This week-long annual meeting for people working in the building industry includes professionals from the building trades, architecture and engineering firms, construction managers and building owners. One question that will be asked, more than once, is “what is the cost benefit of Lean Construction?” Is it 20% less expensive? Is it 40% faster? We want the facts; the metrics!

I used to be one of those people. My cost estimating background told me it must be possible to benchmark standard construction costs and schedules and then build a catalog of Lean Construction experience for which to compare.

Silly me, not because to perform the task adequately given the variability between project costs and schedules without introducing the Lean component requires more data points than available, though that is the case. Silly me because it is a silly question.

At the heart of Lean is the drive to learn to work better. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? If you run and you want to run better, whether that means for you run faster or farther, do you research the metrics to prove to yourself that running a bit faster or farther tomorrow than the last time you ran will help you run better?

If you are in the building industry and want ideas on how to be a bit better tomorrow than yesterday there will be about a thousand people in Boston next week that will share with you what they are doing. If you can join them, find a friend that did attend and find out what they learned. Will you be 20%, 40% better by adopting a Lean Project Delivery method. Maybe eventually. Certainly you will be better with each day, week and project – and that’s what counts.