The British Building and Alterations industry is on the verge of being revolutionised by new building processes developed by Bob. Now, with the introduction of new processes the days of building cost overruns, confusion and general grumpiness about building will soon be over.
"With these new processes homeowners are guaranteed of timely completeness of alteration projects - I have called these processes Agile Building", says Bob with excitement.
"Basically we work very closely every day with the workers, owners and contractors to make sure things get done. We start off the day at 9:30am with a stand up meeting, 'cause there is nowhere to sit on a building site, grab a 'cuppa and discuss things together. I call this meeting a 'Daily Scram' - because if you are not there to work you can bugger off! So", explains Bob, "Every morning we all stand together and describe what we did yesterday and what we are going to do today. It works well so, for example, the plasterer will say 'I've finished the plastering in the bedroom and will start on the bathroom today', which means that the painter know to paint the bedroom instead of the bathroom."
Processes in Agile Building are tuned towards working together to get things done, as Bob explains.
"As you know in alterations on Victorian era English houses there can sometimes be some surprises. So we may, for example take out an old boiler and find a whole mess behind it. So the plumber and gas specialist may have to work together to get things sorted. I call this 'Pair Building' because, y'know, three is a crowd under the stairs where the boiler is"
There is a new trend in building alterations to forgo the services of expensive draughtsmen, project management and quantity surveyors, but apparently this does not hinder the building process.
"We don't like to do BDUF (Big Drawings Up Front) because the drawings are too big to fit in the cubby hole of my van and are never accurate enough to handle all of the problems. So we pretty much work with the homeowner and do design as we go along. This is also great because it allows us to change the design as things change - like finding that the fireplace is bigger then we initially thought."
"Don't get me wrong", continues Bob, "All of this is above board, but we make sure that we only do the design that is necessary. We have this principle, YAGNEP, which stands for 'You Ain't Gonna Need Planning', so that we can decide when we need council approval for any of our plans. Even then, we delay letting the council know until the last responsible moment"
But it is not all about shortcutting planning and removing management, Agile Building has a number of innovations that are practical and highly technical, as Bob explains:
"We have a number of unique innovations, such as MDB, which stands for Measure Driven Building. In this technique we make sure that the tradesman measures before cutting anything - which prevents problems of wastage and time lost by making sure we know what we are doing, for a small unit of work, before cutting the materials. So we have a Measure Unit and make sure that all measure units are measured before cutting and that we have enough measure unit coverage throughout the process. I know it sounds a lot like the 'measure twice, cut once cliche', but we do it with a different process and use fancy tools like those 'laser' measuring thingymebobs."
Not everyone is convinces that Bob's Agile Building processes bring anything new.
"Hogswallop!", exclaims Rodney Trafford, the chairman of the small but influential Harlow Master Builders Association, "I have never hear such rubbish! There is nothing new or 'innovative' here. I have seen enough plumber cracks in my life to know that two blokes under the kitchen sink is not some fancy fandangled new way of building. Soon he's going to come up with some hoity-toity explanation for cat-calling pretty girls from the scaffolding!"
Rodney is convinced that Bob is overstating his 'new' way of doing things to rustle up new customers while the building industry is in a slump.
"Bob has just labelled things that good builders have always been doing", states Rodney, "And just because you talk about it doesn't make it yours or new or unique. Boris Johnson didn't actually invent bicycle lanes, did he?"
But Bob shrugs his shoulders at the objections.
"Other builders just don't understand. Yes, they may do some of these things in some fashion, but they haven't brought them together in a process that ensures more predictable success. Rodney isn't even a certified scram master, what would he know about building anyway? Watch this space, Agile Building is going to be big!", says Bob with finality.
For your next building project, maybe you should look for an Agile Builder.
The idea for this post was triggered by Ted Newards post The Myth of Discovery where he observes that a lot of software development processes are simply restated good management principles and just because we say it is new, doesn't make it so.
While I fully support agile processes in software development, maybe we should be more considerate when speaking to other professionals who have long histories, techniques and management principles that work. Maybe our experts could also, in a more academic tradition, reference some of the leading management works.
Simon Munro