Planning the Work & the Day
Productivity starts with a plan — most lost time comes from poor planning, not slow workers.
Plan ahead
- Use a look-ahead (a rolling 1–2 week plan) so the right work, people, materials, and tools are ready.
- Hold a short daily huddle — what we're doing, who's doing it, what we need.
- Sequence the work so trades aren't tripping over each other or waiting.
Be ready
Have materials staged and tools on hand before the crew shows up — nothing wastes a morning like hunting for materials.
Going Deeper (Intermediate)
Plan the work before doing it. Daily and weekly plans, materials staged, tools ready, and the sequence clear mean crews are never waiting. The foreman's morning huddle sets the day. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Advanced / Pro-Level
Short-interval planning, the cheapest productivity tool:
- Daily huddles and a 3-week lookahead keep work and materials staged.
- "Make-ready" (the Last Planner idea): confirm the prerequisites — information, materials, predecessor work, and inspections — are in place before a task is scheduled to start.
- Stage materials to the work to cut motion and travel.
- Sequence to avoid trade collisions. Time spent planning the morning saves multiples of it on the job.
Practice Challenge
A crew arrives ready to work but the material is across the site and a permit-inspection hasn't cleared the prior task. What planning step was skipped? (Answer: "make-ready" planning — confirming prerequisites (materials staged, predecessor work inspected) before scheduling the task; the crew now waits or does out-of-sequence work, the exact waste a lookahead/huddle prevents.)
In Practice
A crew shows up with no plan and spends the morning hunting materials. A two-minute huddle and a look-ahead would have had everything staged and ready.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- No daily plan or huddle
- Materials and tools not staged
- Trades tripping over each other
Takeaway: Plan ahead with a look-ahead and a daily huddle, and stage materials/tools — most lost time is poor planning, not slow workers.
Educational content — not legal advice. Have contracts reviewed by an attorney.