Last Planner in Construction | Weekly Work Planning (How to Build a Weekly Work Plan)

Why Your Weekly Work Plans Don’t Create Real Commitments (And the Handoff Method That Does)

Here’s what most Last Planner implementations miss about weekly work planning: they treat it as another problem-finding meeting instead of recognizing it’s a commitment-making and handoff-coordination system. You gather trades weekly. You show them what’s scheduled for the coming week. You ask if they can do it. They say yes. You write it down. And then execution fails because nobody actually coordinated the handoffs between trades, nobody validated that activities wouldn’t interfere with each other spatially, and the “commitments” were really just hopeful agreements that fell apart the moment field reality got complicated.

Here’s how weekly work planning actually works when you implement it correctly. The weekly work plan is filtered from your six-week lookahead not created from scratch showing one to two weeks out with activities broken out by day, Monday through Friday. In your trade partner weekly tactical meeting (I like Tuesday afternoons), you don’t just find problems. You understand the work spatially not just “we’re building this wall” but “this trade is building this wall plus the laydown area plus the access plus all the logistics, and here’s our impact on the site.” You coordinate handoffs activity to activity ensuring no overlap, no trade stacking, no interference. And trades make commitments directly to each other foreman looking at foreman not through the superintendent. This is how weekly work planning creates real execution instead of hopeful promises that nobody actually owns.

When Weekly Work Plans Become Promise Theater

The real construction pain here is running weekly work planning meetings where trades say “yes” without actually committing. You review what’s scheduled. You ask if everyone can do their work. Heads nod. People say they’re good. You assume commitments happened. Then Monday arrives and the electrical crew shows up to discover the space isn’t ready because drywall isn’t complete. The drywall crew shows up to discover their laydown area is blocked by mechanical equipment. The mechanical crew can’t access their work area because everyone’s trucks are parked in the staging zone. Nobody actually coordinated the spatial logistics. The “commitments” made in the meeting weren’t real because the coordination wasn’t real.

The pain isn’t that people lied about their commitments. It’s that the weekly work planning process never created the conditions for real commitments. You can’t commit to work you haven’t visualized spatially. You can’t promise handoffs you haven’t coordinated with the receiving trade. You can’t guarantee execution when you haven’t verified that your laydown area, access routes, and logistics won’t conflict with other trades’ work. The meeting produced verbal agreements. It didn’t produce coordinated execution plans that trades actually own.

The Pattern That Keeps Commitments Hollow

The failure pattern is treating weekly work planning as schedule confirmation instead of recognizing its handoff coordination and spatial logistics planning. We show trades a list of activities scheduled for next week. We ask if they can do them. They say yes because saying no feels like creating conflict. And we accept those yeses as commitments without ever validating that the work can actually happen given spatial constraints, predecessor dependencies, and resource conflicts.

What actually happens is the “commitments” fail predictably. The trade that committed to framing can’t execute because the preceding trade’s work isn’t complete and ready for handoff. The trade that committed to mechanical installation can’t execute because their laydown area is occupied by another trade’s materials. The trade that committed to finishing work can’t execute because access to their area requires passing through active construction from a different trade. These weren’t commitment failures. These were coordination failures disguised as commitments because the weekly work planning process never forced spatial coordination and handoff clarity.

Understanding the Last Planner System Hierarchy

Let me show you where weekly work planning fits in the complete Last Planner System structure:

• Master Schedule: Shows all phases with milestones
• Pull Planning: Take single phase and pull plan zone by zone (not entire batched area)
• Norm-Level Production Plan: Time-by-location format with buffers, faster than master schedule
• Six-Week Lookahead: Filter from production plan to identify, discuss, solve problems makes work ready
• Weekly Work Plan: Filter from lookahead to coordinate handoffs and create commitments (we are here)
• Day Plans: Execute from weekly work plan with zone control
• Percent Plan Complete: Track reliability and drive improvement

The lookahead plan four to six weeks out identifies, discusses, and solves problems so you can make work ready. The weekly work plan specifically coordinates handoffs and makes commitments. If we’ve done lookahead planning right, most roadblock removal happened already. The weekly work plan focuses on coordination and commitment, not problem discovery.

What Your Production Plan Foundation Looks Like

If we’ve done this right and I want to make sure I’m explaining it clearly in time-by-location format, the production plan shows zones with individual activities by zone. We do not pull plan one big massive area. We pull plan the individual zone, then repeat it through zones to make sure we have diagonal trade flow. That diagonal trade flow is exactly what we need to maintain if we want to narrow the throughput time of the phase.

When we go from macro-level Takt plan to norm-level production plan, we gain time but we never cut trade durations. In Takt Production System, you can optimize a phase without cutting trade durations. But we have to have buffers inside the norm-level production plan and we have to maintain that milestone. Trade flow, buffers, milestone we have to have all three.

Filtering the Weekly Work Plan From Lookaheads

As we talked about in the previous video, we look six weeks out and use that lookahead plan the six-week make-ready lookahead plan to identify, discuss, and solve problems. The purpose is making work ready for the weekly work plan. Then we filter out a narrower window. One to two weeks out, we filter the activities happening for next week inside the weekly work plan.

