CCA Members Think Lean

By Kelly Faloon

Think of it as a diet for your company. That's the thought behind “lean construction” - eliminating waste and wasteful practices from your business - and the subject of the keynote presentation at the Fall 2005 Construction Contractors Alliance meeting, Oct. 12-14, Atlanta.

Dennis Sowards, formerly with Kinetics, spoke on applying the lean principles that came out of Toyota's manufacturing plant to the construction industry.

“Lean thinking is a shift of thinking between value and waste,” he said. “Value is what the customer is willing to pay for. Everything else is waste.”

Waste in construction can be defects in materials, overproduction, inventory awaiting processing, unnecessary movement of people, unnecessary transport of goods, waiting, design of goods and services that do not serve the customer's needs, and not using talent.

Other presentations included Bruce Seigel's description of the Ritz-Carlton's legendary service; Chip Greene spotlighted his company, Greene & Associates in Macon, Ga.; and Lake Coulson of PHCC-National Association spoke on politics and the plumbing business.

Members also had the option of taking a tour of nearby Dupree Plumbing (Marietta, Ga.)

The next meeting will be February in Houston.

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Kelly Faloon was a former editor of Plumbing & Mechanical as well as the BNP Media Plumbing Group’s Integrated Content Development Specialist. She also was a former editor of the Radiant Comfort Guide the Radiant & Hydronics Report — both official publications of the Radiant Professionals Alliance — and twice-monthly Radiant & Hydronics eNews, an enewsletter for anyone interested in the world of heating with hot water.

Her editorial specialties included women in plumbing, recruiting for the trades, green construction techniques, water conservation, water treatment, hydronic heating, radiant heating and cooling, snow melt, solar thermal and geothermal.

After a 3½-year stint at sister publication Supply House Times, Faloon joined the PM staff in December 2001 as senior editor. She was named PM’s managing editor in 2006 and editor in 2013.

Previously, she spent nearly 10 years at CCH, a publishing firm specializing in business and tax law, where she wore many hats — proofreader, writer/editor for a daily tax publication, and Internal Revenue Code editor.

A native of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, Faloon is a 1986 journalism graduate of Michigan State University.