Assuring quality through clear visual management

Ahead of its essential role in the 2012 Olympics, London’s Farringdon station underwent a major transformation. Costain led the award winning remodeling project which was completed in time for the Grade 2 listed station to present its new look and increased capacity to sports fans from all over the world. Post-games as London and its transport network congratulated themselves on a job well done, the project team got back to work, tackling a considerable list of outstanding works required to fully complete the project. Some 3500 issues had to resolved, and the challenge for Costain was devising a workable system to manage, deliver and quality assure the works within a 6 month deadline. RW’s Charlie Wigzell worked to support Costain to develop a practical and highly visual Lean solution:

“When we were brought on to support the project, job records were held on a number of different spreadsheets, the first challenge was to get the information off computers and then create a simple visual system for the controlled delivery of finished DOWLs. Importantly the system had to track each job through to sign off, meeting the demands of the quality assurance process which involved sign off at multiple levels, from sub-contractor through to Network Rail and Thameslink. Our solution was a very practical application of Lean theory – all the information was kept together in one place, anyone who needed to work on a job or know its progress could easily access it and understand at a glance where the work was up to through the process and what action was required next. The approach proved effective with just 50 DOWLs left outstanding at the end of the period.”