Glenn Ballard

Glenn entered the construction industry as a pipefitter’s helper, transitioned to construction engineering, and in 1980 was named Manager of Productivity Improvement for a construction division of Brown and Root. He subsequently became an internal management consultant with Bechtel Petroleum, working on all aspects of project delivery, and supporting projects in other Bechtel divisions, such as the South Texas Nuclear Plant. He began a management consulting business in 1987. In parallel, he began lecturing on productivity and quality improvement at the University of California Berkeley in 1989, and completed the transition from industry to academia in 2005 when he was named Research Director for the university’s Project Production Systems Laboratory. He co-founded the International Group for Lean Construction in 1993, the Lean Construction Institute in 1997, the Project Production Systems Laboratory in 2005, and Lean in the Public Sector in 2007. Glenn retired from his position as Research Director in 2019, but continues in a support role as a Research Associate for the Project Production Systems Laboratory.

With lots of help from others, Glenn developed the Last Planner System and Target Value Delivery, two key Lean Construction methods, both of which he continues to improve. A new Current Process Benchmark for the Last Planner System was published in 2021, and Glenn is now leading research groups to develop better methods for use in Target Value Delivery: conceptual estimating (estimating cost at completion prior to design) and using trade-off curves in aligning potentially conflicting stakeholder requirements. These will be incorporated in a future update of the Current Process Benchmark for Target Value Delivery.

Glenn has a long list of publications (see Google Scholar), many of which are available at the website of the International Group for Lean Construction (www.iglc.net).