When considering the state of the construction (infrastructure) industry in Melbourne, Victoria with respect to projects’ not achieving outstanding outcomes in terms of key result area metrics1. This paper will examine how the use of Lean2 and Six Sigma principles were adopted on a major Victorian infrastructure project in creating a framework for success and addressing key industry challenges.
Key Result Areas (KRAs) outcomes delivered for this particular project included:
- Cost: an increase in stated margin of 100%, with an additional increase in margin of 25% for achieving outstanding / stretch within the Key Result Area performance pool (maximum allocation)
- Time: works completed 3 months ahead of schedule
- Occupational Health and Safety: over 1 million hours worked without a recordable injury (winning the National Managing Directors Safety award two years in a row)
- Environment: with works above and adjacent to live waterways, there were no incidents
- Community and Stakeholders: no negative feedback and or complaints by the interfacing communities and stakeholders abutting the project cognisant of the narrow project corridor
- Quality and Completions: the use of trials and prototypes set the minimum standard(s) ensuring no defects being achieved upon completion with a seamless handover process to the owner participant
- Traffic: with work being undertaken in a live freeway (toll road) environment, there were no planned or unplanned disruptions to traffic
- People: the culture that was created ensured staff (white collar) retention rate of 94% over three years and a direct labour (blue collar) retention rate of 98% for the same period.
- Institute of Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Award