Last Planner System - from theory to

implementation
Dos Santos, G. F.1, Tokede, O. O.2
1 Faculdade de Cincias Aplicadas, University of Campinas, R. Pedro Zacarias, 1300 - Jardim So Paulo, Limeira - SP, 13484-
350. E-mail address of corresponding author: falcini.gabriel@gmail.com, Tel: +55 (11) 94329-5829
2
School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong Waterfront Campus, Locked Bag 20001, Gee-
long, VIC 3220, Australia.

ABSTRACT

Purpose of this paper

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the Last Planner System (LPS) of construction
project scheduling through a literature review of published case study reports.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology used was a critical literature analysis on LPS case studies reports. This approach was
chosen in order to consider case projects from different locations around the world; predominantly pub-
lications from the year 2000 to 2015 were examined. Several online platforms for academic papers were
used in the study, and a systematic data processing was conducted in order to achieve statistically signif-
icant comparisons and observations.

Findings and value

The Last Planner System is new in the construction business, but there is already a good amount of re-
ported case studies. Through the literature review it was found that there are a number of obstacles in
the implementation of Last Planner System particularly in relation to matching the theory with practice.
However, there is a general consensus in all the case studies examined, on the benefits of adopting LPS.
The relation between the perceived benefits and perceived obstacles were analysed.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitation faced were the paucity of information on critical aspects of the implementation of
LPS in Construction Projects. The study was based upon 24 different case study projects, and lack of
robust and explicit information, such as completion time and cost, was a recurrent problem in the study.

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Practical implications

This work aims to provoke a discussion on the Last Planner System and focuses on its implementation
and challenges. It also seeks to establish the state-of-art practise of LPS in the construction industry.
This information could potentially be useful for researchers and industry practitioners.

Originality/value of paper

The originality of this study is its investigative focus on the LPS technique over a 15-year period. There-
fore, it aims to provide a general overview of the current practice of LPS in the industry.

Conclusions: This study identifies and highlights the obstacles in the implementation of LPS in construc-
tion projects, and assesses the potentials of LPS based on published case study reports. All the case
studies attest to improved efficiency levels in the project completion time and enhanced inclusivity and
bonding of the project team, when LPS is used in managing projects.

Keywords: Case Studies, Construction Management, Last Planner System, Project Completion time, Proj-
ect Planning

1 INTRODUCTION

The Last planner System (LPS) technique has proven to be a valuable approach to scheduling in construc-
tion projects. Over the last two decades, there has been increased interest in the LPS technique (Ballard,
2000). The LPS technique stems from the lean thinking philosophy that emerged from the Japanese
Industry in the early 1990s. The LPS approach is however tailored to the application of lean thinking in
construction project scheduling. The last planner is the person with the expertise, or specific knowledge
of how to actually produce the output that is required, by the specific project task. It gives the name to
the System due to the great importance that the last planner has on the Last Planner System (Pasquire,
Zimina, 2012). The LPS requires the last planner to decompose larger tasks into specific work assign-
ments that can be given to individual construction operatives or teams, to complete in a relatively small
time window. The assignment concept places emphasis on the actual work to be done and its attendant
processes rather than creating a further plan that simply recognises desired outcomes (Ballard, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the LPS technique in construction project sched-
uling through a literature review. This research method provided the better means of appraising the LPS
technique, given the scant availability of relevant data, and limited documentation of vital project in-
formation. The research was conducted in two parts: at first, a broad overview of the LPS theory, which
resulted in the descriptive review below. Secondly, a meticulous analysis on LPS application through case
studies, which resulted in the findings of this paper.

The Last Planner theory

Ballard introduced the Last Planner System in 1993 (Grenho, 2009) based on studies on how to improve
assignments in weekly work plans, and how to control the work flow of design and construction projects.

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The System is a philosophy and a set of rules and procedures, together with tools to guide the implemen-
tation process (Pasquire, Zimina, 2012). Traditional project management methods propose that a master
plan informs what should be done. These objectives are transposed to lower level planning steps referred
to as the lookahead schedule, and later, to weekly work plans (Ballard, 2000).

According to Ballard (2000), the lookahead schedule involves (i) identifying and listing the assignments
that can be completed in the next work period, (ii) consulting with production experts to establish that
each assignment can be feasibly completed within the identified time period and requisition of material
and equipment for each task in order to proceed in the assigned week, (iii) identify any planned assign-
ment that cannot be completed and adjusted in the look-ahead as required, and (iv) generate a list of
activities to be completed prior to the issuing of assignments. In general, the lookahead schedules are
already a usual practice in the production planning, but when allied to the correlation of should with
can, it acquires a new role in project planning. The Lookahead works as a prediction of the probable as-
signments for the next 3 to 12 weeks, depending on the project, and its impacts reverberate further when
applied inside the Last Planner System.

