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An Intro to the Last Planner® System: Part II

This post originally appeared on PlanGrid’s Construction Productivity Blog

It is exciting to discover a new process that will take your company to new heights, but also daunting to get buy-in and widespread implementation. Here are a few ways to get the idea of the Last Planner® accepted within your organization and spreading to every project team.

How to Spread the Last Planner® System in Your Organization

Getting LPS to spread like wildfire takes five steps:

  1. Convince decision makers about the benefits
  2. Pick a project or a team to use Last Planner®
  3. Find a tool that will make Last Planner® easy to learn and quick to apply
  4. Commit to consistent implementation
  5. Measure and report results to validate the benefits and garner interest from others

1. Convince decision makers of the benefits.

Before you address the possibility of adoption, it’s important to answer the question, “why do we want to do this?” Start by clearly announcing problems—productivity, labor shortage, confrontational nature of the industry or lack of industry advancement—and then propose a solution and its benefits to overcome them. If you’re ready to get started, here are some tips to help your organization adopt a new idea:

Become an expert on Last Planner® and the Lean theories behind it: The better you know the practice of LPS and why it was established, the more you and others will become invested in its potential. Understand how LPS works for individual projects as well as the whole company and use this guide to get the process started. Also, educating yourself as an expert will give you confidence and lead to others having confidence in you (and could land you in the driver’s seat of the LPS application).

Discuss the idea and tools to implement the change early and enlist others in the process: Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Keep that expression in mind when you’re pushing for acceptance of a new idea and tool to support it. Start using your expert-level knowledge on Last Planner® and Lean by being vocal in your professional circles. Talk the idea up to other influencers and encourage forward thinking. When the organization starts to hear about a more productive way to operate from several people, accepting it—even for a trial—will be inevitable.

Articulate how LPS will positively affect project outcomes, teams and individuals: A huge part of becoming an expert is learning the benefits of properly applying the Last Planner®. Allowing teams to be as efficient as possible and advancing projects faster than others in the industry is a monumental promise that LPS has seen work time and time again. In addition, sharing the worst-case scenarios if the company chooses not to adopt will also spark conversation.

Understand your audience and their communication style to get, then confirm support: An effective concept to remember—know your audience! Are they better in casual conversations or formal meetings? Does data or emotion drive them? Do they need the support of others to make a decision, or is it their decision alone? Using these relatively simple tactics can make all the difference. Once you’ve distributed the information, get key decision makers to affirm that they’re ready to put LPS in place.

Follow up with any comments, questions or challenges: It’s so important to offer time for additional remarks so everyone’s voice is heard. Use your LPS expertise to wrap up the conversation by addressing any fears or objections and in the future, be sure to use those points as key measurements to show that LPS is working.

2. Pick a project or a team to use Last Planner®.

If you sense that applying LPS across all projects is a monumental challenge for your organization to undergo, select a project or two to test it out with. Look at tapping projects that have project managers and superintendents that are looking to improve their process immediately.

3. Find a tool that will make Last Planner® easy to learn and quick to apply.

There are manual ways you can apply LPS, but they yield inconsistent execution and results and mass confusion—negating the benefits you carefully explained and committed to. Manual or analog execution is also unreliable and very time-consuming, not to mention easily abandoned. To get the most out of your adoption of LPS, seek out a technology option that allows project teams to be connected to measure, validate and continuously improve their building process in real time. Be sure to check out ease of use, as you want all project team members—from trade partners to owners—to be able to access and operate the tool.

4. Commit to consistent implementation.

Once you have a project team and tool selected, it’s time to start using LPS. Recognize that there must be commitment from the entire team to apply and embrace the system and technology. Solutions like Touchplan have excellent training programs to ensure everyone is introduced and ready to use it on their own, while also providing ongoing coaching for any newcomers.

5. Measure and report results to validate the benefits and garner interest from others.

The purpose of rolling out LPS slowly is to prove the benefits to get the rest of the organization excited and on board. It’s important to learn, apply, refine and execute for project teams, but sharing the data is equally important. Be sure the measurements are visual and simple to understand and access. When selecting your tool to apply LPS, take into account its reporting capabilities, too. Ensuring effortless visibility into key metrics will help put company-wide LPS application on the fast track. Showcasing consistent reports of project teams becoming more efficient (and therefore winning more projects), will make widespread interest inevitable. With the entire organization committed, rest assured more projects will be won that lead to company growth and increased profit growth rate.

