Forum Session: The business case for "Leaning-out" your capital projects function

The function of capital project management is perhaps the last frontier in reaping the rewards of lean management processes. Here, John Raimondo makes the business case for organizations to "lean out" their capital projects processes. He uses current construction cost benchmarks to demonstrate the amount of waste involved in current methods, and he examines where inefficiencies occur in traditional contract agreements, risk-allocation formulas, adversarial team structures, and contract award criteria. He illustrates how to apply lean principles to capital project management with restructured team environments, value stream mapping, continuous process flow, and new technologies.

• John A. Raimondo, PE, Director, Central Region - Barton Malow Company