Hartela: 20% shorter lead time and takt implemented across projects

Results

✅ Faster lead times across all residential projects: The best projects improved by around 20% within just one year, reaching below target duration.

✅ 1,100 apartments completed between 10/2024–11/2025: Improved lead times meant that Hartela produced most houses in Finland over 12 months.

✅ Lower costs: Halving takt time from 8h → 4h → 2h significantly reduced labour costs in the takt phase on every cycle.

✅ Takt production successfully rolled out across all residential construction: Nearly 100% of site management would choose the new takt model over the traditional approach.

✅ Fewer disruptions and faster reactions: Immediate visibility into quality and deviations.

✅ Lower financing costs + months faster access to revenue for developers.

✅ Metrics and analytics for company leadership: Full transparency into projects and a unified picture of true progress.

Challenge

When market conditions worsened, Hartela realised that something needed to change — fast.

The strategic priorities became:

• Industrialised construction
• Increasing the level of prefabrication
• Shortening lead times

But a new bottleneck emerged: success would require daily and even hourly planning and control on site instead of traditional weekly planning.

In other words, they needed a new level of grip, and real-time visibility into project progress and roadblocks.

Solution

In 2024, Hartela visited Sitedrive and SiteFactory sites where takt production was already being implemented successfully. These visits confirmed that the model works in practice, not just on paper.

Based on these insights, Hartela introduced several key changes:

• Hartela’s own takt-based production strategy. A company-wide operating model starting from early project planning. Implementation included comprehensive training, communication, and the creation of internal support networks.
  
  
• Production planning and management in Sitedrive at the hour and day level.  One schedule principle enables precise control of work, real-time visibility into site activities, and effective use of data.
  
  
• Bringing workers into interior phases via SiteFactory. The focus shifted from contract management to people management.
  
  
• Tracking actual progress directly on-site via Sitedrive Mobile, ensuring up-to-date visibility into execution at all times.
  
  
• Using data to identify issues. Disruptions, bottlenecks, and obstacles are identified quickly, and learnings are transferred to upcoming projects.
  
  
• Increasing prefabrication, for example, with bathroom modules and other prefabricated elements.

The transformation was, above all, a shared success for Hartela. The model would not have worked without active involvement from the entire organisation — site teams, supervisors, and leadership committing to daily and hourly-level execution.

Now that the model’s effectiveness has been proven in apartment building projects, Hartela is expanding these lessons to other types of projects as well.

Examples of Hartela projects using Sitedrive

About Hartela

Hartela is a family-owned company founded in 1942 with annual revenues of around €300 million. Operating as a main contractor, Hartela builds projects across Finland.