Elevate Construction

Lean construction isn't "a few tools" or magic continuous-improvement pixie dust—it's a foundation and a system. In this episode, Jason shares an interview with Jesse from Operational Excellence, where they unpack what Lean really means: respect for people, stability, capacity, and flow, plus total participation with visual systems and continuous improvement. They also get into why Lean fails when...

Seven responsibilities of the captain of your ship applied to the senior superintendent. Ship must be stocked before anyone boards. Teams must function at all fractal levels. People must be trained. Systems must be working. Know where the ship is going, how to get there daily, and keep the ship afloat. What you'll learn in this episode: Stock the ship: superintendent owns procurement, not PM or PE...

Companies outgrow key people who were loyal and crucial in early days. Circle analogy shows original leaders covered all oversight needs but as company grows their circles no longer encompass the black circle of business needs. Multiplier leaders scale by developing direct reports whose circles together cover the business. Over 80 percent of companies visited have this problem. What you'll learn i...

Is command and control really the enemy in lean construction. Back in the day projects finished on time and only one or two crashed. Now only one or two actually succeed. The problem is lack of training, retiring generals, untrained builders, and wimpy supers without a plan. Best is a master builder with integrated control and full team input. What you'll learn in this episode: Projects cratered a...

Final section of Elevating Construction Surveyors with Brandon Monteiro. Party chief threw his radio into bushes instead of training the new hire. Train others, mentor, weigh in on costs, determine your sweet spot, manage multiple teams, build a cohesive department. Your career will be so much better if you care about it. What you'll learn in this episode: Train effectively: skip hour explanations...

It is not in Procore. Procore has a submittal register. It does not manage the supply chain. You need a buyout log, material procurement log, and design action log aligned to your Takt rhythm. About 25 percent of what you think is in Procore is actually in Procore. What you'll learn in this episode: Buyout log: trades ready with scope, contract, bonds, insurance, safety plans before Takt window op...

Too many PMs and PEs just focus on tools and check the box. Hospital analogy where every doctor checks machines, says tools are fine, and leaves while the patient is dying. Tools working does not mean the project is healthy. Treat the patient, not the equipment. Master the scopes, not just the skills. What you'll learn in this episode: Spectrum of done: nothing done, something done, done, done to...

Production comparison is the missing tool for self-perform crews. Map every 10-minute interval against every station for every micro crew throughout the day. Compare planned versus actual production at each interval. Find deviations, name the causes, fix them in tomorrow's morning huddle. Civil utilities and self-perform contractors must do this to make money. What you'll learn in this episode: Pr...

Played Monopoly with kids over the holidays and saw construction in the game. Kids had money clumped up, could not see properties, made no strategic decisions. Jason spread money out, tracked every position, planned two to three rolls ahead. Great PMs and supers play the game the same way with data and metrics. What you'll learn in this episode: Spread the money out: always know cash on hand, fina...

Things said in construction mean different things than they appear. Fixed fee GMP incentivizes more people there longer and cost transfers out of self-perform. Adding manpower slows productivity and wastes trade partner profit. Systems thinking reveals real consequences behind innocent phrases. Assume positive intent but watch for negative consequences. What you'll learn in this episode: Fixed fee...

Recording the fifth section of Elevating Construction Surveyors with Brandon Monteiro. Ten segments covering aesthetics, interpreting work orders, considering cost, and leading the crew. Chainman stood at end of every staked line and plumbed every stake so the product looked precise before anyone checked accuracy. Effective training creates efficiency. What you'll learn in this episode: Aesthetics...

Jason reviews the responses to his LinkedIn poll asking whether stress is good for you, a post that drew 834 votes, 72 comments, and 35,000 views. He walks through the strongest answers from the community, including the eustress vs. distress distinction, the Yerkes-Dodson law on arousal and performance, and the wisdom from Hans Selye that complete freedom from stress is actually death. He also lan...

