GIRI Error Reduction Framework pilot project

A 12-week pilot study of GIRI’s Error Reduction Framework at Graham is attempting to identify the key errors in the contractor’s concreting process, their root causes, and the behaviours required to prevent these errors occurring in the future. 

“Our rigorous non-conformance reporting is telling us we are still making avoidable errors in concrete,” Graham’s innovation director Emer Murnaghan OBE told GIRI’s members’ meeting in November. “If we put a sum against what it costs to put those errors right, we wince, because in this industry our margins are so slight. So we have to keep asking why – what is happening or not happening that leads to these errors?”

This is what the GIRI Error Reduction Framework pilot will explore, both in terms of the errors that are occurring and the reasons for them. It will also help Graham assess its operational maturity to eliminate the behaviours that lead to error and create an environment that encourages the behaviours that will prevent errors.

GIRI Error Reduction Framework

The approach to error reduction used in the pilot consists of two key components, explained Oana Sala from Expedition Engineering, which is leading the delivery of the framework and the pilot project in collaboration with Graham and GIRI. “The first is the implementation of the Error Reduction Framework to identify errors, root causes and ways to address them. The second focuses on running an error maturity assessment using the GIRI Error Maturity Matrix to evaluate the organisation’s maturity in supporting the right behaviours to reduce and prevent errors.”

The GIRI Error Maturity Matrix is based on the principle that to have the right behaviours, an organisation needs the right capabilities, opportunities and motivations. It uses the COM-B model of behaviour originally developed at University College London. “We took this model and developed a series of maturity statements – such as whether people have the required skills or knowledge to complete their tasks – which we asked around 70 people at Graham to rate out of 10. This tells us what people think and is a way to determine whether you have the right things in place within your organisation to enable the correct behaviours.”

Identifying key errors

The first stage of the pilot study (step one of the framework) at Graham is focused on identifying key errors in the concreting process with the aim of prioritising one error that has a major organisational impact. “In the second stage (step two of the framework) we will do a deep dive into this error to understand why it is happening,” said Oana.

She added that, from the start, senior leadership engagement in the pilot has been critical. “We want to keep them involved throughout and engage the company more widely to ensure this pilot project has an impact beyond one team. And when we develop interventions, we want to ensure these have leadership support and people are accountable for them.”

The project started in September and initially focused on the business case and putting costs to the errors recorded in concrete-related non-conformance reports (NCRs) before moving to the mobilisation stage in October. “It was obvious from the start that we needed to look beyond simply the type of errors in the NCRs,” said Oana. “So we asked a lot of questions about what we want to target and the way we want to do it, designed an error reduction workshop, and held a stakeholder engagement session to ensure we had the right teams engaged.”

This was followed by one-on-one sessions at a Graham site, after which it became apparent that a lot of the errors that came up were specific to that site. “We realised that the next workshops needed to be broader in scope because this is a company-wide issue and we had to ensure that the error we focus on has a company-wide impact.”

To date, the pilot project has held three workshops with more than 80 attendees to ensure these captured opinions from everyone from senior management to quality delivery teams about the most frequent and costly errors. “These were very useful for identifying those day-to-day errors, and together with one-on-one sessions, helped us identify 35 distinct errors based on the 250 that were put forward by attendees. We are now in the process of validating these, with the intention that we end up with five or six errors across processes that we will review internally and then undertake cost modelling.”

Next steps

Oana explained that the next steps, once the decision is taken on which specific errors the pilot will focus on, will be to understand the root causes via further workshops and focused discussions, and then bringing everyone together again to share lessons learned and identify the next steps for Graham, a process that will run through Q1 2025 and the next 12-week sprint.

“As part of this pilot, we have also enhanced aspects of the framework,” Oana added. “We have refined some of the error maturity statements, including confidence in speaking up, and improved the design and delivery of the workshops to accommodate diverse needs such as support for individuals with dyslexia or adaptations for colour blindness.”

Both Emer and Oana will return to a future GIRI members’ meeting to give an update on the framework pilot project.

Useful links

Watch our introductory webinar on the GIRI Error Reduction Framework.

Register your interest in implementing the framework.