Finish on Time Every Time: Optimize Work Planning and Master Scheduling

SHANI SHARIF: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our Autodesk University class, "Finish on Time Every Time-- Optimize Work Planning and Master Scheduling." My name is Shani Sharif I'm a Senior Product Manager at Autodesk. And today, I'm joined by my colleague David Kadyshawich, Product Manager at Autodesk and two planning and scheduling industry experts from Skanska USA, Michael Zeppieri, Director of Emerging Technology and Sherif Agha, Senior Director of Planning.

In the class today, we will be discussing how a schedule fits into construction life cycle, Skanska's approach to scheduling on projects, how they build out their master schedule and then incorporate the work plan, tips and tricks to optimize and connect the master schedule and work plan, and finally, how teams can leverage technology to do so. It is important to first understand how a schedule fits into the overall construction project life cycle.

Long-term master schedule and short-term work plans are living project documents. Although the master schedule is defined in the earliest stages of a project, as the work starts, the construction teams collaboratively define the details of each construction phase on the job side. And as the project goes on, the team updates the master schedule based on the data from the actual project progress. Now, I'm going to hand it over to Sherif and Michael, as they walk you through how this actually works in real life.

SHERIF AGHA: Thank you, Shani. Now, I will share the high-level view of how we approach scheduling at Skanska. For us at Skanska, we start each project by building out the master skill, which is the first step in the planning process. It's supposed to provide the roadmap for the projects from start to end, the path that the team should follow to get this project completed. And it's supposed to be the result of the overall collaboration between the team members, the different stakeholders, and putting the plan together.

The master schedule is important because we look at the project from a very high level at that point. Imagine we're looking at a project from a 10,000 feet view. And you're trying to determine the project approach, thinking about constructability, thinking about phasing, thinking about the most important milestones that will get you from the start to the end. This is how the team should approach building a master schedule. But as we all know, the plan that you put together for the project at the beginning might end up changing.

As the project progresses, things will happen. There may be roadblocks. There may be bottlenecks. There may be design changes. There may be unforeseen site conditions. Many things could happen that require the team to take a different direction.

We act quickly to mitigate that impact. At this point, the master schedule becomes an especially important tool because it helps the team analyze, qualify, and quantify the effect of that impact on the plan and then put together a mitigation plan to stay on track. But to do this and to do it well, you have to start with a good master schedule. You have to start with a plan that was well thought and a plan that was put together by the team and not just by one person.

So looking back many years ago, the perception used to be that the schedulers, and the planner and the scheduler's job was to take responsibility of building the project plan on their own. They were supposed to take the drawings, go into a room, and then work on building the schedule and the plan, ask questions when needed, but then come out of the room with a fully-completed schedule. I would refer to that as building the schedule in a silo.

I would say that this is not the best recipe for success when it comes to putting together a project plan and a project schedule because the most important rule in building a project plan is to get the buy-in and commitment of all the stakeholders. So the role of the typical planner and scheduler, in my view, should be more of a facilitator, someone who brings everybody together, use their own knowledge, of course, and skills-- but bring together the superintendent, the project manager, the project engineer.

And if we have three partners that are on board early in the project, they bring them together as well and collaboratively work together to build a plan. That will ensure there is input from everyone on the team. Everyone can challenge the plan. Everyone can provide feedback. And everyone would have buy-in into the plan. So this process of building the master schedule will go more smooth when you have a plan that meets everyone's expectations.

So the process sounds easy. And it sounds smooth. But there are some pitfalls that if you fall into, it will hurt the overall product that you're trying to build. So as I mentioned, if you're building a schedule in a silo with no buy-in from the project stakeholders, that will not generate a plan that everyone agrees upon. If you end up having multiple versions of the schedule and you're planning to show one to the subs to drive them to finish early and show one to the owner that meets the contractual duration, that will erode the trust that everyone will have in the plan.

If you create a master schedule that's way too much detail at the beginning of the project, when you end up transitioning to starting construction and trying to start short-term planning, the too much detail in the master schedule will confuse everyone, and the team will end up just putting a rubber stamp on the schedule saying, OK, we agree with the details. But they will not have a chance to put their feedback because they did not collaborate on building that schedule.

