BRE’s health and safety tool tackles lean construction

by Brianna Crandall — July 13, 2016 — According to U.K.-based building sciences group BRE, 12,000 users of BRE’s health and safety tool YellowJacket are set to benefit from a new lean construction tracking feature that will help them measure and improve productivity in the on-site delivery of their construction projects.

YellowJacket is a low-cost cloud-based tool for any industry that makes it easy to manage performance, helping users improve their safety record, meet quality standards and reach environmental targets.

BRE's YellowJacket screenshot

New lean construction feature in YellowJacket will enable organizations to improve processes and performance, saving time and money across projects and throughout the organization.

The process improvement enhancement comes on the heels of a recent announcement from the U.K. Infrastructure Commission that productivity was a critical issue for the construction industry in light of the major infrastructure projects being planned.

Lean construction is about improving efficiency in the design and construction stages by applying lean construction principles, says BRE.  In practice this means looking at processes and people and identifying and removing wasteful activities that prevent value from being effectively delivered. Its aim is to improve project delivery timescales and reduce costs for the benefit of the client and the contractor.

YellowJacket’s new lean construction feature enables users to capture real-time data related to time spent on non-value-added activities, for example the process issue type, the number of people involved, and the amount of time lost on site for each process issue. Data captured will be displayed in visual reports including heat maps, graphs and timelines, letting the user know exactly how their projects are performing. By collecting this performance data, users can start to identify and target areas where improvements can be made.

BRE YellowJacket Director Crawford Burns noted:

Improving productivity and reducing costs and delivery time are key tenets of the [U.K.] Government’s Construction 2025 strategy which sets out a plan to deliver a 33% reduction in construction project costs and a 50% reduction in overall project delivery time. Our aim is to help our customers who are already gathering data on health and safety to start measuring their processes in line with lean and ultimately improve productivity.”

The new lean construction process improvement feature is free to access for all current YellowJacket users.