Last Planner in Construction | Daily Team Huddle (Field Leadership Rhythm)

Why Your Office Team Wastes Capacity on Wrong Priorities (And How Daily Team Huddles Align to Field Needs)

Here’s the mistake that wastes your project delivery team’s capacity: running offices where PMs, PEs, and engineers work independently on tasks disconnected from what the field actually needs right now. You have assistant superintendents coordinating logistics. You have field engineers doing layout and processing submittals. You have project managers handling RFIs and change orders. You have project engineers updating schedules and tracking procurement. And everyone’s busy. Everyone’s working hard. But nobody’s coordinating daily to ensure office work prioritizes removing the roadblocks field crews are hitting today. The PM is processing an RFI for work three months out while trades are stopped in Zone 5 waiting for a different clarification. The PE is updating the CPM schedule while foremen need help solving a material delivery problem. The office team is disconnected and isolated, doing their own thing, not enabling flow in the field. You’re burning capacity on tasks that don’t clear the way for execution happening right now.

Here’s what actually enables flow: daily team huddles after 8:00 a.m. where the complete project delivery team superintendent, assistant supers, field engineers, PM, and project engineers stands around a scrum board for 10-15 minutes aligning office work to field priorities. Problems found in yesterday’s afternoon foreman huddle, this morning’s worker huddles, and today’s zone control walks get brought to the daily team huddle. The team looks at the scrum board showing backlog, workable backlog, in progress, and complete columns. They ensure whatever’s in the workable backlog is what the field needs this week. They verify what each individual team member is working on today prioritizes removing roadblocks for trades. The stickies move left to right as work completes. And the daily rhythm ensures there’s no disconnect between field and office the project delivery team backs up the field and clears the way for trade partners instead of working on disconnected priorities that don’t enable execution.

When Office Capacity Gets Burned on Wrong Priorities

The real construction pain here is running projects where your office team is fully utilized but field productivity stays low because office work doesn’t align to execution needs. Your PM spends hours in meetings about future phases. Your PE updates budgets and forecasts. Your field engineers process paperwork. Everyone has full calendars. Everyone’s working long hours. But when superintendents and foremen need help removing roadblocks that are stopping work today, they can’t get responses because the office team is busy with other priorities.

The pain compounds when problems that could have been solved in 10 minutes if caught early become crises because they sat in someone’s queue for days. Material delivery gets delayed field engineer knew about it but didn’t escalate because they were working on layout. Design clarification needed for handoff tomorrow PM saw the RFI but prioritized responding to owner questions about different scope. Submittal approval blocking work in two days PE was updating the schedule instead of following up with the design team. Every roadblock that doesn’t get cleared creates downstream delays, coordination conflicts, and acceleration pressure that could have been prevented through aligned priorities.

The Pattern That Disconnects Office From Field Reality

The failure pattern is treating office and field as separate teams with independent priorities instead of recognizing they’re one unified project delivery team that must align daily to enable flow. We create organizational structures where field reports to superintendent and office reports to PM. We hold separate field meetings and separate office meetings. We assume everyone knows what’s important and will coordinate as needed. And we miss that without daily alignment, office work drifts toward administrative tasks, long-term planning, and owner interface while field work requires immediate problem-solving, roadblock removal, and constraint resolution.

What actually happens is the office team loses connection to execution reality. They work on what’s in their inbox, what’s on their calendar, what their functional role defines as priorities. They become reactive to whoever asks loudest instead of proactive about what field needs most. The superintendent and foremen are out in zones dealing with problems. The office team is in trailers dealing with paperwork. And the disconnect wastes both teams’ capacity field can’t execute because roadblocks don’t get cleared, office can’t add value because their work doesn’t align to execution needs.

Understanding Where Daily Team Huddles Fit in Last Planner System

Okay, I’m super excited about this video. This is a video in a sequence of 20 videos talking about how to implement Last Planner System at all the key steps. Let me help you visualize this. Imagine on your job site, by functional area, that you have a master schedule and pull plan. Then from that, you have your norm-level production plan, your lookahead plan, your weekly work plan, your day plan. That day plan enables the morning worker huddle that happens in the morning where all the workers are now on the same page. Each crew is now off doing their own work after their crew preparation huddles, and they are jamming inside of a zone with their work package as a day full kit everything they need.

Now this is the genius of the system. I’ve already talked about how everything ties together, but the bottom line is we want to go from the master schedule to the pull plan to the production plan to the lookahead to the weekly work plan to the day plan, and then enable the crews to do their work.

The Complete Meeting Structure That Enables Flow

The meeting structure, just to cover it very briefly: I want the project delivery team to huddle once a week to build the team and create capacity. I want them to look at the strategic plan and their procurement once a week. I want that to enable trade partners to do lookahead and weekly work planning, which will enable day planning and the afternoon foreman huddle, which will then enable the morning worker huddle and the crew preparation huddle.

Now the cool thing about this and I mean this seriously, I’m not teasing project managers or project engineers or office engineers usually the office team inside a unified one-team project delivery team will get to the job site like 8:00 a.m. and beyond, unless you’re a special breed which is super fun. But I like to host the daily team huddle sometime after 8:00 a.m.

