INTRODUCCION

This is a report on a Last Planner Master Class led by Glenn Ballard and
hosted in Nottingham by the Centre for Lean Projects at NTU on 14 May 2012.
With its roots in the work of Ballard and Howell in the 1980s and 90s, the Last
Planner System (LPS) is widely acknowledged to be the main tool for Lean
Construction. The principal elements of the system are often implemented in
the UK as collaborative planning and play an important part in introducing
Lean concepts to many organisations in the construction and other project
based sectors. The LPS has been extensively used in the US and around the
world and the Master Class was convened in order to allow experienced
practitioners within the UK to find out about how it has developed as a result of
this extensive implementation.
Glenn Ballard PhD, is an adjunct professor in the School of Environmental and
Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, arguably the leading
civil engineering school in the US. Glenn is currently the Visiting Professor of
Lean Construction within the School of Architecture, Design and the Built
Environment at Nottingham Trent University. This appointment, formalised in
May 2012 continues a longstanding collaborative partnership with Christine
Pasquire. In addition to advising the Australian Woodside Energy on aspects of
their Lean transformation through an action based doctoral study, they are
expanding applications of Lean thinking into maintenance and refurbishment
through a growing relationship with Nottingham City Homes, the local provider
of social housing.
Glenn Ballard Phd
Christine Pasquire Phd
Christine Pasquire PhD, is Professor of Lean Project Management within the
School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent
University where she leads the Centre for Lean Projects. A Chartered Quantity
Surveyor, Christine initially practiced in the M&E sector. This provided her
original interest in manufacturing for construction through the use of off-site
and modular construction. She has been researching Lean and off-site for 20
years and has authored over 100 peer reviewed papers on these and
associated issues.
Glenn began the class with an overview of his experience of first developing
and then using the LPS. He was invited to share his insights from that
experience and describe the latest applications and understanding of how LPS
influences project management. Participants had been required to submit
questions in advance, these questions were themed and formed the basis of
the workshop discussions. Glenn then provided a written response to the
questions which forms the basis of this report.
Master Class agenda
Welcome Introduction to Last Planner System and recent developments
Six questions on process

Three questions on behaviour

Two questions on theory Summary Finish at 5pm

The list of Participants

Alan Mossman, The Change Business Ltd; Andrew Spooner, Room4 Consulting
Ltd
Carl Haywood, Amey plc; Chris Ellins, Total Flow Ltd
Eloise Boyce, Amey plc; George Mensah, NTU
John Ajayi, Kier Ltd; John Eynon, Wates Ltd
Lynne Hamilton, Anglian Water Alliance; Neville Web, Webb Associates
Nicola Morrey, Shepherd Construction Ltd; Nigel Fraser, BAA plc
Paul Phillips, Morgan Sindall Ltd; Ray Sanderson, BG Group plc
Richard Donnelly; Richard Garland, Sandwood Design & Build Ltd
Roy Stratton, NTU; Sally Keill, Morgan Sindall Ltd
Stephen Ginns, Mace; Steve Ward, 6ix Consulting
Tim Fennemore, Bovis Lendlease plc; Vince Hackett, NTU/Woodside
What is last planner system?
Glenn Ballard, the inventor of the Last Planner System with Greg Howell,
defines it as a philosophy, rules, procedures, and a set of tools that shifts the
focus of control from the workers to the flow of work that links them together
and thus proactively managing the production process (Ballard, 2000). A last
planner on a construction site or any other production process is the person or
group who manages and controls the smallest/lowest in the hierarchy unit, that
is, individual assignments at the operational level for example trade foremen,
design team leaders. The LPS received its name because of the leading role it
gives to last planners in the planning process. It is the last planners together
with project managers who produce the Project programme, detail it during the
lookahead process to ensure that work is ready to be done when required and
prepare weekly production plans. Collaboration among the management team
and the last planners is a core principle of the LPS. The concept of the Last
Planner System has five main integrated elements (Ballard 1997). 1. Master
Plan shows the main activities, their duration and sequence. Its
function is
to obtain a general plan and identify all the work packages for
the whole
project. 2. Phase Planning is a bridge between the master plan and lookahead
planning. Its function is to divide the master plan into various phases,
develop
more detailed work plans and provide goals that can be considered
targets
by the project team. 3. Lookahead Planning focuses the teams
attention on the short-term period of up to six week. While the plans are
acquiring further details the
team effort is directed to making everything
ready for execution of the
tasks to come, removing constraints in the work
and making it flow
smoothly. The idea is that proactive problem-solving
should replace reactive firefighting on site.

