“We Should Be Good for Thursday” Isn’t a Promise
Updated: Sep 25
ISSUE 14 · SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
Most of what gets written down as a commitment on your job was never a commitment.
Hal Macomber and Greg Howell wrote a paper for the 2003 International Group for Lean Construction conference called “Linguistic Action: Contributing to the Theory of Lean Construction.” Their argument: we manage projects as though the work were machines executing a schedule, when the actual mechanism is people committing to each other. They borrow Fernando Flores’s definition — the work of business is making and keeping commitments. Projects, they write, “are promises — big, risky promises — to deliver.”
The useful part of that paper is a grammar. Flores, working from the philosophers J.L. Austin and John Searle, sorted workplace language into five acts, and Macomber and Howell laid them out with jobsite examples:
Declaration — creates a space of action. “We’re building a hospital here.” Not a promise.
Request — calls for a commitment. “Please deliver the submittal Thursday.” An ask, not a promise.
Promise — a commitment to provide something specific by a specific time. “You can have the crane at noon.”
Assessment — an opinion, offered with or without any basis. “We’re making good progress.”
Assertion — a statement of fact, with an offer to prove it. “All tasks were completed as promised.”
Now run your last coordination meeting through that list. A lot of what lands in the minutes as a commitment is an assessment. We should be good. That shouldn’t be a problem. We’re tracking to Thursday. Honest opinions about the future, reported up the chain as commitments because they arrived in the slot where a commitment was supposed to go.
The difference isn’t semantics. An assessment carries no obligation, so when it turns out wrong, nothing was actually broken — which is why the guy who gave it feels wronged when you come back at him, and why he’ll give you the same answer next week.
Flores called the full cycle the atomic structure of commitment: a request, a negotiation, a promise against agreed conditions of satisfaction and a date, the work, a declaration that it’s done, acceptance. Most jobsite commitments die at the negotiation, because there isn’t one. Somebody asks, somebody answers, everybody moves on — and the negotiation is where you’d have found out that the two of you meant different things by “done.”
Here’s the test worth carrying around. Their paper says a promise is reliable when the person making it can say all five of these:
I am competent to perform, or I have access to competence. I estimate it will take so much time. I have the capacity, and I’ll allocate it. I am not having a private unspoken conversation in conflict with the promise. I will be responsible — willing to clean up any mess that ensues.
The fourth one catches most of the bad ones. That’s the foreman saying yes out loud while thinking not unless the slab gets poured tomorrow. He isn’t lying. He’s answering a question he wasn’t really allowed to decline.
Which is the last piece. In the Last Planner System, every planner has the authority to say no rather than let a defective assignment move forward — the same rule Ohno applied to defective parts, which don’t get passed downstream. Macomber and Howell name both objections to it: people think it will wreck the schedule, and managers don’t like giving up the call. But a yes that couldn’t have been a no is worth nothing. Their conclusion is one line: reliable promising creates reliable workflow.
Something to consider This lives in text you already generate. Take the minutes from your last two coordination meetings, or the commitment log out of your pull plan, and hand it to an AI tool with one instruction: for every line that reads like a commitment, tell me whether it names a person, a specific deliverable, and a date — and flag the ones that are opinions dressed as commitments. The list will be longer than you expect. What the tool can’t do is the part that matters. It reads words, not rooms. A line worded perfectly by someone who got cornered in front of the owner is still not a promise, and no software hears that in a transcript.
So try this Tuesday. Take the three commitments the week actually depends on and ask, out loud and in front of everybody: who, what exactly, by when. Then listen for which verb comes back. “I will” is a promise. “We should be good” is a weather report.
Steel Market Snapshot
Mid-September 2026 — beams haven’t moved in seven weeks. Tube and freight have.
WIDE-FLANGE BEAMS $1,700/ton ▶ Flat 7 weeks · mill list Aug 3, RMS incl. | HSS & TUBE +$80/ton ▲ Sept 9 · +$220/ton since July 21 |
NYS FUEL SURCHARGE 57% ▲ from 47% · posted for Oct 1 | MILL UTILIZATION 82.3% ▲ from 78.3% · wk ending Sept 12 |
Wide-flange beams are $1,700/net ton. That’s $85.00/cwt for common sections on Nucor-Yamato’s price list dated Aug. 3, RMS included. Steel Dynamics’ Columbia City list, also dated Aug. 3, carries the identical $85.00. Both were re-checked Sept. 21; neither has been replaced. Heavier sections run $100.50/cwt (W14x16 145–283, W18x11 234–258) to $105.25 (W27x14 217–235). C15 channel $86.00, MC12/13/18 $98.75, L8 angles $96.25, S-shapes $109.75 — about $2,195/ton.
That’s seven weeks flat on the beam line, the longest hold of the year. Gerdau’s most recent beam announcement is still August, though its merchant bar book moved again in September.
Tube is a different story. Nucor Tubular raised HSS, mechanical and piling $80/ton effective immediately on Sept. 9, existing orders protected through Oct. 2. That’s the third increase since July — $60 on July 21, $80 on Aug. 7, $80 on Sept. 9. $220/ton in seven weeks, while beams sat still. If your bid carries HSS at a July number, it’s short.