And they will end up not collaborating on building out a short-term plan either. So if you follow the process to the tee, and you try to avoid those pitfalls, and you end up with a good, sound, well-thought project plan and schedule, you can still face a lot of challenges as you start the process of using that plan as a planning tool and execution tool for the job. Depending on how you set up your enterprise planning system and scheduling system, not everyone might have access to the scheduling tool. So you might end up communicating the schedule to them in a PDF format.

You might end up having multiple versions of that PDF format floating around. Not having access to the tool that you use to plan the project, people might not have a good idea and a good understanding of the logic that goes inside the schedule and the logic that connects those activities together and tasks together. If people don't have access to the planning tool, then there might be issues in having a smooth progress tracking and updating process as you go through construction.

So all these challenges can affect the efficiency and the accuracy of the planning process, both with the master schedule and with the short-term plan. So as we transition to talk about the short-term planning, I would like to bring in my colleague, Michael, now to talk about how short-term planning integrates with master planning as part of the overall planning process.

MICHAEL ZEPPIERI: Thanks, Sherif. As Shani mentioned during introductions, my name is Michael Zeppieri. I am director of emerging technology with Skanska USA Building. I've been in the construction industry and with Skanska for eight years. The emerging technology team is a group that's focused on evaluating technology that is disrupting our industry and looking for ways to apply those technologies in a way that delivers value to our project teams and also our clients.

Additionally, I'm a Lean Facilitator for Skanska. It just so happens that prior to coming to Skanska, I had been exposed to lean thinking and in a variety of different industries and in different roles and gained an appreciation for how lean thinking delivers value. And when I came to construction, it was at a time when lean thinking was starting to gain prevalence in this industry. And I love all the lean tools. I'm really passionate about lean construction.

But my favorite of all of them is pull planning and the Last Planner System, there's something about the energy of a job site trailer that I really enjoy. I love working with the skilled trades, and superintendents, and project teams to come together and develop that optimal work plan, but more importantly, expose the risks that could have had an adverse impact had they not been exposed. So what I'm going to do today is share with you some of my experience as a lean facilitator and practitioner.

I'm going to start by sharing with you some of the common pitfalls that teams make when they approach pull planning and the Last Planner System. I'm going to share with you some of the best practices and things that I've learned that make for a good work plan. And then, I'm going to talk a little bit at the end about how I think digitalization and automation can enhance the entire process. So as Sherif mentioned in his portion of the presentation, the master schedule and weekly worth planning are not separate activities.

Those two things need to integrate and interface with one another. And there's a dynamic where the master schedule informs your weekly work planning. And then, what you discover, or learn, or discuss during the weekly work planning process informs the master schedule. So it's a very dynamic cycle. Some of the mistakes that I've seen project teams make is, one, only getting into the discipline of work planning when their schedule has already started to slide.

pull planning isn't going to stop the bleeding once it's started. But it can prevent the bleeding from happening in the first place if you get into the discipline of doing it and making it part of the way that you work. The other common mistake that I see is that people use the terms pull planning and the Last Planner System synonymously. And while they are related, they are two very different things. And it correlates to the Deming cycle, the lean cycle of plan, do, check, act.

Your weekly work planning is the planning and the doing. Most project teams can achieve that with their skilled trades and get to a plan that they can execute to. But the real value of pull planning is exposed when you get into the check in the act, getting into the root cause analysis of why the schedule slipped or why a commitment didn't make, making sure that when you identify a risk or a roadblock during the work plan, that you're actually mitigating it to its logical conclusion such that it doesn't impact the project team and the schedule.

So they're used synonymously, but there's a difference between the two. So those are some of the common pitfalls that I see when people approach the concept of work planning. So now, let's talk a little bit about some of the best practices of how you execute a good pull plan. And my approach this has changed over the years. And it's largely been informed by some great mentors and some great coaches that I've had the luxury of-- that I've had the benefit of working with over the years. So first and foremost, construction is a people business.

And getting to a good work plan is about people. And the key people that you need to interface with to drive this process is, one, the superintendent. The superintendent is absolutely key to successful work planning. But a superintendent isn't necessarily going to see value in the pull planning process because most superintendents, they intuitively know what the optimal work plan is. It's in their head. And what you want to do is, you want to get what's in their head on the board and let the skilled trades massage that plan such that it takes into account their optimal handoffs and what they need to execute the work.

