In a 2017 Lean Construction Institute Congress recap, five guests kept returning to the work that should happen before a team commits to an answer. Mackenzie Skene, Muhsin Lihony, John Haymaker, Steven Wilson, and Howard Ashcraft each approached that work from a different role.
The common concern was not a lack of design skill. It was the risk of moving into design before the owner, affected people, constraints, and measures were clear enough to guide the choice.
John Haymaker mapped the decision before the answer
John Haymaker described a workflow his team called design space construction. It began by identifying the major decisions ahead. The team then mapped decision makers, affected stakeholders, gatekeepers, and the knowledge needed in the room.
Only after that did the workflow move into performance measures, alternatives, analysis, tradeoffs, and a written rationale. The record showed who participated, what concerned them, what they reviewed, and why the final choice was made.
John also named the habit the workflow was trying to interrupt. Designers are trained to use experience and intuition to reach a promising answer quickly. He said designers should “not pick up that fat pencil just yet” while they understood the problem and its constraints more fully.
The recap connected tools to the way people work together
After the first three interviews, I summarized what I had heard from Mackenzie Skene, Muhsin Lihony, and John Haymaker: the guests connected Lean tools with team building and collaborative work.
Mackenzie described a mix of process tools, full participation, and a safe environment for conflict and learning. Muhsin discussed measurable choices, project reviews, and a shared understanding of client value. The methods differed, but both examples placed tools inside a working culture rather than treating a tool as the culture.
Howard Ashcraft separated unfamiliarity from measured risk
When the focus later moved to delivery risk, Howard Ashcraft described how a new method can feel risky simply because it is different. He argued that teams often compare change with an unmeasured picture of the current system. He also described anticipated regret, where fear of blame can stop someone from making a different choice before the result is known.
That point adds a reason for keeping the decision rationale visible. A written record does not prove that the team chose perfectly. It does make the basis of the choice available for review instead of asking the owner to rely on memory or confidence alone.
Steven Wilson brought the owner's time horizon into the room
Steven Wilson described the design and construction team's involvement as a short part of an owner's much longer commitment to a facility. In his view, agreement should come before drawing because later changes become expensive once the work is fixed in place.
For one upcoming decision, open the decision note before design work begins. Record the accountable owner, affected people, gatekeepers, available knowledge, performance measures, alternatives reviewed, and the reason for the choice. Review the note with the people who have to act on it before the preferred answer becomes difficult to challenge.
The value of that decision record is modest but operationally important. It lets an owner see how a decision was reached and where new information should enter if the conditions change.
