The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

by Atul Gawande

He showed me an application called Clash Detective that ferreted out every instance in which the different specs conflicted with one another or with building regulations. “If a structural beam is going where a lighting fixture is supposed to hang, the Clash Detective turns that beam a different color on-screen,” he said. “You can turn up hundreds of clashes. I once found two thousand.” But it’s not enough to show the clash on the screen, he explained. You have to resolve it, and to do that you have to make sure the critical people talk. So the computer also flags the issue for the submittal schedule printout and sends an e-mail to each of the parties who have to resolve it. There’s yet another program, called ProjectCenter, that allows anyone who has found a problem—even a frontline worker—to e-mail all the relevant parties, track progress, and make sure a check is added to the schedule to confirm that everyone has talked and resolved the matter. When we were back at the McNamara/Salvia offices, Bernie Rouillard showed me one such e-mail he’d gotten that week. A worker had attached a digital photo of a twelve-foot steel I beam he was bolting in. It hadn’t lined up properly and only two of the four bolts could fit. Was that all right, the worker wanted to know? No, Rouillard wrote back. They worked out a solution together: to weld the beam into place. The e-mail was also automatically sent to the main contractor and anyone else who might potentially be required to sign off....