This gives field crews or field superintendent, field leads, field engineers time to get everybody started and make sure everything is jamming. It should be prepared the day before, but you have some time in the morning. What happens is there’s time in here, which we’ll cover in detail, a couple hours for zone control walks. That’s where you go look at handoff areas and make sure that foreman-to-foreman coordination is on track.

When Daily Team Huddles Should Happen and Why

The timing matters for very practical reasons. Field crews start early often 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. The afternoon foreman huddle happened yesterday creating today’s plan. The morning worker huddle happened at maybe 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. communicating that plan to workers. Crew preparation huddles happened at zones preparing crews for execution. By 8:00 a.m., work is underway.

Now superintendents and field engineers have done some initial checks. They verified bathrooms are clean for our folks. They checked perimeter signage and traffic control if they haven’t already. They made sure self-performed crews are good. They went to critical handoff zones to ensure planning out ahead and finishing as you go. They’ve done zone control walks where they found some problems. When they get back to the office around 8:00 or 8:30 a.m., now you’re able to do the team daily huddle or daily team huddle however you want to call it.

The Three Sources of Problems That Feed Daily Team Huddles

What happens is if you find problems in the afternoon foreman huddle, or from the worker huddle, or from your walks, those three sources field engineer, lead person, foreman, assistant super, superintendent can bring problems to the daily team huddle. Finding problems is key for Last Planner System and all production systems. You want to find them. You want to bring them back. This isn’t about blame. This is about surfacing issues early when they can be solved.

Three Problem Sources That Drive Daily Team Huddles

• Afternoon Foreman Huddle (Yesterday): Problems identified while coordinating tomorrow’s plan with foremen missing materials, unclear scopes, coordination conflicts between trades
• Morning Worker Huddles (Today): Problems raised by workers during communication tool failures, access issues, safety concerns, questions about handoffs or quality standards
• Zone Control Walks (This Morning): Problems discovered during handoff verification predecessor work not complete, quality issues requiring correction, staging problems, constraint that wasn’t flagged in lookahead

These three problem sources create the agenda for the daily team huddle. The field brings the roadblocks. The office commits to clearing them. The scrum board tracks progress. And the daily rhythm ensures problems get solved before they stop work, not after they’ve already created delays.

How to Run the Daily Team Huddle With Scrum Boards

Once you get back in the office, this is your stand-up meeting. Now let me be clear about this because I want to respect everyone. I want foremen to be able to sit down in the afternoon foreman huddle. I don’t know why stand-up rules were ever made for that. We’ve got to respect these folks. If you want to stand up and do some kind of scrum environment, the daily team huddle is the meeting to do it if you want. But I still like the thought that people can sit down if needed.

What you’re going to do is engage the Kanban method or the specific method called Scrum where you have a board. Your board will have some columns:

Scrum Board Column Structure

• Backlog (Left Column): All identified roadblocks and problems that need solving eventually complete list of issues not yet prioritized for immediate work
• Workable Backlog (Second Column): Problems prioritized for this week based on field needs what the team commits to clearing in the next 5 days to enable execution
• In Progress (Middle Column – Very Narrow): Work team members are actively solving right now limited work-in-progress prevents multitasking and ensures completion
• Complete (Right Column): Roadblocks solved and verified problems that have been cleared so trades can execute without constraint

What happens is if you and the foreman were able to solve a roadblock themselves during the afternoon huddle or zone control walk, then you just get rid of it no need to bring to daily team huddle. But if it’s beyond the foreman and supers’ ability to solve something like it’s an RFI, it’s a submittal, it’s a permission from owner or inspector then you’re going to collect that roadblock and bring it to the daily team huddle.

Who Attends and What Gets Accomplished

When you have the super, the assistant supers, field engineers (if they’re available, they might be doing layout), the PM, and the project engineers all here standing around this huddle board, you are going to make sure that the things the team is working on the stickies on the scrum board are prioritized. Whatever you have in the workable backlog column is what the field needs. This is how you tie office and field together.

This is a daily huddle every single day. What each individual team member is working on for that day will prioritize the work in the field. Items move to the complete column left to right according to Kanban or Scrum method. And in the team daily huddle, these folks are going to try to have fun, support each other, build that team, but enable flow. We can’t have people in the office all disconnected and isolated doing their own thing, not enabling flow in the field. We’ve got to enable flow in the field, and this is how you do it.

The superintendent can come in and make sure this is all aligned, and there doesn’t have to be a disconnect between field and office. This is the team daily huddle or daily team huddle. The point of this is when you’re seeing problems, the project delivery team is going to back up the field and clear the way for trade partners.

The Ideal Daily Routine That Makes This Work

Let me walk through what this looks like in practice on a typical day. Here’s your office trailers on the project site. The afternoon before, you made the plan in the afternoon foreman huddle. You went out to the field with your field boards and talked to the workers in the worker huddle. Then those crews went off into their zones on the job site and did their crew preparation huddles.

