Track construction progress by comparing actual, observable completion with the commitments recorded at the start of the week. Keep the original weekly plan unchanged, assign every commitment to a trade or person, check status in the field, calculate Percent Plan Complete (PPC) at week-end, document why incomplete work missed, and remove constraints from next week’s tasks through lookahead planning. This shows whether the planning process is reliable without confusing commitment reliability with installed quantity or overall schedule performance.
What the weekly plan is—and what progress tracking must prove
A weekly work plan is a list of commitments the project team agrees to complete during a defined week. It should be connected to the project’s lookahead schedule and to the broader phase and milestone plan. The weekly list is not a forecast that can be quietly rewritten as conditions change; it is the baseline against which the team learns whether its commitments were dependable.
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Progress tracking therefore answers two separate questions:
- Did the team complete the work it promised for this week? This is the focus of PPC and commitment reliability.
- Is the project producing the quantity, value and milestone movement required by the master schedule? This requires production quantities, schedule dates, earned-value or other project controls in addition to PPC.
A high PPC does not by itself prove that a project is on schedule. A team can complete a small number of easy commitments while a major handoff remains blocked. Conversely, a missed commitment may not indicate poor execution if an owner decision, design release or severe weather prevented the work. The weekly review must examine the commitments, their causes and their effect on the project together.
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Build a weekly baseline that can be checked in the field
Start with feasible, sequenced assignments
At the weekly planning meeting, pull proposed work from the lookahead plan and select only assignments that are defined, properly sequenced and feasible for the crew’s capacity. The Last Planner System treats milestone planning, phase pull planning, lookahead planning, weekly work planning and learning as connected conversations. A task belongs in the weekly plan only when the team has enough information, access, labour, materials, equipment and preceding work to reasonably commit to it.
Break broad activities into outcomes that a supervisor and the next trade can verify. “Continue electrical rough-in” is difficult to score consistently. “Complete electrical rough-in in Level 2 east corridor and release the area for inspection by Friday” has a location, an observable endpoint and a date. Use the level of detail that makes completion unambiguous without turning the plan into a catalogue of every minor motion.
Record the owner and planned period
Every line needs a responsible trade or person, a location or work area, and the planned day or week. The owner is accountable for coordinating the commitment, while the superintendent or planner maintains the plan and facilitates constraint removal. If several trades must act, identify the handoff and the party responsible for declaring the final outcome complete.
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Freeze the original commitments
Save or print the plan as it stood when the team committed. If a task is later removed, deferred or replaced, retain the original line and record the change. Deleting a difficult task makes the report look better but destroys the evidence needed to understand reliability and prevent a repeat. A separate “current status” view can be used for field coordination; the baseline remains unchanged for the end-of-week calculation.
Use one completion rule for every commitment
Agree on what “complete” means before the week starts. A task should be marked complete only when its stated outcome is achieved and any required inspection, test, documentation or handoff included in the commitment is finished. Partial progress can be recorded in notes or quantity fields, but it does not count as complete unless the team’s rule explicitly defines a measurable partial milestone as the commitment.
Useful completion descriptions include:
- an area is installed to the planned boundary and ready for the named successor trade;
- a concrete placement is finished, cured or tested to the condition stated in the commitment;
- an inspection has passed and the required record is available;
- a procurement or design action has produced the information needed for field work, when that action itself is the commitment.
Do not change the rule between trades or between weeks. Consistency is essential when comparing performance. If one team calls “90 percent installed” complete and another requires a full handoff, their PPC values are not comparable.
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Fields to capture in a weekly plan
A spreadsheet, printed board or planning application is sufficient if it preserves the baseline and captures the information needed for learning. At minimum, use the following fields.
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|---|---|---|
| Commitment ID | A stable number or short label | Prevents a task from disappearing when wording changes |
| Task and observable finish | The outcome that will be judged complete | Creates a common completion rule |
| Location or work area | Level, room, grid, elevation or other boundary | Lets field staff verify the exact scope |
| Responsible trade or person | The owner of the commitment | Clarifies coordination and follow-up |
| Planned period | Day or week in which completion is promised | Supports daily coordination and weekly closeout |
| Prerequisites and constraints | Information, access, materials, labour, equipment, approvals or predecessor work | Allows constraints to be removed before commitment |
| Field status | Not started, in progress, complete or incomplete | Shows current condition without changing the baseline |
| Actual completion date | The date the defined outcome was achieved | Tests performance against the promised period |
| Reason for variance | Cause when a commitment is incomplete or late | Turns a miss into a learnable event |
| Countermeasure and owner | The corrective action, responsible person and due date | Prevents the same cause from recurring |
Check progress during the week
Run short daily coordination checks
Use daily huddles or field walks to review the weekly list with the people doing and receiving the work. Confirm what was completed, what is in progress, what is due next and what has become constrained. The purpose is early coordination, not premature scoring. A task that is still open on Wednesday is not a failure; a known constraint that remains hidden until Friday is a preventable surprise.