Weekly work plans, on the other hand, are produced from look-ahead plans. They identify and sequence
exactly what work should be done on each day to complete identified assignment. The last step in this
sequence involves translating the objectives into assignments. This translation is implemented by the
person or group who holds the last planner position. Howell and Ballards (2000) studies revealed that
the absence of a critical analysis is the root cause of a high non-compliance rate. Traditionally, what
should be done is automatically converted into assignments, not considering the possibility of existing
constraints. The Last Planner System proposes that the last planner is responsible for transitioning the
variable can into should, and only then can he determine which assignments will be solved. In this as-
pect, this is one of the greatest contributions that Last Planner System in construction project planning
and execution, and it can be visualized in the Figure 1, a scheme adapted from the proposed by Ballard
(2000). Prior to establishing what will be done, the last planner must investigate if all the constraints to
a specific work are removed. If not, this work is not an assignment at that specific week, and it must be
postponed to coming ones.

Figure 1 The Last Planner System scheme

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According to Mossman (2013), the Last Planner System (LPS) is about recognising the complex human
relations that exists in a construction site, and work towards improving it, instead of supressing it. With
this, problematic tasks are identified before they turn critical. The difference between the tradition-
al method and Last Planner System becomes clearer when the Percent Plan Complete (PPC) of weekly
plans are compared. PPC is a tool used to measure the non-compliance rate, being simply the completed
assignments divided by the planned assignments (Koskela et al, 2010). It indicates that, in traditional
methods, the low PPC percentage decreases the reliability of the plan that directs the work, causing its
abandonment. Therefore, the PPC ratings of traditional project planning methods are usually lower then
constructions projects that applied the Last Planner System technique.

Besides the improvement in PPC of projects scheduled, using the LPS approach, the system has a dynam-
ic and feedback loop that facilitates workflow and process improvement as programme progresses. The
improvements in efficiency are bottom-up in nature, and work on a pull principle which enhances the
productivity function of tasks and work programmes. Tasks tend to be only progressed when they are
ready to be progressed (Isatto et al, 2010). This removes waste and increases efficiency. In general, con-
struction times tend to be accelerated due to efficiency-gains that can be realised by better work-flows
as a result of more realistic planning assessments.

The Last Planner application

The theory for the system, as seen above, is well consolidated. However, the question that guided the
research was: is the application of the LPS technique as defined as the theory?. In seeking for further
enlightenment, this current work gathered data on 21 academic studies about the Last Planner imple-
mentation through case study reports. The method used to analyse all the reports is described in the
next section, The Literature Review / The Method, and the results from this analysis are explained in the
third section, The Findings.

Importance and related works

The research highlighted important topics and attempts to explain the difficulty in translating the LPS
theory into practice. This was considered important to the academia as well as industry practitioners. Be-
sides, the study identified that the absence of several details in published reports could end up fostering
an indistinct pattern in the implementation of LPS technique in construction scheduling. The literature
review found only one more study similar to the one reported in this paper. In this one, 17 articles were
analysed, published between 2000 and 2009 (Porwal et al, 2010). Some of the findings between that re-
search and the research presented in this paper are similar, but the conclusions differ in a way that both
researches complement each other.

2 THE LITERATURE REVIEW / THE METHOD

The research commenced with a literature review on the Last Planner theory, in order to have a robust
base of the implementation of LPS. Seventeen different studies were initially considered. Later, the re-

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searchers conducted a systematic data processing, in order to capture the first-hand experience of con-
struction organisations that have adopted the LPS implementation strategy. It was therefore necessary
in this work to obtain information on real-life projects focusing on specific projects, and undertake the
analysis of data collected from several construction projects that utilised the LPS technique. Consider-
ing that the Last Planner System has been in existent for only about 22 years, and it is only since Year
1997 (Grenho, 2009) that LPS has received attention from the industry, the researches chose to narrow
the research to papers published between 1999 and 2015.

The researchers used online platforms and online search tools for academic studies: Google Scholar, the
research tool owned by Edinburgh Napier University (United Kingdom) - LibrarySearch, the online Na-
tional Library of Scotland portal, and the one owned by the University of Campinas (Brazil) SophiA
SBU. In the majority, these tools redirected to online archives: International Group for Lean Construction
(IGLC), Lean Construction Institute (LCI) and its journal, Research Gate, Emerald Insight, ProQuest, Else-
vier, Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Hindawi, Routledge by Taylor & Francis Group, Journal of Engi-
neering, Project and Product Management (EPPM), Wiley-Blackwell, and Brazilian National Association
of Technology in the in the Built Environment (ANTAC) non-official translation, or yet, to publications
by other Universities around the world.