This will typically and I think it should all the time break out activities so they’re all on their own lines, shown by day Monday through Friday. If you’re doing this planning on Tuesday, it covers the rest of this week and all the way through next week. That’s your weekly work plan. Will you still look for problems inside the weekly work plan? Yes. But if we’ve done a really good job, most roadblock removal happened in the lookahead plan already.

The Real Purpose: Handoffs and Commitments

So what is the purpose of the weekly work plan? The purpose is handoffs and commitments. Commitment means these activities are being committed to by the trades who will execute them. And we cannot say we’re going to do a pull plan, then create the production plan, then create the lookahead from scratch and create the weekly work plan from scratch. You cannot do that. These are filtered, not created.

This filtering preserves the coordination work already completed. You pull planned the sequence. You optimized zones. You validated diagonal trade flow. You removed constraints through lookahead planning. The weekly work plan filters that validated, constraint-removed sequence into a one-week window and adds the final layer of coordination: spatial logistics and direct trade-to-trade commitments.

Running the Trade Partner Weekly Tactical Meeting

What happens in your weekly work planning meeting briefly, as part of your trade partner weekly tactical meeting Monday through Friday (I like Tuesday afternoons) is you’re in your conference room looking up at screens. You see on the left your visual site maps. You see on the right your whiteboards. Your trade partners are in this room coordinating with you.

What you’re going to do is use the weekly work plan as one last double-check to find and remove roadblocks all the way to the end, because we want it roadblock-free. But you’re going to go through the plan and understand it visually and I’m going to say spatially. That means you’re not just going to look on your visual maps and say “we’re right here building this wall.” You’re going to look at it and say “that trade partner is building this wall, plus the laydown area, plus the access, plus all the logistics. This is our impact on the site.”

Understanding Work Spatially, Not Just Temporally

This spatial understanding is critical. Here’s what you’re validating activity by activity:

Spatial Coordination Checklist

• Work Zone Definition: Where exactly is the work happening? Not just “Zone 3” but specific areas within that zone
• Laydown Area Location: Where are materials staged? Does this block other trades’ access or work areas?
• Access Route Planning: How does the crew get to their work area? Does their access interfere with other trades’ work?
• Logistics Impact Assessment: Where do lifts, scaffolding, or equipment go? What’s the site-wide impact of this trade’s setup?
• Trade Stacking Prevention: Activity to activity, ensure there’s no overlap where two trades occupy the same space simultaneously
• Interference Elimination: Verify one trade’s logistics don’t block another trade’s work zone, laydown area, or access
• Sequential Validation: Confirm spatial handoffs happen cleanly with predecessor work complete before successor arrives

Make sure that activity to activity, there’s no overlap, no trade stacking, no interference with other trades. And that from trade to trade, we’re coordinating these handoffs directly.

Creating Trade-to-Trade Commitments, Not Super-Mediated Promises

Here’s where most weekly work planning fails: the commitments go trade-to-superintendent-to-trade instead of trade-to-trade. The framer commits to the superintendent that they’ll be done Friday. The drywall crew commits to the superintendent that they’ll start Monday. But the framer and drywall crew never looked at each other and confirmed the handoff conditions. What does “done” mean? Framing complete, inspected, and cleaned? Or just nailed up? What does the drywall crew need to start? Just framing complete, or also MEP rough-in finished?

The handoff clarity comes from direct trade-to-trade commitment. I’m the trade partner looking at that other foreman and making commitments. I’ve weighed in. I’ve bought in. I’ve made commitments directly to the person I’m handing off to. We have a better chance of those activities actually hitting when commitments are peer-to-peer instead of mediated through superintendents.

Each of your handoffs should be clearly marked on your weekly work plan. And that is the main thing you review in addition to roadblocks. The handoff points where one trade completes and the next trade begins are the critical coordination moments that determine whether flow happens or chaos erupts.

Enabling Field Execution Through Coordinated Plans

What happens after weekly work planning is this plan, once coordinated, goes out to the field and enables your zone control walks. It becomes the plan you execute from now through two Fridays from now. And this is genius, because everyone can now see as a group, known as a group, and act as a group. The field isn’t interpreting superintendent instructions filtered through memory and text messages. The field is executing from a coordinated plan that all trades helped create and committed to.

Now, what you have to make sure in your weekly work plan is that trades have committed to it. It is their plan, their promises. It is adjusted for whatever they need if a trade says “I need three days instead of two for this activity,” you adjust and verify it still maintains milestone alignment. But it is still aligned to milestones, it still has diagonal trade flow, and you’re still maintaining buffers at the end of the phase. The weekly work plan is now key for leading work out in the field.

Tracking Execution and Calculating PPC

If you’re doing it right, you will checkmark or X these activities every day based on whether they completed as promised. You track that work within a week. From there, you’re calculating your percent plan complete (PPC) your percent promises complete. This isn’t just measurement for measurement’s sake. This is feedback that drives continuous improvement. When PPC is low, you investigate: were roadblocks missed in lookahead? Were commitments unclear? Was the spatial coordination incomplete? The tracking creates learning that improves future planning.

