Читать книгу The Construction Technology Handbook - Hugh Seaton - Страница 11

Technology of any sort is based on some underlying effect, some realization that nature, or human nature, works a certain way. There is some effect, or phenomenon, that makes the technology work. So we build a process, or a tool, or a machine, that exploits this effect to make human work better in some way. Often, these technologies make impossible things possible.

For example, think of a hammer. We don't think of this as a technology, but it is. Here are some of the effects in the world that a modern, handheld hammer exploits:

1 Every force creates an equal and opposite force (Newton's third law, the same one used in rockets)

2 Steel is hard

3 Cold rolled, high carbon steel is very hard

4 Metal is harder than wood or gypsum

5 The end of a pendulum is faster than the handle

6 Force applied to a given area gets multiplied when transferred to a smaller area

All of that in a simple hammer. Think then of what a hammer does: it uses motion from a human arm to transfer force from one steel object, the hammer's head, into another steel object, the nail. This force then drives the nail through whatever material is being worked on.

Let's take a moment and think about what you do, all day long. Whether it's putting electrical conduits in place, managing a team of mechanical contractors, managing a jobsite as a superintendent, or managing an entire job as the project manager – everything you do works because of some effect in the world. Some of those effects are very human, like ego, pride, and a desire to create something real in the world. And you learn through your career to use those effects to motivate, manage, or just navigate other people. For example, you learn to check up on people frequently because you know that accountability makes people more focused on the job – an effect you leverage to get the job done.

Managing is a technology every bit as complex as artificial intelligence – in fact, as someone who has done both I can tell you managing can be harder because it is a never‐ending balancing act. Management as a practice has evolved over time to use different methods, each using a different effect in the world – we used to rely solely on hierarchy and power, which relied on a fear of losing one's job. But we realized that stifles critical information flows and causes worker disengagement. So we've swapped the underlying effect to one of a feeling of involvement and achievement, which is what Lean Construction is focused on. Changing the effect a technology is based on can be very powerful.

Back to our hammer example, what happens if we separate the work to be done, driving the nail into the wall, from how it gets done, the centrifugal force of a swung piece of steel hitting a stationary nail head? What if instead we put the nail in a tube connected to compressed air, and “shoot” the nail into the wall?

We've changed the effect being exploited to get the same work done, from a human arm swing to mechanical air pressure release, and in the process have dramatically improved the efficiency of our nail‐driving workers, significantly improved their ability to keep driving nails without fatigue or arm injury, and hopefully spared their thumbnails.