Update against evidence, not optimism
Record status from direct observation, inspection records, delivery information or the agreed handoff. “Crew expects to finish” is a forecast, not completion. When a commitment changes, note the date, decision and reason while retaining the original line. This creates an audit trail for the weekly conversation.
Escalate constraints while there is time to act
Typical constraints include a missing owner decision, incomplete engineering or design information, unavailable materials, access conflicts, predecessor work, labour or equipment shortages, inspections and weather. Assign each constraint an owner and a required resolution date. If a task is not ready, move the discussion to the lookahead process rather than asking a crew to make an unreliable promise.
Close out the week and calculate PPC
Mark every original commitment
At the end of the planned period, review the frozen baseline line by line. Mark each commitment complete or incomplete using the agreed rule. A task that was deleted, reworded or moved during the week remains in the denominator if it was an original commitment. Record the actual completion date when it finished after the promised period.
Apply the formula
Percent Plan Complete (PPC) = (number of original planned tasks completed ÷ total number of original planned tasks) × 100.
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For example, if the team committed to 10 tasks and completed eight to the defined standard within the planned week, PPC is 80 percent. The two incomplete commitments remain visible with their causes. PPC is generally tracked weekly, although another interval can suit work with a different rhythm. It is a measure of workflow reliability for commitments, not a stand-alone measure of installed quantity, productivity or earned value.
| Original commitments | Completed in the planned week | PPC | What the report still needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 8 | 80% | The two incomplete tasks, their causes, countermeasures and any milestone effect |
| 12 | 8 | 66.7% | Whether the lower result came from one systemic constraint or several unrelated events |
| 5 | 5 | 100% | Confirmation that the commitments were substantial and aligned with required production |
The Lean Construction Institute reports that, on average, only 54 percent of work planned for a given week is completed within the allotted schedule. The page does not state a publication year or underlying attribution in the available material, so treat this as a quoted LCI figure rather than a dated, current industry-wide benchmark.
Explain every miss and agree a countermeasure
Classify the immediate cause
For each incomplete commitment, write a specific cause rather than “behind” or “crew issue.” Broad cause categories used in weekly planning include owner decisions, engineering or design, and weather. Other project-specific categories may include access, predecessor work, materials, labour, equipment, inspection or a change in priority. Identify the event that prevented completion and when it became known.
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Separate cause from consequence
“Room handoff missed” describes the consequence. “Fire-stopping detail was not approved until Thursday, leaving one shift for installation” describes a cause. Capturing both helps the team decide whether the fix is a design-release rule, an approval escalation, a resequencing decision or a resource change.
Look for patterns across weeks
One miss may be exceptional; repeated misses reveal a process problem. Review the count and type of causes over several weeks and by work area. Repeated material constraints may require earlier procurement or submittal tracking. Repeated access conflicts may require a revised logistics plan. Repeated design causes may require a release milestone before work is placed in the weekly plan.
Assign a concrete countermeasure
A countermeasure states the action, owner and due date. Examples include obtaining a decision by a specified meeting, confirming a delivery before the next commitment, resequencing two trades, adding a prerequisite inspection to the lookahead screen or changing the definition of ready. Review whether the action worked; do not close it merely because the next week’s PPC improved.
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Prepare the next week with lookahead planning
Lookahead planning screens upcoming work and takes action to make tasks ready before they enter a weekly commitment. The lookahead horizon should be long enough to expose approvals, procurement, design, access and predecessor risks that cannot be solved in a daily huddle.
- List upcoming activities. Pull tasks from the phase or master schedule into the lookahead window.
- Screen each task for readiness. Check scope, sequence, information, materials, labour, equipment, access, permits, inspections and predecessor completion.
- Log every constraint. Name the required action, responsible person and date by which it must be resolved.
- Follow up before the weekly meeting. Escalate overdue actions and update the readiness status.
- Commit only ready work. Move a task into the weekly plan when the team can make a credible promise, not simply because the schedule date is approaching.
