The Builders Game is a two-day, hands-on Lean workshop delivered on-site at your location by Luke Davies (FutureBuilder) and Michael Bonney (Productivity Improvers). Day 1 covers Lean fundamentals through real construction examples. Day 2 is the simulation — your team builds and optimises a physical production line through multiple rounds of improvement. Each round introduces a new Lean principle. It’s competitive, engaging, and the lessons stick because your team discovers them through experience, not lecture. This is the same methodology that transformed Toyota’s production system — adapted specifically for Australian residential builders.

Your team will learn to identify and eliminate the 9 wastes in construction using the I SWORE OUT framework: Inventory, Space, Waiting, Over-processing, Rework, Excessive Motion, Over-producing, Unused Creativity, and Transport. These are the hidden costs bleeding profit from every project. Beyond waste identification, your team will learn: visual management systems (shadow boards, CI boards, checklists), 5S workplace organisation (‘put stuff back better than you found it’), continuous improvement culture (daily 15-minute toolbox meetings, weekly improvement reviews), spaghetti mapping to identify non-value movement on site, standard work to reduce rework and catch problems early, and communication frameworks that transform team coordination. Most importantly, your whole team — from the apprentice to the site manager — will walk away speaking the same language about efficiency. When someone says “that’s excessive motion waste,” everyone knows what it means and how to fix it.

Pricing depends on your location, team size, and whether you want the optional follow-up coaching session. Enquire using the form on this page and we’ll send you a custom quote within 24 hours. What we can tell you: most builders say the training pays for itself within the first project after attending. When your team starts seeing the rework, the unnecessary walks, the double-handling, and the waiting time that’s been bleeding your margins for years — the return on investment is immediate.

Yes. Luke and Michael fly to your location anywhere in Australia or New Zealand. You provide the venue — a conference room, community hall, or your office works fine. We need tables and enough space for teams to work around. We bring all simulation materials, equipment, and printed resources.

The simulation requires a minimum of 17 participants to run properly. The sweet spot is 17– 20 people. This works best when it’s your core team — site managers, leading hands, carpenters, apprentices, and even admin and office staff. The more of your team who speak the same language afterward, the faster things change on site. If you have a smaller team, we can combine your workshop with another builder in your area. Get in touch and we’ll work it out.

We’ve designed The Builders Game specifically for residential construction — custom homes, renovations, and design-and-build projects. Every example, every exercise, and every application throughout the two days is construction-specific. No generic corporate training. If you’re in a related trade running your own business — plumbing, electrical, carpentry, landscaping — the principles absolutely apply. Lean works in any environment where you’re managing people, materials, and processes.

That’s exactly why we built it this way. The Builders Game doesn’t feel like a training course — it feels like a challenge. The simulation is competitive and hands-on. Even the most resistant blokes in the room get competitive by the second round. By the end of Day 2, they’re the ones suggesting improvements and calling out waste. We’ve seen this hundreds of times over 12+ years of delivery. The format works because people learn by doing, not by sitting through slides.

Everything you need. Specifically: two full days of on-site training delivered by Luke Davies and Michael Bonney. Day 1 covers Lean fundamentals — the 9 wastes, visual management, 5S, continuous improvement, communication, culture and leadership. Day 2 is the hands-on Builders Game simulation. All simulation materials, equipment, and printed resources are provided. Your team finishes with a post-workshop action plan — specific improvements they commit to implementing immediately. Optional: a follow-up virtual coaching session 4 weeks post-training to review implementation progress and troubleshoot any roadblocks.