It’s understandable that learning and then campaigning for a new idea in your organization can be challenging. However, it’s important to realize that there are mounting obstacles that no company in construction can escape, like the lack of labor, rising costs and the increasing complexity of projects. Those that refuse to acknowledge these changes and learn about and implement safeguards, like the Last Planner® System, will watch others in the industry advance and innovate while they are left behind.

 

An Intro to the Last Planner® System

This post originally appeared on PlanGrid’s Construction Productivity Blog

The Last Planner® System (LPS) is a realistic way to collaboratively manage project-based production. It enables issues to be identified and resolved and increases the chances that workflows and projects are completed on time. Simply put, LPS is exactly what its namesake suggests, a system that engages last planners—the people ultimately responsible for getting the work done—in the planning and efficient execution of a project.

Developed by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, LPS was designed to produce a predictable workflow with rapid learnings for continuous improvement. A common misconception is that teams need to subscribe to all parts of Lean construction and its principles before using the Last Planner® System. While Lean and other theories like Agile Construction Management are useful to understand the origin of LPS, the only requirement to get started is a team’s commitment to working together and becoming more efficient by adhering to the Last Planner® System.

LPS is useful at any stage, from design through construction, and everyone from owners and project executives to trade partners and superintendents can use and benefit from using LPS. The outcome of enacting the Last Planner® System is a continuously improving project workflow with increased team accountability and commitment.

If you’re looking to get started using LPS, we break down the five stages of the system below and provide tips on how you can implement it today. Please note that all projects are unique and therefore, each of the following steps and recommendations should be customized to the project scope and team.

Breaking Down the Last Planner® System

LPS is made up of five components:

  1. Master Scheduling
  2. Phase Scheduling
  3. Look-Ahead Planning
  4. Commitment Planning
  5. Learning

1. Master Scheduling

What it is: The process of building a schedule covering an entire project start-to-finish. It involves identifying and planning for high-level milestones that end up defining phases of work and their relative overlaps.

When to use it: Master scheduling should start as soon as is practical, with the master schedule being further refined as project details come into more focus. It is not essential to have the entire master schedule complete to the same level of detail from the start. What matters is that the full project is captured and that the earlier phases are better defined.

Why do it: The master schedule is the basis for all other planning during the project. It sets the milestones and phase durations for the project. All future detailed activities will be built out in the following steps.

Who is involved: During the conceptual and design stage, typically the construction manager/owner’s representative and the architect are involved. Once the general contractor is aboard, they take the baton.

How to get started: Teams should get together and identify the project’s milestones first—this is what all other work will be based off of in the master schedule.

2. Phase Scheduling

What it is: The collaborative planning process of defining and sequencing tasks to complete phases of work established in the master schedule. It is often done using a technique known as “pull planning” where teams work backward from a clearly defined milestone, identifying in detail the tasks required to complete the milestone as well as the conditions of satisfaction for the handoffs between the tasks.

When to use it: Typically six to twelve weeks ahead, depending on the lead times required to remove constraints.

Why do it: Phase scheduling often produces better plans because the people involved in actually doing the work are the ones planning it. Phase scheduling also develops a strong sense of ownership for the plan across the entire project team, which leads to improved reliability and accountability.

Who is involved: The last planners. During design, it’s the design team leads or the actual designers. During construction, it’s the general contractor project team and trade contractor foremen. Lean leaders often join to support and discuss as well.

How to get started: Project teams should have an in-person planning meeting to sequence out the phase work. (Each participant should detail out their own work beforehand.) A facilitator, often the lead architect (for design) or the project superintendent (for construction) should lead the planning conversations while team members sequence out their work together. Software like Touchplan offers a virtual planning environment that makes real-time collaborative phase scheduling a breeze.

3. Look-Ahead Planning

What it is: A way to identify and clear constraints preventing upcoming work from being completed as planned before these constraints become a problem.

When to use it: During weekly meetings. Ideally, the team is reviewing work planned four to six weeks out to remove any potential obstacles.

Why do it: To ensure work is ready to start when planned.

