What Is A Design Phase Pull Plan?

What Is a Design Phase Pull Plan? Here’s How We’re Making It Work in Real Projects

At our construction company, we’ve been experimenting with Design Phase Pull Planning, and the results have been impressive. We’ve achieved over 80% plan complete and have built stronger collaboration across our design teams.

This blog walks you through what a design phase pull plan is, how we’re applying it using both the Last Planner System® and Scrum, and what we’ve learned from real-world implementation. If you’re working on improving preconstruction planning, this approach might be a game changer for your team.

A design phase pull plan flips traditional planning on its head. Instead of pushing tasks forward with fixed deadlines, we start by identifying key milestones, then work backward to define the steps required to meet them. That includes things like review cycles, regulatory durations, procurement approvals, and coordination across disciplines. By planning this way, we give the design team visibility, flexibility, and ownership—without losing control of progress.

In Elevating Preconstruction Planning (pages 241–249), there’s a step-by-step process for applying Last Planner in preconstruction. Here’s how we’ve adapted it:

1. Set clear milestones.
2. Pull backward to identify required actions.
3. Tag durations and confirm timelines.
4. Collaboratively review the plan.
5. Finalize and detail each milestone zone.

Once that’s in place, we move into traditional Last Planner phases: six-week look-ahead, weekly work planning, daily huddles (when using cluster teams or IPD setups), and roadblock tracking and removal. This method makes bottlenecks visible and actionable—something design teams often struggle with due to distractions and poor communication.

We’re also big fans of Scrum, especially for design teams working collaboratively in sprint formats. Inspired by Filipe Engineer’s Construction Scrum, we organize work by creating a backlog of tasks, assigning story points to estimate effort, conducting sprint planning, holding daily huddles, and using burn-down charts to track progress. The visual nature of Scrum—moving tasks left to right on a board—makes it easier to coordinate, track progress, and adapt quickly. It also encourages better communication and commitment within teams.

Whether you’re using Last Planner or Scrum, these principles have helped us get results: use a decision matrix to clarify priorities, minimize distractions like emails and batching, limit work in progress to avoid overwhelm, encourage a “Done-Done-Freaking-Done” mindset, and focus on flow and quick recovery when delays hit.

In one of our projects, we compared two snapshots of a pull plan—one from January 3rd and one from January 10th. What you’ll see is a high-level pull plan by discipline, a weekly work plan that advances each week, a three-week look-ahead that keeps everyone aligned, and clear visuals showing what’s done, what’s next, and what’s at risk.

After each planning session, we send a recap email with updated work plans, roadblock trackers, look-ahead schedules, and progress snapshots. This keeps the entire team on the same page and has directly contributed to increased productivity and alignment.

We’re continuously improving this system. On our next project, we plan to create more detailed pull plans, enhance roadblock visibility, improve email formatting and visual dashboards, and track smarter metrics for greater insights.

We’re not claiming perfection—but we’re committed to mastering the art of Lean Construction, and that means constantly learning, sharing, and refining.

Key Takeaway:

Design Phase Pull Planning, when implemented using systems like Last Planner and Scrum, helps construction teams align around milestones, identify roadblocks early, and maintain consistent progress—ultimately leading to better collaboration, higher plan completion rates, and more predictable design outcomes.