Built to Fail - by Todd R Zabelle (Hardcover)

About the Book

The separation of planning from doing and the preoccupation with administration, contracts, and scheduling over designing and building has been disastrous for construction. Lawyers, planners, risk managers, schedulers, and other administrative roles impede the ability of architects, engineers, and craftspeople--the professionals who design and build the things society needs to function. It isn't just a matter of getting things done on time--if you're the owner of an asset, manage a construction company, or invest in a project, overcoming these limitations is critical to your ability to compete and profit.

Todd Zabelle, a recognized expert, construction CEO, and one of the founders of the lean construction movement, looks critically at each aspect of the industry, from production to construction to design to deployment to what the future holds, deftly analyzing where we've gone wrong and offering concrete, clear-eyed solutions for how to fix it.

Zabelle's incisive wit and pulls-no-punches honesty are a refreshing antidote to the bland, overly polite, vacuous dialogue of board meetings and academic conferences. Speaking from the heart--and informed by over thirty years of experience in all facets of the industry--Zabelle delivers a much-needed wakeup call at a time when it's needed most.

Book Synopsis

The construction industry is as big as it is important. Without construction, our society would cease to be. We would have no ports, roads, or bridges. No communications networks, power grids, or water systems. No hospitals. No schools. No homes.

But we can barely get anything built. Capital projects are routinely finished late and over budget. Everyone acknowledges the problem, but no one seems to have the vision, or the will, to fix it.

The problem is the separation of "planning" from "doing" that has taken place over the last century. A misplaced focus on administration has marginalized the tasks of designing and building, which are the essence of construction.

New techniques and cutting-edge technology provide us with a different way of doing things. This is not mere theory; as author Todd Zabelle demonstrates, his company and other innovative firms are doing it now. But because too many construction professionals are set in their ways or are profiting from an ineffective system, nothing changes.

By drawing on operations science and focusing on the critical aspects of construction and on how we design, make, and build instead of administration, we can fix what has dogged the industry for decades while expanding the bottom line of owners, investors, and construction managers.

As Built to Fail argues,

- we must recognize projects as an assemblage of multiple production systems and use operations science to understand and influence their behavior and thus improve project outcomes.
- the Taylorist preoccupation with squeezing as much work out of workers as possible is counterproductive. Having "materials waiting on workers" is avoided at all costs over "workers waiting on materials," but we don't need to choose between these two options. When it comes to supply, we can replace "just in case" (stacking up inventory) with "just in time" (delivering supplies when and where they are needed).
- the separation of design from construction and the fallacy that design is a phase that can be "finished" has contributed to the problem. Design is an ongoing process through the life of the project.
- deployment is changing from a centralized model to a decentralized one: instead of a project situated in one location, headed by one design firm and a single lead contractor and regulated by one permit, we must contend with multiple locations and jurisdictions, governed by numerous permits, various suppliers, and a multiplicity of design firms.
- the future is autonomous and digital. Yet few construction firms really know how to utilize this technology. Built to Fail explains how AI and machine learning along with IoT, can be fused with operations science and data science to jump ahead of the pack.

From the Back Cover

The construction industry is broken, bloated, and stuck in the past. But there is a way to fix it.

The construction industry is as big as it is important. Without construction, our society would cease to be. We would have no ports, roads, or bridges. No communications networks, power grids, or water systems. No hospitals. No schools. No homes.

But we can barely get anything built. Capital works projects are routinely finished late and over budget. Everyone acknowledges the problem, but no one seems to have the vision, or the will, to fix it.

The problem is industry relies too much on outmoded approaches to management and production that arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The preoccupation with Taylorist scientific management, project management's current focus on planning, and administration interfere with the critical work of designing and building, giving way to the bloated, bureaucratic boondoggles that have marred the industry's reputation.

The solution is an innovative, forward-thinking approach to construction that leverages operations science and utilizes revolutionary advances in digital technology to cut through the red tape and deliver on time and on budget. As Built to Fail shows, this is not mere theory; these ideas are being successfully implemented, providing facility owners and construction professionals who adopt them a competitive advantage and meeting the needs of citizens who depend on those projects to work, live, and thrive. But change is slow, and the people calling the shots--backed by the teeming ranks of administrators, planners, project managers, and others--are unable, or unwilling, to carve a new path forward. As a result, everyone suffers.

It is time to move construction into the twenty-first century. This book is a manifesto for why and a blueprint for how--a call to overcome the status quo and remake an industry on which civilization itself depends.