John Draper

How many projects have you been involved with that unfolded as scripted by “The Plan”?  As of yet, I haven’t been.  Yet time and again we make detailed plans with thousands of activities interconnected together in a labyrinth of logical ties.  Usually “The Plan” was prepared by a handful of “experts” that somehow were able to visualize and understand in detail how the project should be prosecuted.   We then cajole, order, beg, plead and scream at our subcontractors with dictums to get “back on schedule” or else.

Projects don’t unfold exactly as we would like because it is humanly impossible to visualize, analyze and take into account every little detail of a complex undertaking.  In other words, stuff happens that wasn’t foreseen.   Just as adding decimal places to a computation, which is easy to do on today’s calculators and computers, does not make the answer  any more accurate,  using all of the “whiz bang” functionality of today’s scheduling software does not inherently mean that we have represented the real world more accurately than before.

Here we can learn from a profession that undertakes “projects” that are extremely risky, dangerous and very uncertain.  From the Army’s Field Manual on Operations:

“Plans forecast but do not predict. A plan is a continuous, evolving framework of anticipated actions that maximizes opportunities. It guides subordinates as they progress through each phase of the operation. Any plan is a framework from which to adapt, not a script to be followed to the letter. The measure of a good plan is not whether execution transpires as planned but whether the plan facilitates effective action in the face of unforeseen events. Good plans foster initiative.”

From the same source:

“The purpose of any plan is to establish the conceptual basis for action. The plan provides a reasonably accurate forecast of execution. However, it remains a starting point, not the centerpiece of the operation. As GEN George S. Patton Jr. cautioned, “…one makes plans to fit circumstances and does not try to create circumstances to fit plans. That way danger lies.”

I will say more about planning and plans in future blogs.

There is a training principle adhered to by most distance runners that states that each workout needs to have a purpose or objective.  Are you going to work on endurance, speed, hills, etc?  Just going out and running without a purpose is known as running "junk" miles, which does nothing to make you a better runner and could lead to injury.

So, on your LPS project, are you "running junk miles"?  Are you going through the motions of the LPS without really having a purpose?  After you are proficient with the mechanics of the LPS, you should focus on an improvement objective each week.  According to Geoff Colvin in his book Talent Is Overrated, high performance is a result of "deliberate practice" and not a result of just plain hard work or innate talent.  The special kind of hard work that Colvin describes is focused on an objective and is repeated with discipline until you get it right or obtain the improvement that you were seeking.  It is not fun and usually "hurts."

If you really want to improve, stop running "junk miles" and institute a discipline of "deliberate practice" on your project.

How do you go about answering this question?  First you may ask, "What do you mean by ‘under control’?"  In my mind there are two dimensions to project control, financial and operational.  Although both of these are highly dependent on and interrelated to each other I am going to just talk about operational control in this blog.  In my view, a project is in operational control when the work that is being done is the work that should be getting done.   Okay then, what work should be getting done?  The milestone plan or high level master schedule establishes what should be happening and when on the project in order to deliver it to the client as promised.

Here is a simple way to assess your project.  Get a copy of the latest work plan, look-ahead plan, schedule or whatever you use on your project to schedule work crews.  Does the work plan support what should be done on the project for the time period in question?  Go out onto the project and observe.  On what tasks does the work plan say that crews should be working?  Are they?  Are they working on tasks which don’t appear on the work plan or should be happening in the future or should have happened in the past?

I think you will be surprised to find that your project isn’t as under control as you might have previously thought.  So what can we do to bring it under control?  The Last Planner® System, which was developed precisely because of this observation, is a methodology for bringing and keeping a project under operational control.

One of the precepts of lean manufacturing is the reduction of batch size as a means to control overproduction.   Since the concept of "overproduction" on a construction project is more difficult to grasp we tend not to pay a lot of attention to batch sizes.  This neglect can result in less than efficient production and even worse.  By batch size, I am referring to the amount of "work-in-place" that is released to the next trade. 

Here is an example from a multi-unit residential project to illustrate the point.  This project consisted of several multi-story buildings.  Each floor was framed-out with metal studs and gypsum wallboard.  As typical, the metal framer went through each floor erecting the metal studs, with the plumber and electrician following a floor or so behind with their rough installation.  As part of his installation, the plumber installed prefabricated shower units in pre-framed alcoves.  However, when he installed the shower nozzle piping, he had to do so off-center in the shower because a double wall stud assembly had been constructed dead-center behind the shower enclosure.  Since, no one was paying attention to batch sizing and the framer was ahead of the shower installation crews by several floors when this issue was discovered, instead of one or two off-centered shower heads, now there were several hundred.  If the framer had not "overproduced" framed walls and gotten so far ahead of the plumber, only one or two framed walls would have had to be changed for proper installation of the shower head and the stud layout could have been adjusted on all future walls.

The reliable workflow that results from the disciplined use of the Last Planner® System allows the project team to closely coordinate their work on the project which in turn provides the opportunity for the reduction of batch sizes.  On such a project, there would be no advantage and only disadvantages for having the framer more than a couple of days ahead of the plumber.

I have written before about the importance of make-ready planning in creating and maintaining reliable workflow on a project and establishing the discipline of setting aside a block of time each week to actually do this planning.  But how do you actually go about making work ready?  Do you follow a detailed procedure or do you just "think" about the upcoming work in your head.

