Also at the CURT meeting, Dave Kievet, group vice president of The Boldt Co., Appleton, Wis., added that his company is having great success with lean. "There's no longer any one group that has all the answers," he said. "By pooling everybody's resources, we also pull in their knowledge base to come up with best practices."

Gregory Howell, president and co-founder of the Lean Construction Institute, agreed. "I think you're going to see lean used everywhere more," he said. As government bodies change their restrictions on procurement procedures, public projects will use more lean delivery techniques, Howell added.

"It's hard for elected officials in times of budget crunches to continue to hold fast to those traditional procurement rules when they can get more for less."