So most superintendents, they see pull planning-- I don't want to say as a waste of time-- but it's not a good use of their time. Where superintendents tend to see value, however, is in the check and the act part of the cycle. When they see that this entire process allows them to run a more efficient foremans' meeting, the light goes on, and they start to see the value. Most superintendents are phenomenal firefighters. They have spent their entire careers fighting fires on job sites.

But what if you can, instead of making them as firefighters, what if they could prevent the fires from happening in the first place? And when they see the value of mitigating risks before they happen and allowing them to leverage their expertise in more value-added ways, that's when you get the buy-in from the superintendent.

Now, that's not to say that the superintendent shouldn't be present and engaged during the pull plan, but you typically-- the superintendents start to engage on the pull planning after they see the value delivered during the discipline of the work planning in the last planner system. So getting the superintendent on board is absolutely key. The second thing I've learned is, you need to get a couple of project engineers engaged in the process. When I first started as a facilitator, I would parachute into a job site.

I'd set up the pull plan. I'd execute the pull plan. I'd give them their list of roadblocks. We would digitize the sticky nodes into something that they could hand to the master schedule. And then, they'd go away.

And I'd go facilitate at the next job. And I'd come back. And I'd sometimes be disappointed to see that they didn't really execute or leverage what we had discovered or taken the time to build during the pull plan. What I've learned is that you need a couple of project engineers that understand the process, are passionate about it, they want to be lean facilitators. And you coach and mentor them so that they can complement the superintendent and drive the process when the facilitator goes away.

So taking the time to mentor and coach members of the project team to execute the process, I have found, is a good use of time and really enables the success of implementing the process. Lastly is, you want to get your foremen on board. In the Boston Market, there's a couple of foremen that I have encountered in a number of different jobs. And one of my favorite things is when one of the foremen walked at the front of the room when they see me.

And they grab the sticky notes and the pen immediately, and they start to engage, or even better yet, help me facilitate and start to engage with some of the other foremen. So now, I'm going to talk about some things that I think where technology and digitalization can really enhance the pull planning and the last planner process. So going back to what Sherif mentioned and what I discussed at the beginning of my presentation is there's a natural interaction between the master schedule and the work planning process.

The work planning process is informed by the master schedule. The master schedule is what must be done. It sets some contractual, rigid cadence to the job. The work planning is what happens in between. So there's a bidirectional integration between those two worlds.

So in an ideal world, because what you often see is that the master schedule sometimes gets to the granularity of work planning. And sometimes in pull planning, the pull planning process tries to replicate the master schedule. And what you end up having is two sets of books. And you don't want two sets of books. What you want is one set of books that are informed by each other. So through digitalization, through APIs, if you could-- as a pole planner, what would be great for me as a facilitator, is if I can inherit some of the logic and I could-- it's almost like a coloring book.

Tell me what the lines are. Because if you leave it up to me to just draw whatever I want, I may not draw the master schedule. So give me the coloring book. Show me the lines. But then, let me color in between the lines. And if I happen to color outside of the lines, there's a trigger that then informs the schedule that says, oh, well, why did they have to color outside of the lines? I told them, here are the lines.

Draw me this. Why did you go outside the lines? So that's, to me, the integration between the two. So they have to inherit logic. And I don't see it necessarily as a Gantt chart reconciliation.

I almost see it as like an alert system, where if you're doing something during a pull plan that breaks the master schedule, an alert that informs you in the moment that, hey, if you execute to that plan, you just broke your critical path. It's really about risk mitigation. To me, that's what the real benefit of pull planning is, risk mitigation. So you need to be able to light up the plan like a Christmas tree and be able to understand where that risk is hiding.

And sometimes, you don't see that in the sticky notes, just a volume of sticky notes on the wall. You're focused on sequence, but you're not necessarily seeing the risks underneath the water. One of the analogies that I use when I teach lean to our project teams is the analogy of a river. When you're navigating a river-- let's say you're on a kayak. And you're going down the river. You can see the stones, or the rocks, or the obstacles that are above the water.

