Lean Construction Pull Planning Template

Full Description

This pull planning template lets you capture the results of a lean construction pull planning session in Excel. Move the activities from your physical board into an electronic schedule, so you can email it to your trades, save it for the record and hold people to the commitments they made.

What is pull planning?

Pull planning is a collaborative scheduling method used in lean construction. Instead of one scheduler working forward from today, the team starts at a milestone and works backward, with each foreman placing their own activities, durations and crew sizes on a shared board. Each trade states what it needs from the trade before it. The result is a sequence everyone helped build and has committed to, often used to plan the look-ahead at weekly foremen’s meetings.

When to use it

• Planning a phase or milestone with all the trade foremen in the room
• Building the look-ahead for weekly or bi-weekly foremen’s meetings
• Re-planning after a delay or a change in sequence
• Starting lean practices on a project without buying new software
• Keeping a record of what each trade committed to

What’s included

• Excel pull planning template (.xlsx)
• Lets you input the information from your physical pull planning board into electronic format
• Ready to issue to your trades by email and save for record purposes

How to use it

1. Pick the milestone you are planning toward and set its date.
2. Run the pull planning session on a wall or board with the foremen of each trade.
3. Working backward from the milestone, have each trade place its activities, durations and crew size.
4. Agree on handoffs between trades and resolve conflicts while everyone is in the room.
5. Enter the agreed activities, durations, crews and trades into the template.
6. Email it to the team, then review it at each weekly meeting and record what was completed.

Tips

• Have the people who will do the work, usually the foremen, place their own activities.
• Keep each activity small enough to finish within a week.
• Record constraints such as missing information, materials or permits, and assign someone to clear each one.
• Use the latest version of Microsoft Excel so the template works properly.

Related templates and guides

• Three week look ahead schedule template
• Weekly lookahead planner
• Schedule reliability analysis
• Construction scheduling templates
• Lean construction: pull planning explained – full article

Frequently asked questions

What are the advantages of pull planning?

More open communication between trades, a visual plan everyone can see, ownership because people list their own activities, and a better shared understanding of why dates are set. Teams often find fewer surprises at handoffs because each trade states what it needs first.

What are the disadvantages of pull planning?

It takes some understanding and practice to run sessions well, and a physical board needs wall space on site. Capturing the board afterward can also be a challenge, which is the problem this template is built to solve.

How is pull planning different from a traditional schedule?

A traditional schedule is often built forward from the start date by one scheduler. Pull planning works backward from a milestone, and the trades who do the work build the sequence together, so the plan reflects their real needs and commitments.

What is the Last Planner System?

The Last Planner System is a lean planning approach that links the master schedule, phase or pull planning, look-ahead planning and weekly work plans. It measures how many weekly commitments are completed, so the team can find and fix the reasons work was not done.

What do you need for a pull planning session?

The foremen or trade leads for the phase, a milestone date, a large wall or board, sticky notes in a color per trade, and a facilitator. Afterward, enter the results into a template like this one so it can be shared and updated.