by Tony Shaw, NFB Board Member and former Managing Director of Henry Boot Construction

A delegation from the NFB Major Contractor Group (MCG) recently took an action-packed fact-finding trip to Helsinki in Finland to see how their construction industry is emerging from recession and how they are using new technology and processes to help them adapt and become more efficient.

After travelling from different areas of the UK, the delegation consisting of Make Wakeford, NFB Chair, Rico Wojtulewicz, NFB’s Head of Policy, Tony Shaw, Board member, Tom met at the airport and headed off to our hotel in a suburb called Espoo on the outskirts of Helsinki. The weather was mild and sunny, and the aromatic woodland and lakeside setting was just perfect for a brisk walk and a catch up.  Our itinerary was set, and we were all looking forward to what the next few days would bring.

Our first stop was a short walk from the hotel to Aalto University to meet Olli Seppänen in the School of Engineering. Olli is an expert in the field of operational management including real time production control and lean construction techniques. 

Olli currently co-ordinates a research programme called Vision 2030 which is a consortium of 13 Finnish construction and design companies with the aim of solving the productivity problem on construction projects by leaning the process, use of off-site manufacturing and increasing situational awareness through digitalisation and real time data collection.

Two key messages from this presentation were that design development needs to be very advanced with a design freeze before you set the train running on site and incentives should be shared throughout the supply chain and workforce to improve productivity and quality. 

Next stop after a short tram ride was a visit to the office of AIforsite where we met Kari Hirvijärvi the founder and CEO. 

AIforsite provide technology to support tracking, measuring and improving the performance of tasks on site using real time situational awareness. The aim is to use the data collected to identify and help address the time wasted during the construction process by comparing the actual situation on the site to the planned schedule in real time. 

Kila shared a short presentation and we had a productive round table debate. We all left the room thinking about productivity issues in the UK construction industry and how we could use the technology to help us in our businesses.

The following day we headed into Helsinki to visit Laasko Hospital This is currently the largest project in Finland at circa €1bn. euro and was the most impressive project that any of us had ever visited. 

The project is being developed by LYS Alliance using a model based on PPC 2000 with multiple stakeholders involved in the project. The main contractor is SRV and they are tasked with delivering the 190,000m² development by 2030.

The team has worked hard to eliminate buffers in the programme by breaking down the development into chunks of 250m² using Takt (German for rhythm) scheduling. This has helped to reduce the programme by 12 months.

Takt planning is a lean construction methodology that focusses on creating a steady and continuous workflow by dividing the project into zones and allocating tasks with specific timeframes, ensuring a balanced workflow for all teams. This helps to minimise waste in the process, improve efficiency and maintain a predictable schedule. 

In his presentation, Ossi the Project Director shared a powerful statement that resonated with us all. “Projects don’t go wrong they start wrong”. “We often start too soon before the design is completed and then the team do not have the time to properly plan and organise how they are going to do the work”. On this project they spent 4 years in the pre-planning phase with high levels of supply chain collaboration. 

You could clearly see the benefits of this extensive pre-planning and the use of Takt scheduling as there was productive activity in every corner of the site. The site was running smoothly, there was a high standard of quality control and the site was evidently safe. 

A point of note was that all of site logistics including horizontal and vertical transportation of materials were managed by one company. There was an off-site warehouse for deliveries with everything picked and sorted to supply each trade for their 250m² chunk of their Takt schedule. 

It was evident that there was a massive amount of time spent on scheduling and planning of just in time deliveries and this felt the closest you would ever get to a car manufacturing plant model on a construction site.

The welfare and accommodation units were like a small village, a major supplier had a fixings hub on site and there was a tool repair workshop so there was no need for the workforce to leave site as they had everything they needed. Another nice touch was the temporary heating throughout the site fed by the district heating system. Warm conditions lead to better results on site and allow the workforce to remain productive at temperatures down to minus 15 degrees.

Our next stop was a visit to the site of the Paslia Node commercial high rise which will ultimately be the tallest building in Finland at 34 storeys. We were greeted by Alex and Mika the Site Manager.