And you can navigate around them. But the ones that you can see aren't the ones that are going to damage and sink you. It's the ones beneath the water that you can't see. So to me, the discipline of work planning is not only, are you mapping the obstacles that you can see, but you're actually lowering the waterline so that you could see the boulders or the obstacles that are hidden beneath the surface, the ones that you don't even know are there, but the ones that are going to impact your journey the most if you were to hit them.

So to me, through digitalization, through alerts and other things, those things that you as a practitioner or as a worker may not inherently see, business roles and automation would absolutely expose. So that's one area. And this transitions to the second bullet, here, on the slide. And that's actionable insights. To me, the value of work planning isn't to replicate the master schedule.

The value of work planning is to leave that pull plan with the list of actions that people need to take. Those actions could be the work plan itself. These are the commitments of what I'm going to deliver and when. But more importantly, here are the risks or things that we need to mitigate, that if we don't mitigate them, it's going to prevent me from starting my work and starting my sequence. In all honesty-- I think I mentioned this earlier-- the most value that I see in the pull planning process is that risk mitigation, exposing those boulders that you can't see.

And that's what I enjoy the most about it. It's almost like a puzzle and solving for a puzzle. So having actionable insights that the superintendent-- going back to what I said about getting people engaged. The superintendent, like I said, may not necessarily appreciate the pull planning process. They may see it as redundant or something that they already inherently know. But they do appreciate having things that they can execute to, having actions that they can take.

And what better way to use their time than to mitigate risks as opposed to putting out fires, as I mentioned earlier. This goes to the next bullet, which is tracking roadblocks. There is a discipline in and of itself around risk mitigation. And with that, comes accountability. I've seen pull plans where we inherit or build a list of roadblocks.

And everyone sees the roadblocks. But we don't take the next natural step of, then, assigning who's responsible for mitigating those roadblocks. Those are work planning activities in and of themselves. Some project teams will approach roadblocks as a spreadsheet to track, but they don't assign accountability to them. And you have to assign accountability to the roadblocks the same as you would any other activity or task in the construction sequence.

It's absolutely critical that there's accountability behind tracking the roadblocks. And then, the last thing that I'd love to see is a better use of BIM and visualization to enhance the pull planning process. Now, at Skanska, we have some great VTC managers. And when I have the luxury of sitting down with them to do a 4D sequence to enhance a pull plan, it's great to pull up the model and show the sequence or the phase that we're pulling to. Buit even doing that in BIM, its broad brushstrokes.

You're not really gaining an appreciation for the more granular intricacies of assemblies and working on job sites. And it's difficult because you don't have the work plan. So how can you visualize something that you don't have yet? What I would love-- and the mental model that I use-- is a set of LEGO instructions. Every single brick, brick by brick-- if you look at a set of LEGO instructions, it illuminates and it shows you where that brick is going to sit because it's not only the assembly, but it's also taking into consideration some of the logistics.

For any of you that have built a LEGO structure, if you build the walls first and then you try to get your fingers in and put the furniture, it ain't going to work. It's like there's a sequence of an optimal way of doing it. And then, there's the painful way of doing it. You want the optimal way.

So I would love to have a way to correlate every single step of the work plan that then allows you to take an object in BIM, and break it down into subcomponents, and be able to illuminate the sequence step by step because that's where you start to really optimize the sequence. The other thing that I would love to see is, could we use some of the thinking of things like generative design to the work planning process? Are there ways to optimize the schedule in a way that the human mind can't even conceive?

What I love about generative design is some of the asymmetrical organic structures that the computer simulation suggests or comes up with, something that the human mind would never gravitate to. We tend to think of things very linearly and very symmetrically. And I love the asymmetry and the organic nature of what comes out of a generative design. So could you use a generative design algorithm to leverage machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and technology to optimize the sequence in a way that the human mind can't conceive?

And then, could you use visualization to help the human operators wrap their mind around a sequence that's being recommended that maybe they've never tried before? And I know within the confines of building a building, there's only so much room for creativity. Pull planning tends to be very predictable, especially for repeatable sequences. If you're fitting out a building.

And it's like an apartment building, and every apartment is the same, there's like a natural sequence. You almost get into an assembly line cadence. So the cars aren't coming down the assembly line. The rooms are fixed. The cars are fixed. But the sequence is the same.

