5S at GEODIS Park

Matt Steffel, Lean Innovation Manager, Mortenson:

5S is being intentional about how we organize, maintain, and clean our job site. Everybody's involved with it. It's not just a Mortenson program to police the site all the time. Everybody has to be bought in and everybody has to be doing it.

Jeff Carroll, Project Engineer, Mortenson:

5S deals with safety, 5S deals with the field and it also deals before it actually gets to the site. And so that deals with procurement and prefabrication and kitting before you're actually getting to work in an area for the crew.

Tony Hipps, Foreman, Jollay Masonry:

5S is important, like I say, because you're leaving a clean area. There's always a safety aspect on every project. And with this being such a big project, it's very important to make sure when you leave an area in the next trade comes in, there's no debris left behind. And again, it's nice to go to an area and start our scope of work without other trade debris in the way. It just makes for a nice, clean work environment. And on a project this big, I think that’s essential.

Cris Goddard, Project Manager, Nashville Machine Company:

I think it's really allowed open communication between trade partners, when a lot of times, at job sites other than this, you don't get that open line of communication. These guys are so used to, in the construction market, things being in their way. And by managing that on the front end, by eliminating waste material or extra material on site, it leads to those guys being able to actually go do their job during the day and they're very proud to be a part of that environment.

Trevor Delong, General Superintendent, Mortenson:

It creates ownership with the craft out here and they appreciate that. I've had multiple people come and thank our team and myself for how passionate we are about having a clean work area.

Mike Green, Superintendent, ArchKey Technologies:

Anybody can walk around and tell you that this is the cleanest job site they've ever been on, and this is probably my favorite job I've ever been on. When you have clutter and you have things sitting around and you're not meeting the commitments with what you set up for your 5S, that's where you get too many people in one spot, too many things going on, things get rushed, and that safety aspect of the job really starts to be at a higher risk.

Jeff Carroll, Project Engineer, Mortenson:

We have full buy-in on this job site. This job site’s culture—Everybody understands and knows what the expectations are and you can see it. The job site speaks for itself with it.

Brandon “Cotton” Talton, Foreman, Nashville Machine Company:

It's been quite different because of this 5S institution. 5S, to me, is basically making your job easier. And it's also keeping stuff mobile so that you're not constantly having to trip over things and stuff that's just in your way.

Melanie Traylor, Field Engineer, Mortenson:

I think that having good 5S adds a sense of professionalism to the craft and to the work that we're putting in place. It looks clean. It looks like we're ready to present it to anyone at any time. And it makes people want to show you the work that they're doing. It doesn't look like a mess. You know, you don't want to show guests around a messy house, but they want to show people the work that they're doing because it's clean, it looks professional and it's ready to be presented at any time.

All:

I would choose it day in and day out. 5S all the way. I would choose 5S any day. I definitely want 5S on every project I work on.