Just as a pilot who has landed a plane 1000 times will use one on the 1001^st and each succeeding landing, proficient last planners will not leave make-ready planning to chance but will use a set procedure and checklist to guide them in this critical effort.  What sorts of things should the last planner be doing in order to make work ready?  First, although make-ready planning is largely a "mental activity" one should put pencil to paper in a manner akin to how we use these items in solving complex math problems.  Next, develop and follow a set procedure for doing make-ready planning.  Here is a starting point:

Week 6

• What tasks/activities are beginning in week 6?
• Review plans/specs/rfi’s and other construction documents concerning this work.
• How am I going to build it? Is there missing information, i.e. dimensions, clashes, etc.
• Do I need special equipment and/or labor?
• Are submittals required? If so, what is status of each?
• Is all material here or on order to arrive in time?
• Any special safety concerns?
• Are there any permitting issues?

Week 5 to Week 2

• Review tasks/activities scheduled for these weeks to validate/update above information.
• Review constraints affecting these activities.

Week 1

• Ensure all constraints affecting tasks/activities scheduled for this week have been removed.
• If constraints haven’t been remove and it appears that they won’t be in time, formulate a work around plan.

                Lastly, continuously improve your make-ready planning process.  What weekly work plan failures can be attributed to faulty make-ready planning?  How can you improve the process so that this type of failure doesn’t occur again?

                Using a disciplined PDCA approach to make-ready planning will quickly lead to greater workflow reliability on the project.  Efforts expended in proper make-ready planning will be paid back and then some by reduction of on-the-fly adjustments that otherwise would have to be made in realtime on the project.

 Make-ready planning is critical to creating and maintaining reliable workflow on the project.  The constraint log(s) is integral in managing the make-ready planning process, which consists of two specific planning activities:  (1) identifying constraints and (2) obtaining commitments from individuals to remove the constraints.

Without a periodic assessment and adjustments based on the assessment, the log can quickly become an ineffective listing of all known "hot" items.  It takes discipline on the part of the team to self-police the log to continuously ensure that it remains an effective tool in the make-ready planning process.  Consider the following points and questions to gauge the level of effectiveness of your log:

• Have you established a separate log for each phase plan?
• Is each entry in the log tied to an activity or activities on the phase plan?
• Has the "Date Need Resolved" been established for each constraint?
• Has an individual made a committment to remove the constraint and if so is there a "Date Promised"?
• If "Date Promised" is after "Date Need Resolved," what have you changed in the plan to accommodate the discrepancy?
• If a constraint hasn’t been relieved by "Date Promised," what follow-up action have you taken to get a new commitment and what re-planning have you done to adjust to this new reality?
• Comparing the "Date Identified" with the "Date Need Resolved" will give an indication of how well the make-ready process is working. Ideally, you want to identify constraints during the first week that the activity shows up on the look-ahead plan. This means that the "Date Identified" should be upwards of 5 to 6 weeks ahead of the "Date Need Resolved." If these two dates are close, it means that constraints are being identified just prior to when they need to be relieved, leaving little time to do so.

Your phase plan(s) should represent the current best vision of how your project will unfold.  Otherwise, they will soon become irrelevant for managing the project and will be ignored by the project team.  In order to efficiently make work ready to be accomplished, one must have a good idea of what work will need to be done at specific times in the future.  Without a phase plan that is current, each project member will form their own opinion as to what is planned to happen on the project over the look ahead period (normally 6 weeks).  These mental plans will only be similar to each other and reality by chance.  Consequently, work will be made ready that is not within the look ahead window and more importantly, work that is within the window will not be made ready exposing the project to weekly work plan failures.

Now that we have established the importance of keeping phase plans current, the question then becomes "How often should we update the phase plans?"  There are two aspects to this: tracking progress and modifying the plan.  As you might guess there is no simple or correct answer.  Progress should be updated at least once per week.  On highly detailed and fast moving project plans, perhaps the plan will need updating every day and on plant shutdowns maybe every hour.  If the project is evolving as detailed in the phase plan then we have finished our updating for this cycle.  However, if we are not where we planned to be on the project, the team must assess the situation and take some type of action otherwise the attainment of the phase milestone will be put in jeopardy.   Despite the strong reluctance to "change" the plan no matter the source of this anxiety, we have to "bite the bullet" and modify the plan to reflect current reality.  This could be as simple as putting on a second shift in specific trades or as drastic as developing a new phase plan through the pull planning process.  The important thing to remember is that the team must be continuously proactive to ensure that the phase plan reflects the collective best vision of the future.

Get into the discipline of setting aside a block of time each week to "make work ready."  One of the most important facets of the Last Planner System that sets it apart from the traditional  approach to project management is the practice of explicitly making work ready to be accomplished when scheduled.  Unless work is "made ready" it is a crap shoot whether or not it will be able to be completed as originally scheduled.  Teams that are routinely successful in creating and maintaining reliable work flow have established the disciplined practice of setting aside a couple of hours at the same time each week to make work ready.  Just as working out each day at the same time helps to discipline ourselves into following a set routine, sitting down in the office each week at the same time to study the upcoming work and reviewing constraints is very effective in developing the necessary discipline to make this a habit.