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Process excellence delivers significant efficiency gains for construction companies by helping them deconstruct and rebuild internal business and project processes to maximise time and cost efficiency. This article explains what process excellence is, how to implement these techniques in construction firms, and how to avoid creating processes in siloes.

What is Process Excellence?

Process excellence goes beyond process management by integrating continuous improvement into an organisation's mindset. It involves thoroughly investigating project processes and treating them as living entities that continually evolve. Achieving process excellence means developing and refining processes to ensure optimal efficiency in all outcomes.

Crucially, process excellence requires a shared understanding of company processes and a collective commitment to them. Success depends on bringing every team and team member on this journey. The system simply cannot function unless everyone works with optimised, agreed-upon processes.

How to Implement Process Excellence

To achieve process excellence, companies must examine every process and work backwards to map out the required steps. A precise, granular approach helps fully map each process, requiring specific questions about micro-level steps and identifying individuals needed to complete each task.

Shadowing proves invaluable for creating detailed process maps that enable optimisation. This means visiting sites to observe how people actually work.

In addition to observation, asking plenty of questions about why and how teams perform tasks is essential. Even basic questions help capture all necessary details.

After completing shadowing and questioning, creating a process map that illustrates routine team activities becomes possible. Then, the focus shifts to adding the 'excellence' to process excellence. The gathered information helps identify inefficiencies, such as periods when team members aren't actively working. With these insights, activities can be resequenced until everyone remains productive throughout the entire working day, maximising available time during standard shifts.

Maintaining Process Excellence Over Time

Simply mapping and reorganising processes once isn't enough. Process excellence demands ongoing, long-term commitment with continuous monitoring and adjustment.

As companies evolve, so do their processes. Therefore, every new process adopted should be evaluated with a process excellence mindset. Similarly, when construction companies complete projects, examining all issues teams encountered helps incorporate these lessons into processes for future projects.

Organising regular sessions with all team members present effectively maintains momentum in process monitoring initiatives.

Additionally, holding meetings focused on single processes can be beneficial. When teams face challenges with particular processes, gathering everyone together often yields the best solutions.

Making Process Excellence Work for Teams

The greatest mistake in process excellence is creating processes in isolation. A process developed without proper documentation or communication might initially succeed but eventually fails. Moreover, course correction often proves difficult.

To avoid this pitfall, ensuring every team member participates in the process development journey is crucial. Everyone must understand the processes, as shared understanding best ensures processes are followed, and client outcomes are achieved safely and on time.

Whilst gaining team-wide buy-in can be challenging, management can employ tactics to encourage adoption. Process ambassadors - identified through employee surveys or direct observation of adherence - can motivate other team members through healthy competition or support during process changes.

Identifying the Need for Process Excellence

Many construction companies operate with inefficient processes without realising it. If a company frequently has team members waiting idly on site for their turn to work, or if tasks consistently take longer than scheduled, these signs suggest benefits from analysing processes. After completing analysis and mapping processes, construction firms can begin reaping the benefits of process excellence.

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