You can get repeatable work. But what about some of the atypical sequences that you often see on job sites, where there isn't a natural progression? Could you use technology to develop a progression that optimizes the sequence? I don't know. But that's something I'd love to explore. So that concludes my portion. I'm now going to turn it back over to Sharif.

SHERIF AGHA: Thank you, Michael. Now, let's talk a little bit about how we can make sure that the long-term plan and the short-term plan are connected and/or a part of the overall integrated planning process for the project.

We probably mentioned this before, but I want to stress on this again that it's very important to view the master schedule and the short-term plan as part of an integrated process that would help take the team throughout the different phases of the planning, from creating the master schedule, to doing phase pull planning, look ahead plan, weekly work planning, and then, the daily check-ins. The master schedule provides the team with the foundation that they need to build the short-term plan. It provides them with the critical milestones, with the phasing of the project, with how those phases are interconnected and logically tied.

It's very important to find the balance between the master schedule and the short-term plan because the level of detail in the master schedule should be enough to understand the overall plan of the job and make the team confident in their ability to get the job done on time. But it shouldn't be too detailed because if it has too much details, then it will overreach to the short-term plan, and it will lead the team to go into autopilot and not really focus on building a short-term plan that has good buy-in, and that's built with collaboration, and that the handoffs are defined between different stakeholders in different trade partners.

So some of the best practices that we can look at when we talk about short-term planning is that the pull plan should inherit the milestones and the general logic of the master schedule. The master schedule should inform the pull planning phase, but without constraining it. It should inform what should happen. The pull is where the trades then take that, and they start confirming what they can do and what they will do. So what they should do.

But they need to collaboratively work together to plan and decide what they can do, and then confirm what they will do. At this point in the process, there needs to be a feedback loop that ties back to the master schedule to ensure that whatever the team plan to do and did not impact the critical path of the job or did not create any additional risk as a result of that work plan. The planner and scheduler should assess the risk from anything that was executed, anything for the bit part of the work plan.

If something didn't happen according to that plan, did it have any impact on the critical path on the master schedule? And they also should assess any patterns that they can see in the root causes of things not happening according to plan because that could be indicative of systematic problems on the job.

DAVID KADYSHAWICH: Thank you, Michael and Sherif. So technology can help mitigate the challenges described and sometimes even help implementing the best practices. In Autodesk we, understand the need of construction industry for both long-term and short-term schedule solutions. And we're taking action. When it comes to master schedule, we heard many of the same frustration from our customer, no one place of truth. So there are multiple versions of the same schedule floating around the project.

And it's really hard to make sure your team works off of the same most-updated schedule. Consumption-- most people on the job site do not have access to the schedule software. And even if they do, it can be very intimidating to work with P6, Asta, MSP. So most team members have the project schedule as a shared PDF and print it out as a booklet. We saw team members who were going around with markers, trying to mark the information in this huge PDF booklet to make sure they get the information they need.

So not all companies are like Skanska, trying really hard to make the master shorter and balancing it with really good short-term planning. The master can sometimes get to thousands of activities. And project members really struggle to get the information they need out of it. System connectivity-- we often heard people asking to connect schedule activities to other key information objects in the system, things like issues, BCOs, LFI, submittals, floor plans-- they are all deeply connected to schedule activity.

And change in one will almost necessarily affect the other. And last but not least, another big frustration is communication. So getting information all the way from the field up to the master and get it back to the field as an updated schedule is a long process. We heard people talking about two weeks from activity completed all the way to most updated schedule in the site. So communication around future activities is inefficient and frustrating process, creating a lot of misalignment and overhead from the team.

To start addressing those needs, we build schedule tool, now available for everyone in BIM. With schedule tool, you can easily import schedule into the system. And once your P6, or Asta, or MSP is in, you can keep updating it with new versions, making sure everyone in the project has access to your most updated schedule. And you can see it anyone you want. Each and every schedule in the schedule tool can have different permissions.

So one can be set to everyone in the project. And the other one can be most restricted, and only chosen members in the project have access to it. Now, you can save time and find information faster, search thousands of schedule items or filter by date, resource, or any other activity code or outline code imported from the schedule. You can now create and share unique views and find information you need from the schedule quickly.