I’m going to pause right now because in other videos I’ll take you to day plans, meeting structures, and percent plan complete details. We’re not covering that right now. But I want you to know, this is what we’re aiming for. The weekly work plan has to go out to the field at a minimum so we can work together. Digital format. Visual clarity. Spatial coordination. Direct commitments. These are the components that make weekly work planning create execution instead of just documenting hopes.

Goals Your Weekly Work Plan Must Achieve

Every weekly work plan must accomplish these outcomes:

Trade Ownership and Commitment

• Trades have weighed in on their activities and adjusted as needed
• Commitments are direct trade-to-trade, not mediated through superintendent
• Trades own the plan as their promises, not the superintendent’s wishes

Milestone and Flow Preservation

• Plan remains aligned to phase milestone despite adjustments
• Diagonal trade flow across zones is maintained
• Buffers at end of phase are protected

Spatial Coordination Completion

• Work zones, laydown areas, and access routes coordinated activity to activity
• No trade stacking or interference between concurrent activities
• Handoff conditions clearly defined between predecessor and successor trades

Field Execution Enablement

• Plan goes out to field in format foremen and crews can use
• Enables zone control walks and daily tracking
• Everyone sees, knows, and acts as group from same coordinated plan

Resources for Implementation

If you want to know how to run these meetings specifically, the book is Takt Steering & Control. It’s phenomenal for learning how to implement this system with proper meeting structure, agenda flow, and coordination processes. If you want to know why these specific changes have been made to Last Planner System, that book is The 10 Improvements to the Last Planner System.

These aren’t theoretical improvements. These are fixes that make Last Planner work in construction instead of creating coordination theater. Weekly work planning filtered from lookaheads. Spatial coordination instead of just temporal scheduling. Trade-to-trade commitments instead of superintendent-mediated promises. These changes transform weekly work planning from meeting overhead into production coordination that actually enables flow.

If your project needs help implementing weekly work planning that creates real commitments instead of hopeful promises, if your trades say yes in meetings but execution fails in the field, if your coordination stays temporal without becoming spatial, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow through systematic handoff coordination and direct trade commitments.

Building Commitment Systems That Work

This connects to everything we teach at Elevate Construction about respecting people and creating systems that enable their success. Trades want to keep their commitments. They don’t show up planning to fail. But they can’t commit to work they haven’t visualized spatially. They can’t promise handoffs they haven’t coordinated directly. Weekly work planning creates the conditions for real commitments by forcing spatial coordination, clarifying handoff conditions, and enabling direct trade-to-trade promises that aren’t mediated through superintendents.

When you implement weekly work planning correctly filtered from lookaheads, coordinated spatially, committed to directly trades can actually deliver on their promises because the promises were built on coordinated reality instead of hopeful assumptions. That’s how weekly work planning enables production in the field with visual plans and coordinated handoffs so trades can meet their commitments.

A Challenge for Last Planner Practitioners

Here’s the challenge. Stop treating weekly work planning as schedule confirmation where trades say yes without coordinating logistics. Start treating it as spatial coordination where trades validate work zones, laydown areas, access routes, and handoff conditions activity by activity. Stop accepting superintendent-mediated commitments. Start creating direct trade-to-trade promises where foremen look at each other and commit to specific handoff conditions.

Filter your weekly work plans from lookaheads to maintain alignment and preserve constraint removal work. Break activities out by day to create execution clarity. Coordinate spatially using site visualization maps, not just temporally using schedules. Mark handoffs explicitly so everyone knows where one trade ends and the next begins. Enable field execution by getting coordinated plans to foremen and crews in formats they can use for zone control walks and daily tracking.

Weekly work planning now enables production in the field with visual plans and coordinated handoffs so trades can meet their commitments. This is how Last Planner creates flow instead of documenting chaos one week at a time. As Taiichi Ohno said: “People who can’t understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.” Weekly work planning makes the numbers visible who’s doing what, when, where but only after spatial coordination ensures those numbers represent executable reality, not hopeful fiction.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between lookahead and weekly work planning?

Lookaheads (6 weeks out) identify and remove roadblocks to make work ready. Weekly work plans (1-2 weeks out) coordinate handoffs and create trade commitments after constraints are already removed.

Why can’t I create weekly work plans from scratch?

Because you’ll lose vertical alignment to milestones and diagonal trade flow validated during pull planning. Filter from lookaheads, adjust for trade needs, but don’t recreate coordination already completed.

How do I get real commitments instead of hollow promises?

Create direct trade-to-trade commitments where foremen look at each other and agree on handoff conditions. Superintendent-mediated promises aren’t owned the same way peer-to-peer commitments are.

What does “understanding work spatially” actually mean?

It means validating work zone plus laydown area plus access routes plus logistics impact not just “this trade works in Zone 3” but exactly where and how, ensuring no conflicts with other trades’ space needs.

Should weekly work plans be broken out by day?

Yes. Activities on their own lines by day (Monday-Friday) creates execution clarity. If planning Tuesday, cover rest of this week plus all of next week for the complete one-to-two-week window.