The analysis of each paper involved systematic screening on important subjects. This were allocated into
one of the eight columns at the original table elaborated by the researchers. There were specific catego-
ries, such as the authors names, the data about the case study (name of the project, country where was
built, business operation, value and duration, and subjective categories, such as application, benefits
and miscellaneous. The original table was adapted to the purpose of this paper, resulting in the table 1,
that presents part of collected data added to other details considered important for the understanding
of the study. It is important to notice that each number represents one academic publication, and not a
case study. The academic works are arranged base on the year of publication The different papers that
focus on same case study are marked with an asterisk on the Ref column.

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Table 1 researched papers basic data

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 *Some papers broach the same case study. This happens to the papers 01, 02 and 04; 10 and 11; 12 and 13; and 15 and 23.
**NI Not informed

In the course of the analyses, the researchers identified statistically significant comparisons and obser-
vations that are presented in the next section - The Findings. However, the information in some reports
hinted at a prevalent limitation. It was common in the publications to report on qualitative data of the
projects, but there was not commensurate quantitative information, that could shed light on the per-
formance attribute of the projects. A critical missing information in many of the studied reports was the
project cost, or how many percent of the project has exceeded or saved the final predicted value. Another
lack of information was the project duration, or if the project could be finished on time or not, having
exceeded the predicted limit, or having finished within the needed time. Even PPC measures were not
present at all, in the reports, as the researchers supposed initially.

Although cost was a scarce data, it was possible to reach conclusions through it. Table 2 relates the costs
of the cases that revealed such data, without the ones that omitted crucial information. The case study
was repeated in order to facilitate the correlation between cost and project. The table is ordered accord-
ing to the cost, from the cheapest to the most expensive.

Table 1 researched papers basic data

*average estimated between the most expensive and the cheapest project

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3 THE FINDINGS

The authors conducted a survey on the projects, and the general observations was that a hundred per
cent of the cases experienced general improvement in the project delivery, when LPS was implemented.
However, all the cases had also some difficulty in translating the LPS theory into practice, and the con-
vergence of these problems resulted in the other findings presented on this section, which are
The Last Planner system is possibly only applicable for big projects, or
The LPS is applicable to small projects only if there is an adaptation on the lookahead schedule;
The PPC has too broad definition, what can cause wrong conclusions;
The LPS may not be applicable to Design-Bid-Build.

3.1 The Last Planner System: big projects versus small projects

According to Moura (2008), the success of the Last Planner System (LPS) depends on the existence of
many variables to be manage. Similar to this, is that, LPS would not be a good tool for a small project,
once there is less variables and the bureaucracy would only confound and create a barrier to the project
progress. Koskela et al (2009) reveals that the scarcity of specialized labour can be a reason for the dif-
ficulty in following the LPS, therefore contributing to thinking that LPS may be not suitable for small
projects, once they commonly have deficiency on specialized labour.

The definition of small and big projects, on the other hand, is not established, being subjective and
its separation seems rather tenuous. From the various cases examined during the research, it could be
observed that many types of projects uses the Last Planner System with at least a small progress, as
already quoted. From $10 million to $1.7 billion US dollars projects, consisting in hospital constructions,
buildings, offices, rehabilitation of several buildings, research centre, enclosed amphitheatre, sustain-
able and residential tower with 69 floors, a four-floor garage, laboratory building, installation of build-
ing envelopes, the Last Planner System can at first sight be considered a broad system that covers any
project size. Although, a deeper analysis in the literature reveals that, actually, there is possibly no study
covering the use of LPS in small projects. In this work, it was considered big projects, as those exceeding
30 million dollars in project cost,; medium-sized projects as those having project cost between $2 million
and $30 million; and small projects are projects that cost lesser than 2 million dollars. The research done
did not find any reported case of LPS applied to small projects. Indeed, it is not common to find the de-
scription of using the Last Planner System, for example, in the construction of a family house.

3.2 Adapting the lookahead schedule

In order to test Mouras hypothesis, the best confirmation would be an empirical test by future works. Al-
though this research had suspicions regarding Mouras hypothesis, it had limited information to proceed
on this line of inquiry. Ballards et al (2009) work, however reported a successful adaptation of a six-week
lookahead planning to three-week lookahead planning for small projects or individual construction work.
This paper did not examine the adaptation in further details, but the idea of adapting illustrates the
crucial consideration that must be done: if the original format of LPS is not suitable for small projects,
adaptations can be done, once the system is based in the general theory of management, what includes

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all project sizes.

