Bouten Construction recently made a progressive business move not often seen among Eastern Washington construction firms, but more common among larger companies across the nation: it hired a director of performance and innovation.

“We’ve come to a point now where we’ve grown a little bit in size,” said Tony Spratling, who was appointed to the new position in January after six years working with Bouten, first as an engineer, and more recently in project management roles.

“(We) need higher-level strategic leadership so that as we grow and find better ways to do things … that we are still providing a consistent project at the end of the day to our customers,” he said. “It’s strategic guidance to help us incrementally advance.”

The Spokane-based firm, which has an office in Richland, has built a number of high-profile projects in the Tri-Cities, including the expansion of the Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, three Kennewick elementary schools and Kadlec’s six-story patient tower in Richland.

Spratling said the new position is a “strategic move” that he and company President Bill Bouten discussed over the past few years as the company has increasingly adopted the so-called lean approach.

In the wake of the economic recession, Bouten and his team were looking for a way to further distinguish the company in a saturated market.

The answer came in 2011 in the form of lean.

“Lean principles really started in manufacturing … it’s about eliminating steps and finding efficiency and less waste.  Focusing on workflow and relationships,” said Spratling, adding that traditional approaches to construction are “loaded full of waste.”

According to the Lean Enterprise Institute — a think tank that conducts research and shares resources about lean thinking and practice — the principles are:

• Determine what is valuable from the standpoint of the customer as it applies to process, services or products.
• Identify all the steps in the value stream for each part of process, services and products, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value for the customer.
• Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer.
• As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next step in the process.
• As value is determined, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced. Begin the process again and continue until a state of perfection is reached.

Spratling said the key is incremental improvement.

“It’s not always the big changes — even if it’s just doing one step better, as long as you are continually moving forward and everyone is working that way together, then you’re not staying stagnant in the same place doing things the same way they’ve always been done.”

“Construction was never going to be the same again,” said Bouten, referring to post-recession market conditions. “The market needed to wake up in a very concrete way to the issue of waste. Everything from the design process to the construction process in the field and how we close out the process.”

Now, nearly 10 years post-recession, the local construction sector faces an overwhelming demand for contractors and their services as the Tri-Cities and surrounding communities continue to grow and flourish.

Bouten found itself up to a new challenge: keeping competitive in the face of a breakneck-pace market filled with numerous competitors looking for a piece of the action, while still delivering the same level of quality the company has prided itself on for more than 70 years.

“As the construction costs continue to rise and timelines are getting tighter, companies need a way to implement projects quickly and efficiently. The director of performance and innovation role is Bouten’s answer to the constraints of the construction industry,” said Jessica Wade, account director at DH, a marketing firm that works with the company.

“You can only can go so far organically without someone to focus everyone onto a strategic path,” Spratling said.

“That was a huge commitment from a cost standpoint,” Bouten said. “However, we feel we can cover (Spratling’s) costs through savings throughout the company and projects. It was a very important investment.”

As Wade explained, “The company needed a position with the sole purpose of ensuring lean gets woven into every project and into everyday processes — and it’s changing the way Bouten does business.”

Bouten Construction began in the early 1930s as a father-and-son outfit building houses, and gradually worked its way into the commercial sector.

Today, Bouten is strictly a commercial contractor operating primarily in northern Idaho, Eastern Washington and the surrounding areas building medical buildings, workspaces, research labs and facilities, college and university buildings, public school and civic/community projects, and private projects, such as banks.

Grandson Bill Bouten has been managing the family business since the 1990s and employs 62 salaried staff (12 of whom are in Tri-Cities) as well as a fluctuating number of craft laborers and carpenters.

In 2015, Bouten’s volumes exceeded $100 million for the first time in the company’s history.

Spratling said the adoption of lean principles has led to significant positive outcomes for Bouten in alignment with the company’s mission: “The steadfast pursuit of better ways to build places that matter and relationships that last.”

“Lean isn’t just marketing or a sales pitch for us, it’s the culture we’re trying to build in our company and with trade partners,” Spratling said. “A culture of continuous improvement. When everyone is actively engaged in that, that’s where the biggest opportunities are.”

“We’re engaging our employees and asking them to look at their process and ask why,” he added.

He said one of the biggest things the lean method has contributed to Bouten’s approach is “it’s helped us to really understand who our customers are a little better so that we can understand what’s important to them.”

Doug Carl, capital projects director at Kennewick School District, oversaw Bouten’s construction of the Cascade,

Sunset View and Lincoln elementary schools in Kennewick. He said he appreciated the round-table approach Bouten adopted as a part of the lean method.

“I think any time you engage in an activity to make yourself better, that says a lot about your company right there,” Carl said. “And then to include us. It was helpful just to understand what they’re doing. It was enough of a participation that I knew where they were going and what they wanted to do.”

Carl said his experience with Bouten has been great. “They were great teammates, good to work with. In a large construction project like that, you’ve got a whole bunch of different subcontractors that impact each other and the timing,” he said.

He said Bouten’s use of lean principles ensures all parties involved understand they’re dependent on one another and must hold each other accountable.

“It’s been a challenge (getting everyone on board),” Bouten said. “There’s been some resistance, but we’re past that and moving forward and seeing good results. It’s a little bit of a challenge when other team members outside Bouten are not as committed to lean.”

Spratling said restandardization projects are the answer to some of those disconnects. He said Bouten holds meetings with suppliers and subcontractors to ask the question, “How can our process change to make your end of the process more efficient?”

“We’re not just looking internally, but looking at everything as a whole,” he said.

“The overall story is we’re taking lean and really pushing the boundaries with innovation and all with the intent of finding ways to deliver projects more cost-effectively and more timely and just with better outcomes. That’s what this is about for us,” Bouten said.

For those looking to integrate lean principles, Bouten said they are applicable to most types of businesses. “Anywhere there’s waste. You have to look at operations from a waste standpoint, and you have to be really committed to it and look at it methodically,” he said.

Bouten Construction: 295 Bradley Blvd., Suite 202, Richland; 509-943-7677; boutenconstruction.com.