Once you got done with morning huddles, field leadership does verification walks. Go check the bathrooms to make sure they’re clean for our folks. Go check the perimeter signage and the traffic control if you haven’t already. Make sure your own self-performed crews are good. Then in the morning, go to critical handoff zones and make sure you’re planning out ahead and finishing as you go. During these zone control walks, you’re finding problems handoff not complete, quality issue needs addressing, material shortage discovered, coordination conflict between trades.

When you get back to the office around 8:00 or 8:30 a.m., now you’re able to do the team daily huddle. The field brings the problems they found. The office team reviews the scrum board. Everyone aligns on priorities. Team members commit to what they’re working on today. The huddle takes 10-15 minutes. Then everyone disperses to execute field back to supporting trades, office to clearing roadblocks.

How This Enables Flow Instead of Blocking It

We can’t have people in the office all disconnected and isolated doing their own thing, not enabling flow in the field. We’ve got to enable flow in the field, and this is how you do it. The daily team huddle creates the connection where office work aligns to field reality every single day. Without it, office capacity gets spent on lower-priority work while field-stopping problems sit unresolved.

The superintendent can come in and make sure priorities are aligned. The PM can see which RFIs need immediate attention versus which can wait. The PE knows which submittals are blocking work this week. Field engineers understand which layout or coordination tasks enable execution versus which are preparatory for future phases. The unified project delivery team backs up the field and clears the way for trade partners instead of working in isolation on disconnected priorities.

Resources for Implementation

This is talked about at length in the book Elevating Pre-Construction Planning, in a new book called The First Planner System, and it’s really visually described in the book Takt Steering & Control. I’ll also reference you to the book Construction Scrum and Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. Felipe Engineer teaches for scrum.org, so you can go learn about this methodology in depth. Any of the templates we’ll give you reach out to me.

If your project needs help implementing daily team huddles that align office capacity to field priorities, if your project delivery team is disconnected with office working on tasks that don’t enable execution, if problems found in the field sit unresolved while office team works on lower-priority items, Elevate Construction can help your teams create daily rhythm that backs up the field and clears the way for trade partners through scrum boards and aligned priorities.

Building Unified Teams That Enable Flow Through Daily Alignment

This connects to everything we teach at Elevate Construction about creating systems that enable people instead of blocking them. The daily team huddle isn’t another meeting for meeting’s sake. It’s the coordination mechanism that ensures your complete project delivery team field and office together aligns daily to enable flow. Without it, you have two separate teams working hard but not coordinated. With it, you have one unified team where office clears roadblocks field identifies so trades can execute without constraint.

The point of this daily team huddle is when you’re seeing problems, the project delivery team backs up the field and clears the way for trade partners. Problems get found through afternoon foreman huddles, morning worker huddles, and zone control walks. Problems get brought to daily team huddles where the complete project delivery team commits to clearing them. The scrum board tracks progress from backlog through workable backlog through in progress to complete. And the daily rhythm ensures office capacity serves field needs instead of disconnected priorities.

A Challenge for Project Delivery Teams

Here’s the challenge. Stop running offices disconnected from field reality where everyone’s busy but capacity doesn’t align to execution needs. Start implementing daily team huddles after 8:00 a.m. where complete project delivery team stands around scrum board aligning priorities to what field needs cleared today.

Create your scrum board with four columns: backlog, workable backlog, in progress, and complete. Bring problems from three sources: afternoon foreman huddles, morning worker huddles, and zone control walks. Ensure workable backlog reflects field priorities for the week. Verify what each team member is working on today clears roadblocks for trades. Move stickies left to right as work completes. Make it daily 10-15 minutes every morning after field has started and initial zone control walks are done.

Track the results: office work aligned to field needs, roadblocks cleared before they stop work, RFIs and submittals processed based on execution priority, unified team instead of disconnected silos, flow enabled in the field through office capacity clearing the way. Watch what happens when your project delivery team backs up the field and clears the way for trade partners instead of working independently on disconnected priorities.

As Jeff Sutherland wrote in Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time: “The way we work is broken. We don’t have to accept it.” The daily team huddle fixes the broken disconnect between office and field by creating daily alignment that ensures unified project delivery teams enable flow instead of blocking it through misaligned priorities and isolated work.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should daily team huddles happen?

After 8:00 a.m., giving field time to start crews, verify initial conditions through zone control walks, and identify problems to bring to the huddle for office team to clear.

Who attends daily team huddles?

Complete project delivery team: superintendent, assistant supers, field engineers (when available), PM, and PEs. Unified team aligning office capacity to field priorities.

What gets discussed in daily team huddles?

Problems found in afternoon foreman huddles, morning worker huddles, and zone control walks. Team reviews scrum board ensuring workable backlog reflects field needs and each person’s daily work clears roadblocks.

Why use a scrum board with columns?

Visual system showing all roadblocks (backlog), what’s prioritized for this week (workable backlog), what’s being solved now (in progress), and what’s cleared (complete). Prevents work-in-progress overload and ensures completion.

How long should daily team huddles take?

10-15 minutes standing (or sitting if needed). Enough time to align priorities, commit to daily work, move stickies as work completes. Not status meetings coordination meetings enabling flow.