This is also true from the mobile. You can see what's happening this week, next week, or next month, search, filter, and get all the schedule information you need from anywhere. Connect schedule activities to LFI, submittals, forms, issues, and much more. Project members can now find schedule-related information inside the activity itself. And of course, all this information will be kept there when the new version comes in.

And in the communication style of staff-- leverage, comments, and mentions start a trend with people that matter and solve schedule problems way before they get into the look ahead. And with that, I want to move it back to Shani, that will show us how technology can help also shorten planning and to show us how everything can start getting connected.

SHANI SHARIF: We have heard Michael and Sherif discuss many benefits of short-term planning. And for us at Autodesk, we especially had customers coming to us looking for a technology solution to help with the process. For many customers, what they need is the ability to conduct short-term planning sessions remotely. These sessions are meant to be collaborative. But if you couldn't make it out to the job site for that session, you missed out.

Next, to reduce the manual process that Michael spoke about-- the manual data delivery, data entry, and work plan distribution after the planning session. We heard from many that team members have spent as much time transferring this sticky note data from the pull planning session to an electronic work plan as they spent in the actual planning session. And finally, an easier way to track construction progress and monitor how things are going compared to the plan-- for many teams, tracking metrics such as vehicle plan percent complete was a manual process that was not updated in real time.

Work Plan in Autodesk Build provide users with many key features to perform their short-term planning requirements. First, collaborative planning-- import, crate, or copy existing activities and collaboratively build out work plans during in-person and remote planning sessions. Second, shared access-- work plan provides instant access to work plans, commitments, and progress to all project team members via our web or mobile application. Third, constraint management-- identify and remove roadblocks before the work happens, tag activities as roadblocks, create a constraint log, and monitor resolution.

Fourth commitment tracking-- document commitments made by each stakeholder during weekly work planning sessions. As work progresses, track actual [INAUDIBLE] commitment on web or mobile application. And finally, key performance metrics dashboard-- leverage pre-built dashboards to track construction progress against targets and identify common root causes for incomplete activities. We probably sound like broken records, but the importance of view master schedule and short-term plan as an integrated process is critical, especially as you connect the two.

The master schedule provides teams with the phasing, structure, and milestones. As Mike mentioned, from there, the team uses the phase, structure, and milestone as the foundation for the short-term plan. As we mentioned before, finding the balance is important because if the master schedule is too detailed, teams go into autopilot and don't focus on that short-term plan, the collaboration, and the handoffs to make it successful. But if they are overly focused on the short-term plan and lose sight of the master schedule, then delays impact the short-term plan, teams may not see the ripple effect of what gets broken in the master schedule.

To solve this problem, we are connecting a schedule and work plan tools in Autodesk Build. At the start of a project, rather than creating all work plan activities independently, we can start by reading the data from the master schedule and start from there. From the uploaded master schedule file, milestone and select key activities will be pushed to work on. In the work plan, users can modify these selections to match their project requirements.

Next, the superintendent can select a milestone to conduct a collaborative pull planning session with all the construction team members to create a short-term plan. Project members can define and sequence their own tasks to meet the milestone. Next, all the tasks created in the planning session are added to the work plan. All these tasks are linked to the right milestones. Once the planning session is over and the construction starts, if based on the actual project progress-- a connected milestone should move-- the superintendent can make the required adjustments.

But the system will highlight that this milestone is out of sync from the master schedule and will automatically generate a change suggestion to the owner of the master schedule. Scheduler can review the milestone changes and update the master schedule changes accordingly. Once the changes to the master schedule are performed, the schedule file is updated.

These changes will be reflected in work plan, triggering a notification that a change was made based on the suggestion from the work plan to the master or indicating that the work plan might be out of sync due to other changes to the schedule updates. I know we have covered a lot of material today.

But hopefully, you have learned the importance of integrating short-term plan with the master schedule, some best practices and pitfalls to avoid, and how leveraging technology can help you create more efficient processes, and at the end of the day, finish on time, every time. While the project roadmap may not look exactly as what it looked like from the beginning of the trip, but hopefully, it has less detours, turn around, and backtracking. Thank you for listening to our talk. And we look forward to your questions and continue the conversation in the future. Have a great day.