Jason and Brandon Montero record another long session for the upcoming book Elevating Construction Surveyors. They walk through ten sections of the manuscript live, sharing the stories, principles, and applications behind tolerance, measurement, double checks, best practices, the data collector, traversing, as builts, topographic mapping, two person crew flow, and intelligent exhibits. Each sectio...

Jason closes out the year with a reflective episode framed around A Christmas Carol and the question of what your own Christmas story really is. He walks through the year end ritual of reviews, bonuses, taxes, and tax projections, then pivots to the deeper work of remembering why your company, team, family, or project exists in the first place. He shares the recent leadership conversation at Eleva...

Jason welcomes Tess Fiacca, Director of Employee Development and Engagement at O'Shea Builders, and Josh Fry, Assistant Director, for a deep conversation on how O'Shea has built one of the most respected leadership and team development cultures in construction. They walk through the deliberate recruitment and onboarding process, the commitment to learning at every level (including the president, t...

Jason closes out the six part production control series with the final pillar: how to actually manage production using the underlying laws of construction work. He walks through the law of bottlenecks, cycle time optimization, the law of the effect of variation, Kingman's formula, and Little's law, then ties them together with the daily habits that put them to work. He closes with a powerful refle...

Jason continues the production control series with part five on installing with a quality product. He opens with a sharp clarification a colleague asked for: the real difference between throwing manpower at a problem and swarming. Then he walks through why quality is not the opposite of production, why finishing as you go is the right kind of production, and how four practical pillars (quality at...

Jason continues the production control series with part four on roadblock removal. He makes a bold claim: the industry has no business talking about percent plan complete until it can demonstrate a fanatical, visual roadblock removal system. He then walks through the five pillars that make roadblock removal actually work, from using buffers and seeing deviations, to running real make ready lookahe...

Jason continues the production control series with part three on leveling work. He opens with a clear contrast between the old way of pushing productivity (manpower, overtime, larger batches, frantic motion) and the lean way of building capacity (preparation, flow, rhythm, removing roadblocks). Then he walks through the histogram problem on construction projects and lays out the five concrete tact...

Jason continues the six part production control series with part two on creating stability. He walks through the foundational conditions any project needs before any Takt, scrum, or last planner system can actually work: a clean, safe, and organized site; a healthy and balanced team; aggressive delay management; trade partner ownership of geographical areas; held start dates; a real meeting system...

Jason kicks off a six part series on production control, also known as Takt control, the term he picked up from Marco Binninger and Janosch Dlouhy in Germany. This first episode focuses on the role of the superintendent and foreman in actively controlling production in the field. He shares the meeting system that creates the environment for Takt control, then walks through six concrete behaviors t...

Jason flags a trap he sees on jobs all over the country: schedule extensions that look like wins but quietly destroy the project financially. Owners grant extra time, supers and PMs celebrate, and nobody asks who's paying for two extra months of general conditions, trailers, dumpsters, porta potties, and salaried staff. Jason walks through why every schedule extension needs a parallel cost analysi...

Jason shares a short, punchy episode built around a quote he heard from a trade partner during a coordination meeting: if you want to, you'll find a way, and if you don't want to, you'll find an excuse. He uses the story of his son Reno mastering Logic Pro and Libsyn from scratch in three weeks because he wanted to, contrasted with not being able to send a fifty dollar payment because he didn't, t...

Jason prepares for an upcoming presentation by riffing through the topic of psychological safety on construction job sites. He opens with the personal story of being suspended once for not standing up for someone being harassed, and how that defining moment shaped a permanently higher standard for inclusion and respect in his work. He then reframes stress through The Upside of Stress, walks throug...

Jason takes a quick podcast to fully endorse WhatsApp as the best communication app for scaling teams, cultures, and project sites. He walks through his personal journey from text chains at the BSRL research lab, to GroupMe with Carlos, to being one of the early Microsoft Teams adopters at DPR with Spencer Easton in Oakland, all the way to his current standard: WhatsApp for everything from constru...