Elevate Construction

Jason and Brandon Montero record another long session for the upcoming book Elevating Construction Surveyors. They walk through ten sections of the manuscript live, sharing the stories, principles, and applications behind tolerance, measurement, double checks, best practices, the data collector, traversing, as builts, topographic mapping, two person crew flow, and intelligent exhibits. Each section follows the format of story or reflection, quote, and application or challenge, giving listeners a real preview of how the book teaches surveyors to think, plan, and execute at a master craftsman level.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why envisioning task tolerance is the first decision a surveyor makes on any work

• The hidden truth that "perfectly calibrated" still has built in inherent error

• Why everything you do should have a double check, including the basics

• How best practices get built by combining instrument capability, double checks, and waste elimination

• Why learning the data collector is the first step toward learning CAD

• Why applied traversing remains the only way to bring multi building site control together

• Why drafting on your own work makes you a better field surveyor

• How a two person crew creates flow when both people are working in parallel

• The discipline of creating intelligent exhibits that anyone on the project can understand

Surveying isn't a checklist trade. It's a thinking trade. Build the standards, do the double checks, traverse the site, and let your exhibits speak for themselves.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason closes out the year with a reflective episode framed around A Christmas Carol and the question of what your own Christmas story really is. He walks through the year end ritual of reviews, bonuses, taxes, and tax projections, then pivots to the deeper work of remembering why your company, team, family, or project exists in the first place. He shares the recent leadership conversation at Elevate Construction about whether to keep giving away Miro boards and free content, the inspiration that came from praying about it, and the realization that giving really is who Elevate is. He closes with Gordon B. Hinckley's quote reframed for the Elevate philosophy and a charge to focus on becoming rather than having.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why the post Christmas depression goes away when the future inspires you more than the past celebrates

• Patrick Lencioni's thematic goal and defining goals framework for the year ahead

• Dean Graziosi's discipline of asking why seven times to find the real reason your company exists

• How Elevate's purpose ("to build people in construction to build families") shaped a recent giving decision

• Why Gordon B. Hinckley's standing on the summit of your life quote captures the whole goal

• Why becoming beats having, every time, in business and in life

Find your Christmas story. Live it. Stand on the summit of your life one day and look back on a trail of accomplishment, not a slew of wasted energies.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason welcomes Tess Fyalka, Director of Employee Development and Engagement at O'Shea Builders, and Josh Frye, Assistant Director, for a deep conversation on how O'Shea has built one of the most respected leadership and team development cultures in construction. They walk through the deliberate recruitment and onboarding process, the commitment to learning at every level (including the president, the VP, and the director of business strategies), the use of DISC for behavioral understanding, the Leadership Circle 360 for development, and the rich library of books that underpin O'Shea's continuous improvement journey. The conversation lands on what it really means to respect the nature of people and why patience and persistence are the only honest way to build a learning organization.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why intentional recruitment and onboarding (3 weeks to 12 months) sets the foundation for everything else

• The respect for the nature of people: meeting each person where they actually are, not where you wish they were

• How psychological safety lets people surface what isn't working and offer real improvements

• Why a true learning organization needs leaders who are themselves fanatical learners

• The book stack: Edmondson, Wiseman, Lencioni, Maxwell, Schein, Stavros and Torres, Kotter, Dweck

• Why behavioral tools like DISC are pieces of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle

Tess and Josh leave us with the two Ps: persistence and patience. Continuous improvement is continuous. The work never ends, and the journey is the point.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason closes out the six part production control series with the final pillar: how to actually manage production using the underlying laws of construction work. He walks through the law of bottlenecks, cycle time optimization, the law of the effect of variation, Kingman's formula, and Little's law, then ties them together with the daily habits that put them to work. He closes with a powerful reflection: the entire industry is too focused on talking about when work will happen and not enough on how to make it happen. That single shift is the heart of Takt control.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The law of bottlenecks: optimize one process bottleneck and the next one appears

• Why cycle time optimization is a plan, do, check, act loop run by the whole crew

• How limiting work in process and finishing as you go keep the team capable of improvement

• The labor productivity boosters: less context switching, consistent leaders and crews, right team size, no manpower spikes

• Why Little's law and right batch sizes make every other improvement possible

• The closing reflection: high functioning teams spend their meetings on how, not when

When meetings stop revolving around when and start revolving around how, you've reached Takt control. That's the destination.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason continues the production control series with part five on installing with a quality product. He opens with a sharp clarification a colleague asked for: the real difference between throwing manpower at a problem and swarming. Then he walks through why quality is not the opposite of production, why finishing as you go is the right kind of production, and how four practical pillars (quality at the source, finishing as you go, standard work, and prefabrication) become the engine of a real production system on any project.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The clear distinction between throwing manpower at a problem and swarming with existing resources

• Why production and quality aren't a trade off, they're the same thing

• What quality at the source actually means: any worker can stop the line and call leadership

• Why finishing as you go (all conduit, back boxes, putty pads, screws, labels) is the only true production

• The dream of every crew having a beautifully formatted feature of work board with QC checklists

• Why prefabrication is really about vetting problems early in a safer, better environment

You can't push your way to production. You install with quality at the source, finish as you go, and let prefabrication absorb the roadblocks before they hit the field.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason continues the production control series with part four on roadblock removal. He makes a bold claim: the industry has no business talking about percent plan complete until it can demonstrate a fanatical, visual roadblock removal system. He then walks through the five pillars that make roadblock removal actually work, from using buffers and seeing deviations, to running real make ready lookahead conversations, to maintaining color coded roadblock maps in Bluebeam, to managing buffers as a finite resource that has to last to the end of the project.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why a Takt plan lets you see, remove, and absorb roadblocks in a way CPM cannot

• Why a five day Takt locked between Monday and Saturday prevents single day buffer use

• How to run real make ready lookahead conversations that go beyond "is it ready?"

