Austin Commercial, a division of Austin Industries, is a major U.S. national contractor based in Texas. It specializes in commercial projects including healthcare and higher education facilities, aviation buildings, data centers and mixed-use developments. As a 100% employee-owned company, Austin Commercial is recognized for its culture of respect, accountability, and collaboration.
Its people-focused culture has led Austin Commercial to adopt Lean planning for many projects, including use of the Last Planner System® for consistent and collaborative teamwork. However, its reliance on paper-based methods had limited its effectiveness in the field.
Its team needed a digital tool that enabled collaborative planning while removing tedious, time-consuming, and wasteful tasks.
Sean Sachtleben, Preconstruction Manager and Lean Practice Leader at Austin Commercial, said, “I found that if software was too complicated for me to figure out after one use, I would have trouble getting our trade partners to adjust to figure it out.” He added, “That’s not a judgment! Our partners are already being asked to do so much already. We don’t want to pile on a complicated software for them to manage.”
Here’s how Austin Commercial is making the digital transition with Nialli™ Visual Planner:
At a glance |
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Company: Austin Commercial |
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Industry: Large commercial construction projects |
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Challenge: Tedious paper planning, low trade engagement, poor information capture |
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Solution: Nialli Visual Planner + interactive displays for collaborative planning |
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Results:
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Time is critical in construction. Austin Commercial knows that keeping people, materials, and information moving without disruption ensures optimal schedule flow and profitability. Even small delays can lead to major costs over a project’s duration.
Improving project task flow requires transparent communication among trade partners. Problems often occur when teams withhold information or agree to tasks because they’re uncomfortable with voicing their concerns.
Having seen many failed implementations of collaborative planning methods and skepticism among construction professionals toward Lean approaches, Sean Sachtleben notes the importance of putting the focus on people, as methodology and tools alone cannot ensure project success.
“Everyone wants to do a pull plan on their project, but not everyone understands what that really means or entails,” said Sean. “Just because you do a pull plan session, that doesn’t mean you are magically going to find cost savings and compress your schedule. The true intent is to get team members to proactively think through the logic of the project. That way, by communicating and collaborating, we determine potential constraints in advance that would otherwise disrupt our project flow. The result is an accurate plan that everyone on the team is committed to delivering.”
While Austin Commercial, with their emphasis on enabling people, found success in adopting Lean planning methods, traditional planning techniques requiring paper and walls of sticky notes posed logistical difficulties on larger projects.
“I was getting frustrated with sticky notes on walls. It was tedious, they fell off and it didn’t encourage real collaboration. There had to be something digital that preserved the process without overcomplicating it.” — Sean Sachtleben
Sean Sachtleben was convinced there had to be a better way. Unfortunately, his initial research led him toward technology options that were too complex, cost-prohibitive, or lacked the hands-on interaction that made Lean planning so effective. So, his teams reverted to continuing with paper.
This changed when a colleague forwarded him a link to a new Canadian start-up specializing in collaborative construction planning.
Why did Austin Commercial choose Nialli Visual Planner?
After evaluating the application, Sean chose to move forward with Nialli Visual Planner for the following reasons:
Trade partners could learn how to use the tool in 5 minutes, becoming productive within 10 minutes.
Touch-enabled displays encouraged the same interactive group-planning behavior as physical sticky notes. As Sean said, “People get out of their chairs. They gather around the board. It encourages conversations rather than hiding behind laptops.”
Rather than trying to tackle all aspects of construction management, Visual Planner was adept at doing the one thing they needed from it very well: digital pull planning. Reduced feature bloat meant a more affordable price tag.
Respect for trade partners, collaborative planning and flow optimization were all amplified in the workflows of Visual Planner.
Having deployed Nialli Visual Planner on several projects, the team at Austin Commercial has seen clear benefits with the shift to a digital approach.
Instead of writing tasks by hand on sticky notes, moving boards around and counting completed tasks manually, the technology now manages these processes. This allows trade partners to return to work in the field more quickly and cut down on administrative tasks.
Trades now have visibility months ahead instead of just days, allowing more precise labor allocation and significant cost savings. Rather than sending too many (or too few) team members to the site or having skilled resources sit idle waiting on other crews to finish, trades can show up with the exact crew needed, at the exact time they’re needed, and depart the jobsite on time.
Digital planning means the teams at Austin Commercial can view much further ahead in their weekly plan, properly illustrate dependencies between tasks, and better capture constraints in a central log. “Issues can now be spotted much earlier in the construction process, where they can be proactively discussed and corrected with a click of a button rather than wasting time, effort and money retroactively resolving them as they occur.”
As a Lean Practice leader at Austin Commercial, Sean Sachtleben realizes his work is never complete. He continually introduces new projects and employee-owners to Lean methods and shows other divisions within Austin Industries the benefits of collaborative planning. With more teams adopting Nialli Visual Planner, Sean and his group are expanding their data analysis efforts, aiming to make better use of Percent Plan Complete (PPC) and reasons for variance reporting to support their continuous improvement endeavors.
Austin Commercial’s journey shows how the right digital tool can amplify Lean practices rather than complicate them. With Nialli Visual Planner, they’ve found a solution that’s simple, collaborative and scalable; aligning with the values that set Austin Industries apart.
Ready to experience simple, collaborative site planning? Join Nialli for a virtual demonstration.