Increasing the Productivity of a Construction Project Using Collaborative Pull Planning

With the growing competitiveness of the market and owners' increasing expectations, improving productivity has become all the more important. Construction professionals have recognized the importance of increasing the reliability of the planning processes in order to realize the ultimate goal of increasing the productivity of construction projects. A relatively new planning approach known as collaborative pull planning coupled with Last Planner System has proven to be successful in improving the reliability of the planning processes and increasing the productivity. This paper presents a case study of an ongoing project where the prime contractor has adopted the collaborative pull planning process. The details of the planning and control processes have been captured based on observations and interviews with the stakeholders. While measuring the actual improvement in productivity was not feasible, the percent plan complete provided empirical evidence of increasing reliability and completion of planned tasks. Other emergent experiences of the stakeholders included shared understanding of the project goals, improved trust, and better communication.