Who is involved: The last planners.

How to get started: Have everyone consider their upcoming work and spend time identifying constraints that could hold them up if not addressed. Record these constraints and assign specific people to run each to ground. Follow up weekly to make sure progress is being made. For instance, Touchplan has a tailor-made constraints module that simplifies the process of identifying and tracking constraints.

4. Commitment Planning (or Weekly Work Planning)

What it is: A way for teams to regularly meet, talk about current and future work and collectively commit to getting next week’s work done.

When to use it: The best practice is to have teams meet once a week to discuss their work and make commitments, then to meet briefly in daily huddles to ensure everyone is tracking to the plan.

Why do it: Team members refine their plan for the upcoming week one last time before committing to getting their specific tasks done on specific days, with the goal of ensuring that team members who follow can count on being able to start their work on time.

Who is involved: The last planners.

How to get started: Schedule a mandatory weekly time for project teams to connect in person and be prepared to commit to what they intend to accomplish over the coming week. Solutions like Touchplan enables team members to instantly transform their phase scheduling tasks into detailed weekly tasks, make further refinements as necessary, and then capture and track everyone’s commitments automatically, greatly reducing time spent in these weekly meetings.

5. Learning

What it is: To constantly improve, teams must regularly take inventory of what went well (plusses) and what didn’t (deltas) with the previous week’s plan.

When to use it: Immediately following completion of the prior week’s plan.

Why do it: This crucial step is how teams identify root causes of plan failures and figure out how to prevent them or plan around them for the remainder of the project. The idea is to take lessons learned and immediately adjust the rest of the plan to accommodate the lesson learned.

Who is involved: The last planners.

How to get started: With Touchplan, for instance, the Percent Plan Complete (PPC) is automatically calculated based on the proper execution of the previous steps. Evaluating the PPC and reviewing the associated variance reasons give context to what happened. Teams should then work through a process known as “5 Whys” to get to the root cause of any identified problem, and then, once the root cause is known, develop countermeasures to prevent reoccurrence.

Stay tuned for part II of this post next week, or read more at PlanGrid’s Construction Productivity Blog.

The Changing Project Delivery Landscape

If you follow the construction industry, you’ll have noticed the current buzz around alternative project delivery. This term refers to integrated project delivery (IPD), design-build (DB) and construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) approaches, which all differ from the traditional design-bid-build process. These three distinct approaches, which we’ll explore in more detail below, have arisen in response to project owners’ desire for a less confrontational and more accountable customer experience.

Types of Alternative Project Delivery

First, it’s important to understand how each of these alternative project delivery methods differ from the design-bid-build approach. Integrated project delivery, sometimes referred to as Lean/IPD, originated out of Lean methodology as a way to involve architects, engineers, contractors and trade partners together in a project as early as possible to build trust and identify issues sooner.

The American Institute of Architects defines IPD as “a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.” As with all Lean construction practices, the objective is to tap into a team’s best thinking, build better relationships, maximize efficiency and minimize waste.

However, it’s important to note that the success of an IPD project hinges on solid relationships and communication between everyone involved. It can also be challenging to work with lenders, contractors or designers who are unfamiliar with this approach.

Design-build (DB) is a system of project delivery in which a project owner, instead of entering contracts with a designer and a contractor, contracts with a single entity providing both design and construction services. According to the Design-Build Institute of America, “the designer and contractor work together from the beginning, as a team, providing unified project recommendations to fit the owner’s schedule and budget. Any changes are addressed by the entire team, leading to collaborative problem-solving and innovation, not excuses or blame-shifting.” Proponents of DB project delivery argue that by uniting the designer and contractor, an owner can avoid the often contentious dynamic that emerges as each party blames the other for delays or other problems.

While DB is advantageous for many projects, it isn’t always the answer. This approach can result in less owner control over the design, and the time and money required for contractors to bid on projects can reduce competition and lead to fewer bids overall.

Construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) is yet another approach to project delivery in which a construction manager (CM) agrees to deliver a project within a guaranteed maximum price (GMP). A CMAR arrangement may entail project management as well as construction services, depending on the situation. This approach limits an owner’s risk of cost overruns through its commitment to a GMP.