• How roadblock maps in Bluebeam with color coded polygons make blockages visible at a glance

• Why project leaders need to be chemically addicted to checking the roadblock board first thing every morning

• Why managing buffers across the life of the project is just as important as using them

Without a fanatical roadblock removal system, Takt planning can't function. Build the system, work it daily, and let buffers do their job.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason continues the production control series with part three on leveling work. He opens with a clear contrast between the old way of pushing productivity (manpower, overtime, larger batches, frantic motion) and the lean way of building capacity (preparation, flow, rhythm, removing roadblocks). Then he walks through the histogram problem on construction projects and lays out the five concrete tactics for leveling work that keep crews, materials, information, and equipment all moving at a consistent pace instead of spiking and crashing.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The difference between pushing productivity and creating capacity

• The histogram problem: why spikes in worker counts overburden every supporting system

• The frosting bag analogy for choosing a bigger nozzle instead of squeezing harder

• Tactic one: adjusting Takt zones to balance complexity and effort

• Tactic two: adjusting work packages and work steps to keep worker counts consistent

• Tactic three: leveling information flow with designers and approvals

• Tactic four: leveling worker counts crew by crew

• Tactic five: bringing materials and equipment just in time using supermarkets and staging yards

Leveled work keeps the team capable of doing the things that keep projects running. Spikes break the system. Smooth flow keeps it alive.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason continues the six part production control series with part two on creating stability. He walks through the foundational conditions any project needs before any Takt, scrum, or last planner system can actually work: a clean, safe, and organized site; a healthy and balanced team; aggressive delay management; trade partner ownership of geographical areas; held start dates; a real meeting system; and a deliberate choice between Takt control alone, scrum, or last planner as the weekly engine. Without these in place, no production system can take hold.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why clean comes before everything else, even safety in practical sequence

• How a dirty site hides production problems, morale issues, and unsafe conditions

• Why team balance and health must be graded at least monthly

• Why holding start dates instead of pulling work forward creates real stability

• How geographical area control assigned to trade partners protects the work and reduces damage

• The meeting cadence: strategic planning, weekly tactical, foreman daily huddle, worker daily huddle

Stability is the foundation. Without a clean, safe, organized, balanced, and well managed project, no production system can stand on it.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason kicks off a six part series on production control, also known as Takt control, the term he picked up from Marco Binninger and Janosch Dlouhy in Germany. This first episode focuses on the role of the superintendent and foreman in actively controlling production in the field. He shares the meeting system that creates the environment for Takt control, then walks through six concrete behaviors that the simulation work with German lean teams keeps confirming as the universal pattern for increased flow on any project, regardless of scheduling method.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The integrated meeting system that creates the environment for Takt control to live in

• Why staging materials ahead of the Takt time is one of the highest leverage habits in the field

• Why preparing other areas during the buffer is smarter than pulling next week's work forward

• How improving handoffs requires foremen to think like customers on both sides of the line

• Why matching Takt zones with lay down and staging areas prevents treasure hunts

• How swarming problem areas keeps flow from collapsing under bottlenecks

Imagine a NASCAR pit crew. They don't run cars back to back. They prepare, brief, stage, and explode into action. That's what Takt control looks like in the field.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw

Jason flags a trap he sees on jobs all over the country: schedule extensions that look like wins but quietly destroy the project financially. Owners grant extra time, supers and PMs celebrate, and nobody asks who's paying for two extra months of general conditions, trailers, dumpsters, porta potties, and salaried staff. Jason walks through why every schedule extension needs a parallel cost analysis, and why the right strategy always loops schedule, cost, quality, production, team health, and owner satisfaction together. He also shares an update on his upcoming Lean Fundamentals in Construction course launching with Niklas Modig's worldwide construction excellence program.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why teams celebrate schedule extensions without ever calculating the financial cost

• How general conditions and general requirements get tied to a specific project duration in the bid

• Why two extra months can mean two extra months of trailers, dumpsters, porta potties, and salaried staff

• Why owners sometimes grant extra time knowing the burn rate falls on the contractor

• The right reflex: any schedule change triggers an immediate cost analysis

Schedule and cost have to move together. An extension isn't a win until you've checked who's actually paying for it.

If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free, and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two 😊).

Also, here are links to our YouTube Channels:

· Jason Schroeder YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xpRYvrW5Op5Ckxs4vDGDg

· LeanTakt YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/leanTakt

· LeanSuper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQDevqQP19L4LePuqma3Fg/featured

· LeanSurvey YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ztn3okFhyB_3p5nmMKnsw