The project was being delivered under a Construction Management Contract where the architect was responsible for the fully co-ordinated design and the main contractor purely recommended subcontractors for work packages. 

Alex shared with us that the project had been 5 to 6 years in the making, and had stalled due to the recession but was now substantially pre-let after 2 years of pre-planning activity. Whilst the site was complex in nature with it being adjacent to the main railway line and straddling over a main road tunnel the 50m x 50m floorplate was repetitive from levels 4 to 32 and lended itself to a Takt schedule. The Takt schedule was set at 2 weeks per floor.

Alex demonstrated how he was able to monitor the progress of the Takt schedule using Synchro 4D planning and an IFC BIM model including quantities against a baseline programme. The system was cloud based and the teams on site had an app to allow them to report real time progress of tasks. 

They also had a logistics company to manage horizontal and vertical distribution and the Takt schedule was tagged with BIM quantities to make sure materials were delivered just in time on this tight and  land locked site.

Our final visit was to a residential site in the early stages of construction managed by a company called Fira. We were greeted by Otto the Site Manager, Oskari the Production Manager and joined by Ethu, who was a very knowledgeable and respected lean construction consultant. 

We had a very open, honest and at times entertaining debate with three very different characters, but one thing was for sure, they were all pulling in the same direction and were firmly on a drive to make their project and their business more efficient. The turning point for them appeared to be coming out of recession where they talked about having to force a change and evolve.

They employ their own site personnel and have regular manufacturing supply partners which they consider is a better way of working for everyone as they know what is expected of them. The team is working fewer hours but delivering more and feeling more healthy as a result. 

They were able to demonstrate how they had achieved some very impressive project and business results over a 7 year period. Before using Takt scheduling they were delivering 120 apartments per year. By introducing a 1 week Takt workflow in 2018 they were able to reduce the programme to one floor per week and deliver 250 apartments. In 2024 they introduced 2 hour Takt scheduling and are now forecast to deliver 500 apartments per annum. In doing so costs have been reduced by 15% with fewer defects on handover.

They talked openly of buffers that were commonly used in scheduling to hide issues and inefficient ways of working. They have worked hard to remove these and citied an example of a critical activity on this residential site that had been reduced by 8 weeks.

Otto said you should “try to be faster, if you improve the speed with better communication and collaboration everything follows”. 

By the end of the trip, we all agreed that the itinerary had been perfectly sequenced to open our minds and to drill down into a further level of detail at every stage. We opened with a high- level academic appreciation of where the industry currently stands and where it could be if only we would adopt more efficient ways of working. There were many similarities with the health of the UK construction industry but in Finland they appeared to be doing something positive to make a difference.  This was followed by valuable insight from the team at AIforsite on what products and data management systems are currently available and a flavour of what technological advances are coming down the track in 5 to 10 years. 

The site visit to the Alliance project at Laasko Hospital was very impressive and a shining light of what can be achieved with “one team” collaboration, extensive pre-planning and meticulous attention to detail in co-ordination and monitoring of real time activities on site. It was clear that the whole project team had bought into using Takt planning.

The next visit to the Pasila Node commercial high rise added a further level of interesting detail. The team were very passionate and knowledgeable and openly demonstrated how they were using Takt scheduling and monitoring to within 4 hours of real time activity on site.

The final site visit was to the Fira residential site where we met three very different characters with different roles in the team. This was a very valuable session because the benefits of lean construction techniques were very articulately outlined by the consultant. The Takt production planner was able to share how he had witnessed and could demonstrate significant improvements over a 5 year period since he had been using Takt scheduling and the Site Manager who was clearly a great advocate of Takt was also able to add some realism with entertaining anecdotes.

It was interesting to have the opportunity to test our curiosity in another country and the trip was a great success. What made it so was the generosity of all of the people that we met who gave up so much of their valuable time. They were all welcoming, friendly and very open to sharing ideas on how we could all deploy more collaborative, safe and efficient ways of working. Some companies were able to demonstrate significant benefits at both project and business level and we were left with plenty of food for thought.

We will set aside some time at the next MCG meeting to share some of the knowledge that we learned on the trip with a short presentation, and we can discuss opportunities and potential benefits for our members.