Freight is the other mover. Nucor-Yamato’s truck fuel surcharge went 44% in August to 47% on Sept. 1, and the mill has already posted 57% for Oct. 1. Steel Dynamics held 44% through Sept. 15, then jumped to 51% on Sept. 16. Two weeks ago SDI was the cheaper freight of the two; today it isn’t. Same base price, two different delivered costs, and the gap keeps flipping. The raw materials surcharge barely moved: $298/ton on Aug. 18, $299 on Sept. 15.
What to watch: Labor is the near-term risk. The USW’s Sept. 18 update on U.S. Steel reports no tentative agreements, health care still the sticking point, and bargaining scheduled only through Sept. 25. The 30-day extension agreed Aug. 31 runs out around Oct. 1. Mills are running hot into it: AISI put capability utilization at 82.3% for the week ending Sept. 12, on 1,900,000 net tons, up from 78.3% the week before. On the demand side, the Dodge Momentum Index slipped 0.4% in August to 282.0, still up 4.2% year over year — but take data centers out and commercial planning is down 18.9%, a wider hole than the 16.2% in the July reading. For precon: beams are the stable number here and tube is not. Price HSS off the Sept. 9 letter, quote freight off the surcharge that will be in force when the truck rolls, and keep bid validity short until the U.S. Steel talks close. For live data, visit our Market Informer page.
Sources & Further Reading
1. Macomber, Hal, and Gregory A. Howell. “Linguistic Action: Contributing to the Theory of Lean Construction.” 11th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction, Blacksburg, Virginia, 2003. iglc.net (The grammar of action — declaration, request, promise, assessment, assertion — with the jobsite examples quoted here; the conversation for action and conditions of satisfaction; the five statements a reliable promiser can make; the Last Planner “say no” rule and its parallel to Ohno’s defective-part rule; “projects are promises — big, risky promises — to deliver”; “reliable promising creates reliable workflow.”)
2. Flores, Fernando. Management and Communication in the Office of the Future. PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1982. (The source of “the work of business is making and keeping commitments” and of the commitment cycle, cited throughout Macomber and Howell 2003.)
3. Winograd, Terry, and Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Ablex Publishing, 1986. ISBN 0893910503. (Chapter 5, the linguistic action perspective, cited by Macomber and Howell as the foundational treatment; they cite the 1987 Addison-Wesley printing.)
4. Luff, Peter. “How to Make and Secure Reliable Promises.” Lean Construction Blog, January 12, 2022. leanconstructionblog.com (Macomber’s proposal to treat projects as networks of promises; the characteristics of a reliable promise, among them public, active, voluntary and explicit; and the distinction between promises and intentions, targets, coerced agreements and contracts.)
5. Nucor-Yamato Steel Company. ASTM A992/A572-50 Price List, August 3, 2026 (replaces June 8, 2026). nucoryamato.com (All beam, channel, angle and S-shape transaction prices; pricing includes the RMS surcharge. Confirmed current as of Sept. 21, 2026.)
6. Nucor-Yamato Steel Company. Raw Material Surcharge and Fuel Surcharge. nucoryamato.com (RMS $14.90/cwt or $298/ton effective Aug. 18, 2026, and $14.95/cwt or $299/ton effective Sept. 15; truck fuel surcharge 44% for Aug. 1, 47% for Sept. 1, 57% posted for Oct. 1.)
7. Steel Dynamics, Structural & Rail Division. Beam Price List, August 3, 2026, revised Sept. 16 for truck fuel surcharge. steeldynamics.com (Same $85.00/cwt on common wide-flange sections; truck FSC 44% Sept. 1–15, 51% from Sept. 16; September railcar CFE $1.04/mile.)
8. Nucor Tubular Products. Price Announcement, September 9, 2026. nucortubular.com (“Effective immediately, Nucor Tubular Products will increase pricing on all new orders for HSS, mechanical, and piling products by US $80.00/ton”; existing orders price-protected for shipment through Oct. 2, 2026.)
9. Nucor Tubular Products. Price Announcements index. nucortubular.com (Sequence of structural announcements: July 21, Aug. 7 and Sept. 9, 2026.)
10. Gerdau Long Steel North America. Pricing Announcements. gerdau.com (Most recent beam announcement dated August 2026; a Merchants announcement dated September 2026; verified Sept. 21, 2026.)
11. American Iron and Steel Institute. Weekly Raw Steel Production, week ending September 12, 2026. steel.org (1,900,000 net tons at 82.3% capability utilization, up from 1,808,000 tons and 78.3% the prior week and 7.0% above the same week of 2025; YTD 66,537,000 net tons at 79.1%, up 5.5%.)
12. United Steelworkers. “USW USS Bargaining Update 9/18/2026.” September 18, 2026. usw.org (No tentative agreements reached; health care the top unresolved issue; bargaining scheduled through Sept. 25.)
13. United Steelworkers. “Bargaining Will Continue Past Expiration with U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs.” August 31, 2026. usw.org (30-day extensions past the Sept. 1 expiration; workers remain on the job.)
14. Dodge Construction Network. “Dodge Momentum Index Flat in August.” September 8, 2026. construction.com (DMI 282.0, down 0.4% from a downwardly revised 283.0 in July, up 4.2% year over year; commercial planning down 3.0% and institutional up 4.9% on the month; excluding data centers, the commercial segment would be down 18.9% from year-ago levels.)
Champion Steel Works — Steel you can trust.
