Last Planner in Construction | Pull Planning Mistakes to Avoid (Stop Doing It Wrong)

Pull Planning Mistakes to Avoid: Stop Doing It Wrong

Here’s a hard thing to say and I don’t mean to be offensive. You’re an A+ builder, but from a system perspective and an educational perspective, people are teaching pull planning wrong. I just want you to know there is a right way. And the way most of the industry does it creates large batch waste, loses vertical alignment to milestones, and disrespects the trades by exporting schedules they don’t see, use, or understand.

Let me show you what’s wrong and how to fix it.

The Pain of Pull Planning the Wrong Way

Here’s what the industry typically does wrong with pull planning. They will say that you should go from a CPM schedule and inside the CPM schedule, you should pick intermediate milestones. That’s the first thing that’s wrong. You take that milestone and then you pull plan to it. And Lean professionals will actually say go backwards, which is the hardest way to do it. You can go forward or backwards as long as you go in the opposite direction to check.

They’ll do the pull plan, but they’ll do it just for one area, which means that it will be a large batch and you’ll waste weeks and months this way. And then they will say, take this pull plan and loop it back into the CPM. In that way, it gets lost and your CPM becomes a level four verging on a level five and now it’s unmanageable.

Then what will happen is because it’s lost in here, the scheduling team will typically say your lookahead and your weekly work plan, go ahead and create those from scratch and then use those. You’re going to love this. And have those educate the CPM so that the CPM can then export your new weekly work plan that’s given to the trades.

Here’s what’s wrong with this entire process. First, the milestones are wrong because CPM doesn’t have diagonal trade flow, buffers, or a path of critical flow. Second, you wasted weeks or months by pull planning one large area instead of zoning properly. Third, you’ve created an unmanageable level four or level five CPM that nobody can maintain. And fourth, you’re exporting schedules that the trades don’t see, use, or understand. That’s disrespectful. And it doesn’t work.

Why CPM Milestones Don’t Work for Pull Planning

Okay, let me talk about this. I think you’re going to love the argument here. First of all, because a CPM schedule doesn’t have diagonal trade flow and it’s not planned with buffers and it doesn’t have a path of critical flow, your milestones will not be correct.

Here’s why this matters. CPM milestones are set based on tasks and dependencies. But they don’t account for trade flow. They don’t account for buffers. They don’t account for the reality that the project moves at the pace of the slowest trade through the hardest zone. So, when you pull plan to a CPM milestone, you’re pulling to the wrong target. The milestone might say “structural complete by June 1st.” But if you actually flow the trades zone by zone with proper buffers, you’ll finish earlier. Or if you don’t have proper flow, you’ll finish later. Either way, the CPM milestone is wrong.

Takt milestones, on the other hand, are set based on diagonal trade flow, buffers, and the path of critical flow. They account for zone size, trade rhythm, and the reality of how work actually flows through the building. So, when you pull plan to a Takt milestone, you’re pulling to the right target. And you gain vertical alignment.

Why Pull Planning Large Batch Areas Wastes Time

Second, if you pull plan just one large area, you’ve wasted weeks or months and that’s called large batch. That’s a mathematical scientific certainty.

Here’s the math. If you pull plan the entire floor as one area, you’re treating it as a large batch. Little’s Law says smaller batches shorten duration even though trade time stays the same. So, when you pull plan one large floor, you’re locking in a longer duration. But if you zone the floor by work density and pull plan zone by zone, you pull in the overall duration and gain buffers. Same trade time. Shorter project duration. That’s the power of right-sizing the batch.

Pull planning one large area also creates trade stacking, eliminates buffers, and breaks flow. You can’t maintain rhythm across an entire floor. You can’t coordinate handoffs cleanly. You can’t finish as you go. Large batch pull planning looks productive in the meeting, but it wastes weeks or months on the actual project.

Why Recreating Look-Aheads and Weekly Work Plans Is a Waste

Doing the lookahead and weekly work plan from scratch and looping them into an unmanageable level four, level five CPM is not even the way CPM was designed to be. This is going to get you in trouble and you’re going to hobble the workforce. Then exporting a schedule that people do not see, use, or understand or implement is a waste of time and we’re disrespecting the trades.

Here’s what happens. The team does the pull plan. It gets lost in the CPM. So, the scheduling team says, “Create the lookahead and weekly work plan from scratch.” The trades do that. Then the scheduling team loops it back into the CPM. The CPM updates. And then the CPM exports a new weekly work plan to the trades. But the trades didn’t create that export. They don’t understand it. They don’t use it. And it doesn’t match the pull plan they actually created.

That’s a waste of time. That’s disrespectful. And it hobbles the workforce because they’re working from a schedule they didn’t create and don’t understand.

The Right Way to Do Pull Planning

This is not the way to pull plan. I am going to be very, very specific about how to do this the right way. First of all, when you do pull planning the right way, and I’m not trying to be arrogant, I learned this from other people, so I’m not special, the concept is special.

When you do your pull planning the right way, your macro-level Takt plan will have diagonal trade flow. That means it will be planned where you have trade flow and buffers and we have a calculator for it actually. So, you know your milestones are correct.