On the flip side, this approach can also reduce an owner’s control over construction due to the shifting of responsibility from the owner to the CM. There is also the potential for a conflict of interest in cases where the CM is also a contractor on the project.

Three Answers, One Problem

These alternative project delivery approaches are being driven by a common industry need—to reduce the confrontation and risk that’s become an industry norm, and to increase accountability and efficiency. In a traditional design-bid-build project, a project owner contracts separately with a designer and a contractor. This can create an antagonistic dynamic between the designer and contractor, as each may try to blame the other when delays or cost overruns occur. The owner often ends up caught in the middle of a dispute that they may not have the ability to adjudicate.

So, it comes as no surprise that many customers are looking for more collaborative project delivery approaches. According to a recent article in Engineering News-Record, revenue for domestic CMAR projects has grown by over eighty-nine percent from 2011 to 2017. Domestic DB revenue grew by over fifty-four percent in the same time frame. While international revenue in both these areas declined, this decline was offset by gains in the domestic market.

Facilitating Collaboration

This push for collaboration reflects the depth of the impact that Lean methodology has had on the construction industry. Industry demand for greater accountability and transparency benefits contractors that have implemented Lean practices such as the Last Planner® System (LPS), particularly those that are using a digital LPS tool.

Because IPD, DB and CMAR project delivery approaches all prioritize collaboration and accountability, it’s crucial to have a reliable and easily deployable tool in which teams can schedule tasks and plan work in tandem. Owners are increasingly unwilling to be dragged into the construction blame game, and expect their project teams to be able to demonstrate their progress and justify their expenses on an ongoing basis.

While this is good news for owners, it spells trouble for contractors that have not yet adopted Lean methodology. Until they do, these firms will be at a competitive disadvantage in bidding processes against firms that can demonstrate a history of collaborative engagements that were completed on or near schedule and within budget. CMAR firms that haven’t implemented LPS are at a particular disadvantage, since they assume a significant portion of a project’s financial risk.

Fortunately, a digital implementation of LPS can be rolled out across an organization quickly, enabling faster and greater return on a company’s investment in Lean practices. As industry demand for alternative project delivery grows, contractors that are prepared to deliver the customer experience that owners are looking for will win more business and build better relationships and reputations.

The Benefits of Digital Pull Planning: Q&A

I talked to Touchplan President Michael Carr to learn more about why Lean construction companies are transitioning to digital implementations of the Last Planner® System. Read on to find out what benefits these contractors are experiencing and how going digital can help your teams increase their efficiency in pull planning meetings and on the jobsite.

Katherine Van Adzin: To start off, can you explain what pull planning is? How is it different from a master schedule?

Michael Carr: The master schedule comes from traditional critical path method (CPM) scheduling. The master schedule carves out the major phases of work, each one ending with a milestone. (Master schedules that don’t go too deep into the details are often called milestone schedules.)

Pull planning is a technique of the Last Planner® System, or LPS. Pull planning is used to schedule out the individual phases. It’s where the details get added with the last planners (the teams who’ll be doing the work) working backwards from the phase milestone asking the question, “What is the last thing that needs to be done so that we can achieve this milestone? And, what are the things that need to be done so that we can start the last things?”

Pull planning can also be used to do commitment planning, and even support master planning.

KV: How have teams traditionally done pull planning?

MC: Sticky notes were introduced when Lean principles took off in the construction industry. Sticky notes are much easier to modify and change when compared to critical path method schedules.

The problem is that traditional CPM scheduling doesn’t capture the level of detail these last planners need to think about, and even if someone did take the time to load all the details in, CPM schedules are still too rigid and difficult for last planners to modify to accommodate real-world events and changes that need to be addressed. Still, last planners need some kind of plan to get their work done. They either do it siloed and in their heads, or they do it together and out in the open. The Last Planner® System of course is all about having them do it together in the open.

KV: What are the benefits of adopting a digital LPS tool?

MC: The analog approach with sticky notes relies heavily on people and their time. Success or failure is highly dependent on the facilitator’s ability to have the team adhere to the process. It’s also more difficult to implement the more people are involved. And because of the complexity of the resulting plans, doing any kind of analysis or measuring to learn from and improve the plan requires that the results be somehow loaded in a computer. Having a few people load the data in on behalf of the rest of the team duplicates effort and disconnects the last planners from their plan, giving them the ability to say, “That’s not what I said or agreed to. You captured it wrong.”