Two lookahead indicators complement PPC:
| Measure | Definition | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks Made Ready (TMR) | Whether tasks planned for a future week were made ready before that week | Shows how effectively the team removes constraints ahead of commitment |
| Tasks Anticipated (TA) | How many tasks in a target week’s plan were anticipated in an earlier lookahead plan | Shows whether upcoming work was visible early enough to prepare |
A low PPC caused by tasks that were never ready points to weak lookahead screening. A high TMR with low PPC points to a different problem, such as inaccurate production assumptions, poor sequencing or execution constraints. Use the indicators together rather than treating one percentage as a verdict.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Compare weeks, trades and work areas fairly
Comparisons are useful only when the measurement rules are stable. Use the same completion definition, reporting interval and treatment of changed commitments. When comparing two weeks, trades or areas, examine all of the following:
- PPC and the number of commitments behind the percentage;
- the count and type of incomplete commitments;
- recurring causes and whether assigned countermeasures were completed;
- TMR and TA for the relevant lookahead window;
- the effect on milestone dates, inspections, handoffs and successor work;
- the size and complexity of the commitments, not just their count.
Do not rank teams solely by PPC. The Last Planner approach frames PPC as a workflow-reliability measure and emphasizes learning and improvement. A trade with a lower percentage may have accepted difficult, high-value commitments while another reported a higher percentage on smaller or less constrained tasks. Use the comparison to improve planning and coordination, not to conceal risk or create a simplistic productivity league table.
Connect weekly tracking to project controls
Weekly commitment data should feed the project’s schedule and production conversations. If an incomplete task affects a milestone, handoff or successor activity, record that relationship and update the responsible schedule owner. Track installed quantities, labour hours, cost, earned value or other required controls in their appropriate systems; PPC does not replace them.
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- Which incomplete commitments can still be recovered without creating a new risk?
- Which misses move a milestone or block another trade?
- Did the original task definition or sequence make the promise unreliable?
- Are the next week’s commitments genuinely ready after the recorded countermeasures?
This keeps the weekly plan connected to the schedule without turning a single reliability percentage into a claim about the whole project.
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Choose a tracking format that preserves the discipline
A printed board works well when the team gathers in the same area and can mark status visibly. A spreadsheet is practical when several people need a shared baseline, formulas and a history of causes. A planning application can connect lookahead, weekly and daily horizons, field updates and promised-date completion. Autodesk documentation describes this type of planning and weekly root-cause review; Outbuild describes creating weekly plans from lookahead tasks, updating field progress and calculating PPC. These descriptions establish software capabilities, not independent performance comparisons or current pricing.
Whichever format you use, verify that it can:
- lock or archive the original weekly plan;
- show owner, location, planned period and completion rule;
- record status and actual completion without overwriting the baseline;
- capture a cause and countermeasure for every incomplete commitment;
- calculate PPC from the original denominator;
- carry constraints from lookahead into weekly planning;
- export a history so trends can be reviewed over time.
The Lean Construction Institute’s The Last Planner System Workbook is a physical reference for lookahead planning and PPC concepts. Confirm the current edition and availability before obtaining it.
Common failure modes and practical fixes
The plan is edited until it looks complete
Symptom: cancelled or deferred tasks vanish, producing an inflated PPC. Fix: archive the committed baseline and record every change as a variance.
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Symptom: different people disagree about whether work is done. Fix: add a location, boundary, measurable outcome and required handoff before accepting the commitment.
Only Friday status is collected
Symptom: constraints are discovered after recovery options have disappeared. Fix: use daily huddles or field checks and escalate blockers as soon as they appear.
Every miss is labelled “weather” or “manpower”
Symptom: the cause list cannot support a corrective action. Fix: describe the specific event, its timing and the decision or resource that would have prevented it.
PPC is treated as a productivity score
Symptom: teams avoid difficult commitments or manipulate task size. Fix: review PPC with task count, cause patterns, readiness measures, quantities and milestone effects.
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Lookahead is a schedule display, not a readiness process
Symptom: tasks enter the weekly plan with unresolved approvals, materials or access. Fix: assign constraint owners and due dates, then commit only work that passes the readiness screen.
A repeatable weekly meeting agenda
- Open the frozen baseline. Confirm the week, locations and original commitments.
- Review completion evidence. Mark each line complete or incomplete using the agreed rule.
- Calculate PPC. Show the numerator, denominator and any late completions separately.
- Discuss every incomplete line. Record the immediate cause and project consequence.
- Assign countermeasures. Give each action an owner and due date.
- Review lookahead readiness. Check TMR, TA and unresolved constraints for the next planning window.
- Set the next commitments. Select defined, sequenced and feasible work that the team can credibly promise.
- Publish the record. Distribute the baseline, status, causes, actions and next-week plan so trades share one version.
Following this cycle makes the weekly plan a management conversation rather than a retrospective spreadsheet: commitments are explicit, field conditions are visible, misses produce learning, and upcoming work is made ready before crews are asked to promise it.
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