“Don’t fool yourself: having a strategy map is not the same as having a strategy”

Having a time schedule isn’t everything you need for a strategy. You need to have a strategy within that strategy. So let’s talk about beating a glazing project deadline to explain this:

Beating the deadline isn’t quite same as finishing right smack on time. Beating the deadline is getting ahead of it. But in glazing projects, especially in commercial building facade projects, there can be expected and unexpected delays of work.

The best way to work around these setbacks is to:

Strive to beat the glazing deadline.

Working in a pace that is set to just finish on time, most likely won’t work as intended, especially if the unexpected delays happen. At LJM, we found that that is the strategy to finishing ahead of the deadline (without delays caused by third parties) or still finish on time (despite the unexpected and third-party-caused delays) WITHOUT ever compromising quality of service and deliverables.

First, It pays to do honest work and spend every billable minutes for the glazing project.

For example, the remaining 20-30 minutes when you have crossed out everything that must be done for the day, can be used for:

• Moving/preparing/stacking materials on to the next area of installation.
• Decluttering the area of work you just finished and prepping the next area.
• Checking inventory, confirming upcoming deliveries and checking weather reports. This is to ensure delays won’t happen because of lack of materials to work with and plan the job according to the weather advisories. We prep mullions when it is impossible to install glass due to sudden bad weather.
• Conducting a meeting with the crew to discuss concerns, brainstorm and plan.

Always work to reduce the workload. While some crew may actually waste a remaining hour, this only happens when the supervision is slacking as well. It is important that Supervisors and Project Managers become particular with these remaining minutes to be spent in reducing workload or advancing the work progress even by just a fraction.

Foresee smooth operations. While expected delays become part of the planning, we must always foresee smooth operations by:

Expecting the unexpected. Never have a “come what may” attitude. Delays costs time and money.

Running down the next tasks virtually on your mind and foresee how it could go smoothly. Do you need to position certain tools or materials when you still have time to do it today so tomorrow you could go straight to work?

See? It’s also all about preparations.

It’s how you spend time that makes the difference. Nobody intentionally wastes an hour. But you could actually be wasting it by spending it on tasks that doesn’t help with the next tasks on schedule. At the end of the day, a good practice is to think about how to execute tomorrow’s tasks and beat the schedule.

Simply put, have the goal to beat your own record. We do that at LJM. We always think creatively on how we can beat our own daily work schedule. But the cheat is, as much as possible, we prepare for tomorrow’s grind, today.