Then when you pull this milestone down, you have vertical alignment. And when you take this sequence and pull plan it, you use the right zone size. And then what happens is you will be able to create an optimized phase that has buffers at the end. And this will incline without hurting the trades’ durations.

And I want to show you something. Now you have a vertically aligned milestone, buffers, and you still have that diagonal trade flow.

Here’s the process step by step:

Step One: Set the Takt Milestone

Start with a macro-level Takt plan that has diagonal trade flow and buffers. Use the Takt Calculator to determine the right zone size, Takt time, and milestone. This milestone is correct because it’s based on flow, not just tasks.

Step Two: Zone the Area by Work Density

What you do here is when you do your pull plan, you first talk to the trades and you say, “Hey, in this area, how do we want to break up the zones?” And there’s a calculator which we’ll link you to in the description below that helps you to know how many you should have. Then you program the size of them by work density.

Step Three: Pull Plan One Zone

And then what you do is you pull plan a single zone. So let me go ahead and just do this in a simple format. Let’s say this is your pull plan. I’ll just do four stickies. And then what you do is you say, “Hey, since I have one, two, three, four, five zones,” then I’m just going to do this with a single line. You start comparing that single pull plan sequence together to make sure you have diagonal trade flow and then you also compare it to your milestone and your buffers.

Step Four: Replicate the Sequence Zone to Zone

So let me just make sure I’m covering that well. You should never see an individual pull plan. You should see it unless you’re just doing one small area. You should see that pull plan going from zone to zone to zone so you have trade flow. You should be able to gain buffers at the end because you’re optimizing and you should be vertically aligned to your milestone. And so that is the key.

The Benefits of Pull Planning the Right Way

And here’s the thing in the Takt Production System. You have a correct milestone when you do your pull planning. You will gain time. You will not large batch. So that means you are doing it by zone. You will maintain trade flow. And you will make sure that you have buffers. This is the right way to do a pull plan.

Here are the benefits:

• Correct milestones based on diagonal trade flow and buffers, not just CPM tasks
• Gain time by zoning properly instead of large batch planning
• Maintain trade flow zone to zone to zone
• Create buffers at the end of the phase without hurting trade durations
• Vertical alignment from milestone to pull plan to lookahead to weekly work plan

This is the right way. And it works. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Pull Planning

So let me just highlight this. If you’re like, “Jason, you talked about a lot of stuff.” Here are the do’s and don’ts:

Don’t:

• Don’t use CPM milestones—they’re wrong because they don’t account for trade flow or buffers
• Don’t pull plan large batch areas—you’ll waste weeks or months
• Don’t recreate the lookahead and weekly work plan from scratch—it’s a waste and disrespects the trades

Do:

• Do use Takt milestones—they’re correct because they’re based on diagonal trade flow and buffers
• Do pull plan zone by zone using the right zone size
• Do compare your pull plan sequences zone to zone to zone to maintain trade flow
• Do gain buffers at the end of the phase

This is very clearly articulated in the book Takt Planning and The 10 Improvements to the Last Planner System, and it will be shown in the book Pull Planning for Builders.

A Challenge for Builders

There is a wrong way and there is a right way. If you’re like, “I don’t get it quite yet,” watch the video that I’m going to link in the description below. You’ll get it right away. But you need a system that matches your A+ score because if you take an A+ person with a C-minus system, you’re going to get a C-minus grade. We need A+ plus A+ and that will give you the results.

Here’s what I want you to do this week. Stop pull planning from CPM milestones. Stop pull planning large batch areas. Stop recreating lookaheads from scratch. Instead, start with a Takt milestone. Zone the area by work density. Pull plan one zone. Replicate the sequence zone to zone. Compare it to your milestone and buffers. And gain time without hurting the trades. As we say at Elevate, there’s a wrong way and a right way to pull plan. Use Takt milestones. Zone by zone. Gain buffers. That’s how you do it right.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are CPM milestones wrong for pull planning?

Because CPM doesn’t have diagonal trade flow, buffers, or a path of critical flow. CPM milestones are based on tasks and dependencies, not on how work actually flows through zones. So, when you pull plan to a CPM milestone, you’re pulling to the wrong target.

Why does pull planning large batch areas waste time?

Because Little’s Law says smaller batches shorten duration even though trade time stays the same. Pull planning one large floor locks in a longer duration. Zoning by work density and pull planning zone by zone pulls in the overall duration and gains buffers.

What’s wrong with recreating lookaheads and weekly work plans from scratch?

It’s a waste of time and disrespects the trades. The pull plan should flow directly into the lookahead and weekly work plan. Recreating them from scratch and looping them through CPM creates an unmanageable schedule that the trades don’t understand or use.

How do you pull plan the right way?

Start with a Takt milestone based on diagonal trade flow and buffers. Zone the area by work density. Pull plan one zone. Replicate the sequence zone to zone. Compare it to your milestone and buffers. Gain time without hurting the trades.

What should a correct pull plan look like?

You should see the pull plan sequence going zone to zone to zone with diagonal trade flow. You should see buffers at the end of the phase. You should see vertical alignment from the Takt milestone down to the pull plan. You should never see just one isolated pull plan for a large area.