The 9 wastes use the acronym I SWORE OUT. Each one is a type of non-value activity bleeding profit from your projects: • Inventory — ordering too much ‘just in case’. Materials sitting on site, tying up cash, risking damage, warranty ticking before installation. • Space — needing bigger sheds and containers to store materials you ‘might use on the next job.’ • Waiting — your team waiting on council, consultants, clients, materials, or instructions. Pre-construction that should take 12 weeks stretching to 12–18 months. • Over-processing — checking the checker who’s checking the checker. Triple-reviewing because you don’t trust the process. • Rework — the triple cost: money to do it, money to undo it, money to redo it. A wrong colour door. A missed spec. A handover that fell through the cracks. • Excessive Motion — every walk to the trailer for a forgotten tool costs $2–3 per minute of zero value. Map your team’s movements — it’ll look like a bowl of spaghetti. • Over-producing — starting work before you have all the information, then reworking when plans change. • Unused Creativity — your team has ideas you’re not capturing. That’s free improvement you’re leaving on the table. Worse — it kills engagement. • Transport — moving materials twice. Driving to Bunnings when a delivery would’ve saved two hours of a $100/hour carpenter’s time. During The Builders Game, your team learns to see all 9 wastes using real examples from their own projects — then practises eliminating them in the simulation.

Spaghetti mapping is one of the simplest and most powerful Lean tools. You draw lines on a site plan every time someone moves. By the end of the day, it looks like a bowl of spaghetti — revealing all the non-value movement your team does without realising. Every one of those walks costs $2–3 per minute and adds zero value to the build. The fix isn’t complicated: set up tool stations at the work face, think about which tools you’ll need before you start, use shadow boards so everything has a home. The walks drop, the output goes up, and nobody works harder — they just walk less.

5S is a workplace organisation system from Lean manufacturing: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardise, Sustain. On a building site, it translates to two simple mantras: ‘put stuff back better than you found it’ and ‘be tool ready every day.’ In practice, this means: every tool has a designated home (shadow boards). Your team sets up dedicated tool stations each morning — same tools, same layout, every job. Materials are staged in the right spot before work starts. The site stays clean and organised, which reduces movement waste, prevents damage, and improves safety. For office-based staff, we look at how many clicks in a filing system it take to find a file, and how multiple systems and apps can create wasted time.

This is one of the most important concepts your team will learn. Lean has two sides — like a coin. Side one is the tools: SOPs, checklists, 5S, standard work, visual management. These are simple to teach and implement. Side two is the culture: respect, psychological safety, active listening, the willingness to raise problems without fear. Most builders only focus on the tools. They buy the software, write the procedures, then wonder why nobody follows them. Tools without culture is just compliance. Culture without tools is chaos. You need both. The Builders Game teaches both sides.

Productivity Improvers is led by Michael Bonney, a Lean methodology specialist with 12+ years delivering hands-on training across manufacturing, construction, healthcare, education, and government organisations throughout Australia and internationally. Michael developed his expertise at Caterpillar Underground Mining in Tasmania, where he was part of the team that transformed the entire operation using Lean principles — moving from stall-build to production lines and dramatically increasing efficiency. He brings the simulation, the methodology, and over a decade of facilitation experience.

FutureBuilder is a business development platform for residential construction companies, founded by Luke Davies. Luke is a practising builder in Tasmania who runs Davies Construction — a custom home and renovation business that operates on the Lean systems he teaches. His mission is to help 10,000 builders become healthy, wealthy, and wise. FutureBuilder brings the construction lens, the builder network, and the real-world application to The Builders Game.

Your team leaves with a written action plan — specific improvements they’ve committed to implementing on their next project. This isn’t a folder of theory. It’s practical changes: setting up a CI board, running daily 15-minute toolbox meetings, implementing 5S on site, mapping one process for waste. Optionally, we offer a follow-up virtual coaching session 4 weeks after the workshop. This is a check-in to review what’s been implemented, troubleshoot any roadblocks, and keep the momentum going. The businesses that see the biggest long-term results are the ones that embed continuous improvement as a weekly habit, not a one-off event.

Lean methodology originated in Toyota’s production system and has been adopted across virtually every industry worldwide — manufacturing, healthcare (NHS, SpaceX), aerospace, logistics, and construction. Productivity Improvers have delivered Lean training for 12+ years across Australian organisations. FutureBuilder has adapted the principles specifically for residential construction, grounding every tool and framework in the realities of building houses in Australia.

Yes. The simulation at the heart of the workshop is widely known in Lean circles as the ‘Car Game’ — a proven training tool used by Productivity Improvers for over a decade. We’ve rebranded it as The Builders Game to reflect the construction-specific context and application we deliver. Same proven simulation, same methodology, same results — wrapped in a format built specifically for builders.