Giving the last planners the ability to load their own work in eliminates the “lost in translation” effect. It also eliminates any back-and-forth conversations related to what was or wasn’t said. It cuts waste out of the meetings so teams can spend their time strategizing instead of rehashing the conversations they’ve already had.

When LPS is implemented properly, trades arrive to work sites able to get to work right away. In traditional construction, as much as half of the time a trade will show up to an area and be unable to start because the team in front is still in the way. LPS squeezes that waste out of the system.

KV: How do these benefits change the way a contractor operates?

MC: So, apart from all the obvious efficiency benefits, there are even bigger benefits you can’t ever get unless you go digital. A big one is standardization, meaning that you can expect all your teams to derive benefit from LPS, not just the good ones. It also gives you visibility into how well LPS is being implemented across all your projects. This visibility enables you to give individual projects—and people—the right kind of attention based on what they’re doing well (or where they’re struggling) to help them get even better at using LPS. It also eliminates human error (and bias) in reporting of the results so you get a better understanding of just how well (or not so well) things are going on all your projects.

Finally, Last Planner® metrics like Percent Plan Complete (PPC) or Tasks Made Ready (TMR) are leading indicators, so getting them in real time gives managers the maximum ability to identify issues early and head off any problems before things get out of hand. There’s no way to effectively implement LPS across an entire organization without going digital.

KV: What other business challenges can this alleviate?

MC: The labor shortage is something that a lot of people in the field are grappling with right now. If you’re a senior leader worried about labor shortages affecting your projects and you can improve efficiencies on your projects to get more done with fewer people, then having a system that gives you visibility into which projects are getting the efficiency benefits and which aren’t is invaluable.

KV: What do you predict for the industry’s future as digital tools catch on?

MC: In short, the old way of doing business will become obsolete. Project teams will be better informed, better coordinated and capable of achieving far greater efficiency with the same or fewer people. It will become harder to play games with numbers and operate in the shadows. Bad actors will be exposed by their own actions and will lose out. Team members that collaborate and work together in the interest of the project will find it easier to do so and will be rewarded handsomely for it.

 

How to Power Through the Construction Labor Shortage

As reported last week in Construction Dive, the Q2 2018 United States Gypsum (USG) + U.S. Chamber of Commerce Commercial Construction Index (CCI) expressed widespread concern among contractors about their ability to hire enough skilled labor to properly staff projects.

Continue reading “How to Power Through the Construction Labor Shortage”

Working with Bernards: Commercial Builder and Construction Management Company

In collaboration with HMC Architects, Bernards is serving as design-builder for a six-story, 160,000 SF patient tower at the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital which will connect to the existing hospital. Chris Maslyk, Director of Planning and Lean Initiatives at Bernards, ran the first pull planning session on the project. We checked in with Chris last week to see how the session went as well as hear his insights on Touchplan.

Continue reading “Working with Bernards: Commercial Builder and Construction Management Company”

The Touchplan Way

What are the benefits that you could be seeing if you started planning your project with the Touchplan method? Here are just a few things that we have seen happen on the projects that are collaborating and communicating the way we recommend. Continue reading “The Touchplan Way”

How to Have the Best Weekly Meetings

Do you enjoy your weekly meetings? I don’t know a lot of people that do. They can be really long, and when things aren’t going well they can be really contentious. What are some of the ways that you can improve your weekly meetings?

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5 Steps to Better Planning

Touchplan employees have worked in the construction industry for years. We thought it was high time we put our thousands of hours of onsite experience to good use. So we sat down with the schedulers, planners, and project managers in our office to put together their 5 tips to better planning. Planning smarter can be super easy if you just start here with the Touchplan way! Continue reading “5 Steps to Better Planning”

Bringing Touchplan to the Next Generation of Construction Planners

Technology is everywhere we look, in almost every part of our lives. It affects how we shop, socialize, play, work, and most importantly learn. With their great and increasing presence in our lives it only makes sense to have mobile technology in the classroom. Yet there are some schools that are delaying this imminent future of using technology in the classroom as the valuable learning tool it is.

Continue reading “Bringing Touchplan to the Next Generation of Construction Planners”