Tools for the trade

A man of stone would feel the nerves tingle. But men of stone seldom make the grade as m&e contractors. And, chilling though it may seem at first glance, everybody needs some kind of benchmarking to assess how they measure up in their place of work.

It’s over a year ago since the BRE’s Centre for Performance Improvement in Construction launched Calibre, “a simple but effective tool that enables site progress to be clearly mapped and understood”. Its raison d’etre is to provide a simple method for mapping the construction process and coding every activity on-site. It is no shrinking violet, claiming to monitor and control activities, identify and eliminate waste, even to improve teamwork.

The BRE declares: “Calibre enables you to set target benchmarks and get real-time feedback on the performance of individual phases of the programme, individual tasks and suppliers.” Central to its development is its claim to “study the whole site process rather than individual tasks in isolation”.

But does it work? Len Beale, business development manager at IEI Building Services Engineers, part of the Kier Group, thinks so. Calibre was put to the test to measure the m&e contractor’s performance and productivity at a project in Slough where a new headquarters building for Meggit Mowbray, Berks, was under construction.

His report glowed: “Calibre is an excellent project management tool-kit. It has the potential to provide a UK improvement database – an on-going benchmark as well as a benchmark for particular trades. And it helps people to understand interfaces and eliminate waste.”

Calibre relies on everyone on site carrying an identifying number on a helmet or jacket. Suppliers are coded, activities categorised and work areas zoned. An electrician unloading materials becomes, say, E1 performing U in X7. Codes are logged on to handheld Psions for downloading later. Outputs can be graphed and managers can identify potential improvements. For example, perhaps code N (At workplace, not working) can be eliminated through better co-ordination of trades.

Beale stresses that before Calibre can be successfully implemented, it must be “workshopped” with all staff. “People have to understand what’s going on, otherwise it might seem like a time and motion study and scare people off,” he warns.

On the whole, though, Beale feels that Calibre provides a positive means of feedback and has succeeded in identifying wastage on site.

But nothing is ever fool proof. Beale pointed out that it wouldn’t work unless set up properly, with all operatives wearing the right coding. He did, however, note that people tend to perform better if they know they are being monitored.

The objective of Calibre is to come up with target ranges for productivity for each trade package for each building type. The BRE is not the only advisory body within the construction industry to recognise the potential for a benchmark tool. This summer will see the prototype of Empower, a productivity measurement tool from BSRIA that “highlights best practice, room for improvement, production management and work area stabilization issues”.

The decision to launch what could be conceived as a rival to Calibre was made last summer, with the rather unpromising name “AutoPMT”. BSRIA’s Adam Rowe-Roberts argues that the two products are fundamentally different. With Empower, he says, gang members monitor themselves. In other words, the data collected comes directly from the worker involved and no third party is involved. There’s no Big Brother, or young student for that matter, watching over anyone.

So what does Empower hope to achieve? Rowe-Roberts explains: “Empower will enable real time performance analysis, feedback and benchmarking on UK construction projects that will lead to increased value for money for the client and improved profit margins for contractors.”

The system has two key components: a PC-based application (local database), enabling companies to monitor their performance and analyse delays, and a central BSRIA administered, maintained and updated database that will incorporate a Web page user interface for the data manipulation, dissemination and software update patches.

Rowe-Roberts says: “Empower’s configuration complements the broader approach to performance measurement within the UK construction industry. This includes the use of agreed graphical output formats, process stage definitions and task identication codes. Indeed, BSRIA has been in constant contact with BRE’s Calibre and Building Software’s Contrack and is actively seeking synergy with all contemporary products in this area.”

The system will include context sensitive on-line help. A hard copy is also to be made available, with supplementary workshops demonstrating Empower and the benefits of productivity measurement.

The application is designed for use by site staff, meaning that after initial training, there will be no need for BSRIA to provide expert analysis of the data.

General capabilities of Empower’s local database include:

• ECA and HVCA endorsed contractors are to be preloaded into the system;

• flexibility to allow use by both large and small companies, though the target audience is small and medium enterprises;

• providing analysis of activity-based planning, level of performance achieved, delays encountered and work area control within a project;

• a range of fixed, pre-configured graphical and tabular outputs that are simple to use and easy to interpret;

• being pre-loaded with all BSRIA’s packages, delay types, categories and best practice times.

The central database will look, feel and function identically to the local database. “The central database will be interrogated by BSRIA, showing industry trends, best practice times and lessons learned documents. All the output of the data analysis are to be uploaded to the Empower web page for performance improvement dissemination,” explains Rowe-Roberts.

Fundamental changes in the way the industry thinks and works are taking place in the light of the Latham and Egan reports. Clients are demanding that the industry, specialist contractors included, pulls its socks up. But before you can improve anything, you must first be able to measure it. Empower yourself now.