3.3 The definition of PPC

Moura (2008) presents another concern about the LPS theory, questioning the definition of PPC. Quot-
ing Costa, Moura (2008) highlights that the weekly tasks can be managed in order to produce artificial re-
sults for the PPC, ignoring the quality requirements proposed by Ballard and Howell (1997). This problem
relies on the broad definition that the PPC has, something that Breternitz (2002) had already noticed
when proposing another metric to the LPS. According to his work, the PPC is not capable of considering
incomplete works, for example, half work. For the PPC metric, it does not matter if determined task was
99% or 1% done in both cases, it will be considered undone. As Moura (2008) stated, tasks broken down
into smaller packages of work, have higher chances of resulting in higher PPC rates.

The broad definition of PPC can explain why the PPC behaviour is so different from one project to anoth-
er or even inside just one project. It is observed that commonly the variation in PPC measures tends to
narrow as the project matures, but the amplitude remains wide. Ochoa (2012) gathered data about an
enormous project, recording also the PCC measures, which resulted in the graphic shown in Figure 2. The
rising values are explained inside the study as direct result of the LPS acting, but the large amplitude
between the recordings during the first 9 weeks can be explained by PPCs broad definition.

Figure 2 PPC measures in Ochoa (2012) research, adapted graph showing the project first weeks

In Figure 3, it is presented the PPC performance in two more case studies that also confirm visually the
high amplitude in PPC measures during the whole projects.

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 Figure 3 PPC measures in Salem et al (2005) and Koskevensa and Koskela (2005) researches, both

Among the case studies analysed in this research, the amplitude is also observed in Ballard (1999), in
Alarcon et al (2005), specially on the last year of a three years research; and it happens again in AlSehaimi
et al (2014) with the two researched projects.

3.4 LPS to Design-Bid-Build projects

At first, LPS was developed to be a tool to be used only during the construction itself. Ballard and Howell
(2000), although, predicted the benefits that would emerge from implementing LPS since the project
beginning, in the design phase. Nowadays, the current practice indeed apply LPS since the project early
stages, but it has brought unpredictable questionings. Fuemana et al (2013) identified in his research two
main problems relating LPS in the early stages of the most traditional way of contracting the Design-
Bid-Build project, where two different contractors execute the design and the construction phases.

The first problem is that LPS requires more from the designers. In traditional procurement systems, the
designers do their work in the first phase of the project, and it is not required much more after that.
The Last Planner System break with this model, requiring the designer participation until the end of the
project, what makes room for defects or rework. Therefore, it was clear in Fuemana et al (2013) that there
is a reluctance from the designers, creating a need of raising awareness.

The second problem related was the investment done in the design. It is intrinsic of LPS that a bigger
amount of cost will be invested in the design, but the investment is quickly recouped and paid back
during the construction, once waste of time and resource are avoided. This LPS characteristic becomes

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a problem in a Design-Bid-Build project because there is no total guarantee that the company will be
awarded the construction contract, and if not, all the investment may be in vain. Future studies can
develop a LPS adaptation to Design-Bid-Build projects, but until then, it is recommended to adopt the
LPS in case of high levels of certainty.

4 CONCLUSION

The Last Planner System (LPS) is a generic application of lean thinking in construction project scheduling. It
challenges the traditional approach of delivering construction projects, and incorporates a more dynamic
approach to project planning. This work on the application of LPS suggests promising results, but there
are also areas of improvement. For instance, it is suggested that LPS embraces additional flexibility that
can enhance its applicability in construction projects. This will be beneficial for construction industry
practitioners and project managers.

The research sought for convergent points in the case studies that indicate the state-of-art of the Last
Planner System. The researchers conclude that the Last Planner System must be improved in order to
conveniently utilise the approach in small construction projects. One possible way to start with this is
working upon the lookahead schedule.

Another important observation was that the assessment of projects based on Percent Plan Completion
(PPC) levels can be a reason for the divergence observed in the data bf different projects implemented
using the LPS technique, or even in same project. The solution can appear to be simple to a create a
narrower pattern. However, this needs to be extensively studied in order to obtain more consistent and
reliable results.

The research also examined the application of LPS in Design-Bid-Build projects, reaching the conclusion
that the decision is up to each project team after studying the cost- benefit of using LPS in construction
projects.

Finally, it was found that, in a hundred per cent of the cases, the Last Planner System delivers improved
project performance compared to traditional techniques. All the project participants interrogated
suggested that the Last Planner System achieved a general improvement in the delivery of construction
projects. This findings support the hypothesis formulated in the beginning of this section. All the case
studies attest to improved efficiency levels in the project completion time and enhanced inclusivity and
bonding of the project team, when LPS is used in managing projects.

For future research, the authors suggest the development of a more holistic approach for reporting on
the application of LPS. The researchers also suggest future studies on the adaptations that need to be
done in the LPS approach.

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