I love some surprises — unexpected
snow on Christmas Eve or old college
mates calling out of the blue. But surprises
on a construction site? No
thanks. I hate them. Construction
"unknowns" consume time, energy,
and profit. And nothing is more humbling
than bringing five
subcontractors to a halt after spending
a week coercing them to hurry up.
After years of designing and building,
my partner and I realized that
carpenters are only as good as their
tools and general contractors are only
as good as their systems. So we got
serious about planning.
As my partner Marianne put it,
what we needed was "a case of boredom":
a scheduling system designed to
make our work brainless. We figured
the