of the ball we restricted ourselves from playing any big shots. It saved our ball from going out of boundary. And from the very next game we got accustomed to these things. We need not require any playground around our society as we can play our sports even at this landscape with little compromise. This may not be the case in my small town as we need the playground at any cost no matter how many teams may be sharing the field but we need playground.

     So if I ask to any builder to provide me with a playground or at least a landscape level at ground level so that I can free my hands playing some big shots, he will say that it would be waste of both money and time. Since it has become the mindset of the people that a landscape can come always at a certain height from ground level (as car parking is more important issue). So the builder doesn’t bother to give it a thought. In his view it is a waste. Here comes the relation between MINDSET & WASTE. A waste is decided by our own mindset and our mindset changes with the things that usually occur around us as with the earth everything rotates and we can’t figure out that the earth is rotating.

    Let us come back to the LEAN Construction which says that there should be happiness quotient for the people while saving the time and cost in a project. So in order to save the cost and time we sacrifice the happiness quotient and the builder is not the sole responsible for this. They supply as per the demands. Our mindset says that there is no need of landscape at ground level so why should a builder go for it. Later we succumb to our own. Our MINDSET altered a necessity into a waste with some compromise.

      This is the thing that usually happens in a profession. Our MINDSET changes the VALUE and it even decide what should be called as a WASTE. Coming to my very first line that VALUE, MINDSET & WASTE go in a loop; one changes the other and so does the other change another. And it is tough to disrupt a loop as it is hard to change the mind set of the people. So scope of lean construction gets even leaner. But there is a scope I admit that as shrinking mindset will blast one day as it happens in case of a dying star- either a Supernova or a Black hole.