The Last Planner System?, Chaos, and Making Complacency Work for You

The Last Planner System

The Last Planner System (LPS?) is a widely used set of practices in lean construction. However, it is often not fully implemented because even a partial application can yield satisfactory results in coordinating workflow between trades.

For those unfamiliar with LPS, it involves five connected conversations:

1. Milestone Planning
2. Phase Planning
3. Make-Ready Planning
4. Weekly Planning
5. Daily Learning

These stages help manage uncertainty and variation in complex projects.

Chaos

Although not its primary purpose, LPS significantly reduces chaos in collaborative work environments. Chaos, the enemy of productivity, often arises when multiple people work on different assignments with large amounts of material in limited spaces. Reducing chaos improves productivity and minimizes conflicts due to miscommunication.

LPS reduces chaos by coordinating long and medium-term tasks and shielding field crews from assignments they cannot complete. It provides crews with clear direction based on coordinated planning by those closest to the work.

In contrast, highly detailed critical path method scheduling often contributes to chaos. This rigid planning structure produces plans that are rarely realized and are often dismissed in the field as impractical. These tools are more effective at tracking work than planning and predicting it, leading to missed target completion dates.

While LPS reduces chaos, it can also lead to complacency among project leaders. Satisfied with reduced chaos, they may not fully utilize performance improvement practices, missing opportunities for further enhancement. As Jim Collins wrote, "good is the enemy of great."

LPS includes several performance metrics to help teams improve:

1. Percent Plan Complete (PPC): Measures the percentage of planned tasks completed each week. It's important to break down tasks daily to get accurate PPC, as the meaningfulness of PPC is context dependent. Many teams allow multi-day tasks in their weekly plan. The Last Planner System is designed to help project teams manage variation, and the value of the PPC is diminished by multi-day duration tasks in the weekly plan.
2. Weekly Plan Variances: Tracks reasons for incomplete tasks, helping identify areas for improvement. While many project teams track variances very few uses them to develop improvement ideas.
3. Tasks Anticipated: Measures the percentage of tasks included in the weekly plan. High unplanned work can disrupt productivity. I have only met two project leaders that have recorded Tasks Anticipated.
4. Tasks Made Ready: Measures the percentage of tasks ready to start as planned, indicating effective constraint management. Poor constraint management is a significant contributor to chaos and project delays. I have only met one project leader that has recorded Tasks Made Ready.

Making Complacency Work for You

The complacency of your competitors is an opportunity to stand out from your competition. Focus on learning from performance metrics and improving planning processes. Treat project management like athletic training, with continuous learning and skill development. Athletes use performance measurements to accomplish winning performances. You can do likewise.

Athletic championships are often decided by mere points or seconds. While your performance cannot be measured against competitors with such precision, fortunately, it doesn't need to be. By focusing on learning from Last Planner System metrics and adopting a strategic approach to milestone and phase planning, achieving a 10% reduction in project time becomes straightforward. With modest effort, a project can reduce its duration by 20%. Some teams have accomplished this even without the recommended measurement and learning.

Consistently delivering projects in 80% of the time it takes your competitors will set you apart, as they are at least 25% slower.

I am convinced, along with others, that it is possible to reduce most project durations by at least 50%. To achieve this, we must enhance our ability to measure and learn from our projects. That learning needs to be at a "high-velocity," as described by Steven Spear in The High Velocity Edge. Delivering projects in 50% of the time it takes your competitors will make you the preferred builder for any owner who values rapid project delivery.

Here is where to start.

1. Plan Next Week with Daily Tasks: Manage variation by planning tasks in daily increments. When you learn to plan daily tasks well, shift to planning to the half day.
2. Learn from Daily Variances: Assign someone to assess and report on daily variances, sharing insights with the planning team. The performance value gained is the building a stronger tacit knowledge of how to make a coordinated weekly plan through the daily reading of these insights.
3. Measure Tasks Anticipated and Tasks Made Ready: Aim for 100% in both metrics to enhance productivity.

The following are examples of additional performance measurements on projects. Creative project leaders will be able to develop and test additional performance measurement ideas.

1. Constraint Identification Lead Time: Track the average days between identifying and needing constraints to be removed. The longer the lead time the more opportunity a team has available to remove a constraint when needed. I have found a lead time of 20 days to be a healthy indicator.
2. Constraint Identification Lead Time Variation: This measures the lead time variation in days. I suspect that with a 20-day average lead time that a +/- 7-day variation or less is a healthy indicator.
3. Constraint Removal Reliability: Measure the percentage of constraints removed by the date promised.
4. Operations per Flow Unit-Day: Understand the pace of work handoffs. The quicker these handoffs, the faster the overall project moves without accelerating the pace of crews.
5. Task Completion Variation: Track deviations from planned task completion times in hours. The purpose of this measurement is to understand production rates as they apply to that part of the project, to enhance the coordination of project planning.
6. Crew-Task Focus: Ensure crews focus on completing tasks in one area before moving to another.
7. Process Improvements: Aim for regular improvements in planning and management processes. An initial worthwhile target is one improvement per quarter for each foreman and field office staff member.

Summary

By consistently improving their implementation of the Last Planner System through high velocity learning from a range of metrics, project leaders can develop a reputation for reliably reducing project durations and outperforming competitors.

Note: Last Planner System? and LPS? are registered trademarks of the Lean Construction Institute.