4. Weekly Work Plan is a stage when work per- formers assume responsibility
and give prom- ises for the week to come. This is complement- ed by daily
checks.
5. Feedback Statistics. Percent plan (or promises) a completed (PPC) and
register of reasons for
non-completion of tasks helps in the manage-ment of
the planning process. PPC is a simple
measure of the proportion of promises
that are delivered on time, calculated as the number of activities that are
completed as planned divided by the total number of planned activities.
Reasons for non-completed tasks are registered weekly in the Weekly Work
Plan form. These
two help to make visible shortcomings in management and
weak points in the execution pro- cess. They give information for further
investigation and the means to make informed deci- sions.
The LPS aims to reduce the variability (both flow and process-time variability)
of tasks, which reduces the need for buffers, as shown by Hopp and Spearman,
2000. LPS is first of all a management system. Its administration needs can be
covered with a small number Excel forms, postit notes and basic stationary.
Today it can also be helped with software specially dedicated to LPS and
compatible with traditional PM software, such as Primavera or MS Project. The
Last Planner is a live system. Academics and practitioners, who apply LPS on
their projects, help to understand the deeper theoretical underpinnings of
production process as well as to improve this philosophy and management tool.
Older lPs insights
The importance of low PPC: unreliable release of work discourages planning
and preparation, and thereby reduces performance.
Planning is more social than technical.
All plans are forecasts and all forecasts are wrong.
It may be impossible to be perfect planners, but we can aspire to never
making the same mistake twice.
To prevent reoccurrence of breakdowns requires understanding what
happened. That includes understanding why people did what they did in the
circumstances as they experienced them. If people fear punishment, they will
not participate in root cause analysis.
There is always a trade-off between time and cost, but the level at which the
trade-off is made changes with work flow reliability.
Newer lPs insights
The principles of Last Planner appear to apply to all types of work that
require coordination between humans.
Last Planners job is to stabilise operations so optimisation makes economic
sense, but it also improves productivity. Many people are satisfied with that and
dont exploit the opportunity for more fundamental improvement in
performance.
The industry plans for productivity at 50% PPC.
The two least implemented components of Last Planner are measurement
of Tasks Made Ready and design of operations.
5 Whys analysis is practical and brings unexpected benefits.
LAST PLANNER SYSTEM(Principles and impact)

1. Plan in greater detail as you get closer to doing the work.

The problem with the traditional planning is that it is based on predictions of
the future. From our everyday and business experience we know that all
forecasts are wrong. The more detailed the forecast, the more wrong it will be.
The further into the future we forecast, the more wrong we will be. Since plans
are forecasts, they pose the same challenge. Hence the first principle of the
Last Planner System is to plan in greater detail as you get closer to doing the
work. As we get closer to the moment of execution of work the factor of
uncertainty reduces drastically. Even if 100% certainty is never achieved,
difficult to deal with problems that occur unexpectedly and can shake stability
of the system are rare.
2. Produce plans collaboratively with those who will do the work.
Not only do people who do the work know their tasks better, it is only they who
have the latest information about the progress of the work or changes in their
teams, who can tell the manager and the rest of the team about prerequisites
for the work to be done. The usual assumptions made by managers are
avoided.
3. Reveal and remove constraints on planned tasks as a team.
Regular structured discussions on the requirements of coming tasks and
obstacles on their way in a group of last planners allow achieving smooth
workflow.
4. Make reliable promises.
If the work is planned with people who do the work and if regular meetings to
discuss requirements and obstacles take place, then all conditions are there for
executors of tasks to give reliable promises. In other words, only when enough
effort is made to make ensure the task actually can be done is a promise given
reliable.
5. When promises are broken, find root causes and preventionslearn
from those breakdowns. The biggest advantage of the LPS is that it reveals
the problems with management, team relationships and system that previously
were hidden. Monitoring of PPC and reasons for non-completion provides clear
visual facts. These can be investigated further using root-cause analysis to
discover the real reasons for the problem, eliminate it and prevent it from
happening again. The Last Planner method contains the feature of continuous
improvement that comes along with its fifth principle. When promises are
broken, find root causes and preventions - learn from those breakdowns. Here
we will talk a little bit more about this feature. In Table 2 what is measured and
by what means are further detailed.
*Tasks Made Ready compares the weekly work plan to the lookahead plan
made a week earlier, measuring the percentage of tasks in the weekly work
plan that were in the lookahead. If tasks are not made ready, we may not be
doing work at the right time and rate. TMR is typically a result of the quality of
constraint analysis and removal. **Tasks Anticipated also compares the weekly
work plan and lookahead, but measures tasks in the work plan that were never
in the lookahead. If tasks are not anticipated, they cannot be made ready. Task
anticipation is typically a result of the level of detail in operations design.
The impact of last Planner
Last Planner has been shown to improve productivity, but its primary job is
to reduce variation in work flow to clear the way for investments in

optimization. Figure 2 is an illustration how Last Planner impacts work flow

reliability. The example is taken from a refinery expansion project in Venezuela
in 1994. The chart shows the Performance Factor for a contractor over time and
the productivity reported each week. As it can be seen the Performance Factor
(actual versus estimated productivity) varied widely in the first ten weeks, and
cumulative productivity deteriorated to 50% over budget.
The first phase of Last Planner, weekly work planning and PPC tracking, was
implemented, after which week-to-week variation radically decreased and the
trend was reversed from negative to positive. Why it happened can be
explained using Queuing theory. Figure 3 demonstrates the relationship
between PPC and Performance Factor. 5 Whys is a structure approach to
investigation of the real causes of the problems occurring during production.
Five is an average number, sometimes less or more steps are needed, as
demonstrated in the examples in the Table 3. In the first column the tasks that
were not completed are written. The following Whys columns demonstrate a
step-by-step investigation that brings to the surface new, sometimes
unexpected details. Such analysis empowers managers to facilitate work flow.