Faster Customer Hand-Over with Collaborative Planning System

Introduction Intermittent handing-over (IHO) of dwelling units in any residential project across various stakeholders has been the traditional approach. This alternating cycle of handing over and taking over (HO-TO) leads to time wastage and contractual issues and extended stay at site, which can result in additional overheads. These include creating complexities over DLP (Defect Liability Period) duration and cost claims and affects adjacent ongoing activities owing to resource reallocation. This cycle can be optimised by bringing all stakeholders on a comprehensive work schedule, thus streamlining interdependence. The project under study is a residential project in Bengaluru with around 3,600 dwelling units to be constructed and handed over to the end-user over a period of four years. Need for the Study The work till customer handing over involved L&T as well as non-L&T vendors with different work scopes. The cross-organisational dependencies had a varying impact on each activity. Even after completion of L&T’s scope of work, there was a visible delay in the final handing over of the dwelling units to the customer. As this was under L&T’s scope, there was a need to closely monitor the process and identify and arrest the bottleneck. Objective To speed up the process of customer handing over by eliminating the waste in multiple HO-TO cycles. Methodology A detailed process chart was plotted to identify L&T’s dependency on other agencies’ scope of work. This enabled the team to adopt the ‘DMAIC’ strategy to improve the process by identifying the bottlenecks and arresting the same by virtue of discussions in the Big Room (progress review) meetings. M: Measure – current ratio of L&T scope completion to customer handing over ratio (L/HO) was found to be 0.01; i.e. 1%; and switches and sockets – 72 per cent This is wrt to Process Map for Handing Over Info graphic it is there in the layout A: Analyse – the analysis was done with the process chart in the internal progress reviews. The same was then extended to the project-level Big Room meetings I: Improve – a more rigorous tracking of cross-organisational scopes facilitated faster project delivery. All design-related and intermittent HO-TO processes were sped up, which in turn escalated the overall cycle. The L/HO ratio increased to 0.33, i.e. 33 per cent, as H1 and 62 per cent as H2 (improvement of about 30 per cent over a period of six months consecutively for a year compared to past projects) C: Control – the refined system of project monitoring was implemented and used for faster customer handing over. An efficient and impartial display of the project status and collaborating for a more effective way of cross-organisational collaboration led to a win-win situation. Exceptional improvement in switches and sockets works facilitated a smoother and faster customer handing over. Conclusion The collaboration and dynamic project planning facilitated the teams to improve the final handing-over rate from 150 to 211 dwelling units per month. Process Mapping is a very useful tool to understand the process and identify and eliminate waste. The Collaborative Planning System highlights the opportunities to schedule project planning in a stage-wise manner by dynamically updating project planning and sharing ideas among all the stakeholders highlights the opportunities to schedule project planning in a stage-wise manner with the dynamically updating the project planning and share ideas among all the stakeholders. About the authors: K Ravichandran is Project Director, L&T - Buildings and Factories; A Subramanian is Project Manager - Finishes, L&T - Buildings and Factories; and V Ramani is Planning Manager at L&T - Buildings and Factories.