Richard Drennen: Superior Mechanical

Richard Drennen – Superior Mechanical

“Everybody’s looking for an edge, and this is it,” says Richard Drennen, president of Superior Mechanical, MEP contractors known for their expertise in healthcare facilities. What Drennen speaks so passionately about is how lean manufacturing principles have dramatically transformed his company.

And the proof is in the numbers. During the course of fulfilling a $12.1 million contract at a children’s hospital, their wasted material was limited to approximately six wheelbarrows of pipe, equivalent to $12,000. While a typical plumber can install roughly 200 feet of pipe per day, prefabrication in a controlled off-site environment allows Superior’s plumbers to routinely install 600 feet of pipe per day.

What’s the difference?

It all started with a fortunate meeting. Through work Superior was doing with Hoar Construction, Drennen met a consultant named Leroy Morrow, founder of Basic Lean, Inc. Morrow helps major corporations convert traditional manufacturing processes to lean systems by following the objectives advocated in The Toyota Way.

Previously, Superior only did stick-built work, but to be more lean, they now prefabricate everything. The company also underwent a complete paradigm shift—changing everything from the way they transport materials (everything is on wheels) to their logo.

CBO met with Drennen at his new office situated next to the $40 million dollar Children’s Hospital project they’re working on in Birmingham, Ala. We wanted to find out the challenges involved in remaking a company into a lean operation. Here’s what Drennen had to say.

“Whenever you put people and processes together, there is opportunity for waste,” Drennen says. He explains that at its core, lean can be summarized as an approach to maximize value and minimize waste—defects and rework, excessive processing, unnecessary motion, over production, etc.

In MEP trades alone, studies show that up to 57 percent of costs can be attributed to waste, Drennen says. “If most owners knew what they were paying for, they simply wouldn’t pay it.”

As part of their effort to eliminate waste, Superior decided to create a functional mock-up in their loft-like warehouse building by prefabbing an entire hospital room. Initially, some thought this pre-planning was a waste of time. “It didn’t come without some pain and gnashing of teeth,” Drennen says.

They took every detail into account– the drywall crew even framed the room. As a result, they found that the insulation specs were off, which saved at least $5,000. And though the project is not yet complete, the company anticipates a savings of approximately $1 million because of incremental solutions like this.

Prefabbing also allows Superior to refresh estimating assumptions, providing real-time cost controls and the ability to update real-time As-Built Reports.

Their use of BIM (building information technology) played an integral part in becoming a lean organization. With BIM’s data-rich models, every pipe can be labeled, and every clash can be detected prior to fabrication, saving time and resources.

With the help of third-party software, Superior uses BIM to coordinate with other trades on the timing of the project. They have also installed a 55-inch screen at the jobsite that allows the workers to see BIM in action. “What we needed to do was to bring the power of BIM to the jobsites,” Drennen says. (An added benefit: BIM has become a big selling point as owners realize the building maintenance benefits available.)

Beyond these core strategies, Superior seeks out innovative ways to train their workforce. Lean coordinator Rodney King maintains a teachable spirit, traveling from Canada to California to learn from lean trail blazers. This is how they learned about the Trimble Total Station, the equivalent of having a robot on staff that can be operated by an apprentice and lay out 200 points a day, substituting for a two-man surveying crew.

In addition, they look for ways to eliminate unnecessary motion. “We want our plumbers to work like surgeons, to do plumbing only. So we hired material handlers to deliver supplies to them,” Drennen says.

Recently, they began working with the McWhorter School of Building Science at Auburn University in conjunction with Knaack to create a new job box for organizing tools that will replace the need for rifling through a cluttered toolbox.

Every day at Superior presents a chance to improve processes. “In Japanese culture, mistakes are seen as opportunities,” Drennen says, explaining that in Toyota plants, any employee can sound an alarm when he observes a quality issue. It’s called pulling the andon, an actual cord strung along the production line.

By definition, a lean company is relatively small, but that has not stopped Superior from catching the attention of owners on large healthcare projects. Perhaps Steve Jobs put it best when he said, “It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

Construction Business Owner, December 2011