Sequencing: The Key to Multifamily Construction Productivity

Construction success has four foundations: time, money, quality, and safety, all equally important. If you deliver your project on time, execute it safely, with the quality required by contract and making a profit for your organization, that describes a successful project. There is one thing that if you do right you can exponentially improve the outcome of your project: Sequencing. Having a constant, orderly flow of work helps everyone in the project reach an optimum production output faster, avoid rework, and potentially finishing the project early, which turns into additional profit for your organization.Sequencing is defining the order of the activities that have to be perform, and in order to get this right, you must also know their duration and the relationship that each activity has amongst them. There are 3 simple steps:

1. Define the activities and who performs it.

2. Define the order and its relationship with other activities (or sequence).

3. Define the duration of each activity.

It sounds very simple but understanding the relationship that every activity has with each other can get really complex, if you add that each activity may have a different stakeholder that performs it and that you may have to line up a batch of work ready for an activity to start, it can get very complex. This is the reason that sequencing is not an activity that is done once during planning stage and its complete, it has to be coordinated with every subcontractor and stakeholder to make sure they understand it and add important information that you may be missing. As managers of the project we are not required to know all of the details of any individual activity, that’s why we hire specialized companies (subcontractors) to perform the work, we need to talk to them and start defining step by step what are the requirements that they need to perform each activity. Once an agreement has been reached between all parties involved, it must be constantly revised to do adjustments as needed to reach the highest productive possible. In multifamily construction productivity can be measure with the turnaround time of each apartment unit, there is always a learning and adjustment curve, so you can measure how long does it take you to complete a unit from framing to finish floor by floor, the goals is to reach the lowest turnaround time possible in the shortest period of time. A good sequence will give you a head start that will help you reach that optimum output faster.In construction time is money and loss of time is loss of money, so it is in everybody's interest to get the sequence right and to protect it. Having your sequence wrong is one of the primary reasons for rework which affects your budget and team morale. Let’s see an example, you have a flooring contractor that do your vinyl and carpet, you and him want to be as efficient as possible, so you reach an agreement to do all of the flooring scope on the same visit. You did not account that the carpet needs to be installed after a sliding door, and the sliding door cannot be installed until the vinyl floor is complete. So the flooring contractor in anticipation of his installation starts stocking the project with the materials he need, not knowing that we won't be able to do the carpet, which will be on the way of the other trades that also need to complete their work, and can potentially get damaged. This causes frustration and loss of productivity to everyone involve. This is how simple it is to get the sequence wrong and have strong effects in your project.As project managers we must protect the sequence, there are few things as important as this. We can compare this to a production line. In manufacturing, you can’t jump a step because the materials were not there or because the next station was not ready, nor you can partially install something, move it to another station and then bring it back to finish what you had left incomplete. Manufacturing managers know this very well, they know that the key for productivity and avoiding faulty product, is to have a well define production line, and if something on the production line is not working, everything else stops until that gets resolved. As construction professionals we have a lot to learn from this mindset. Multifamily construction is very much alike a production line, were our product (apartment units), are all the same or very similar. If someone in your sequence is not performing, you need to address it immediately, it must be seen as an emergency, it is big deal, is like stopping a manufacturing line causing thousands of dollars in lost production. It is easy to just jump to the next activity while you figure it out, but this cause more harm to everyone else downstream. It is better to stop and address the problem, than to continue and cause rework and frustration to everyone else.This are the common mistakes that affect your sequence:

1. Getting the order of the activities wrong.

2. Being overly optimistic with the duration of the activities.

3. Jumping a step because the previous one was not ready.

4. Leaving work incomplete.

A great recommendation for getting our sequence correct early in the construction process is to do a mockup. During a mockup, all the subcontractors get to experience the sequence. The they will know if they were call in too early, too late, or there might be issues with the previous activity. You also get the benefit of calling the owner to walk the unit and understand his expectations, it is much better to correct anything at this point than later when everything is running or complete.Having the right sequence and protecting it will bring you many benefits that we did not go through in this paper. As examples it will help you boost morale, help your partners (subcontractors) make more money, finish earlier, make your customer happy, help your superintendents, make more money to your organization, among many other benefits. It is easy to get it right and to get it wrong, but if we understand its important and have the extra attention in getting it right, it could be a game changer. Remember that sometimes is better to stop and correct, than to continue doing things wrong.