The Last Planner System
Commit
The people who do the work plan it, promise it, and count whether the promises were kept.
For contractors who want to see a way of working prove itself on one job before committing to anything bigger. You pick the project. We train the team, build the plan with them, and come back a few weeks later to watch them run it without us.
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A walkthrough of the whole week is being finished. In the meantime, the day-by-day below covers the same ground.
Ashcombe Build is a fictional client; images are illustrative.
The problem it solves
Your programme is built once and issued downwards. Trades are told when to start, and almost nobody is asked whether they can. So the dates stop being believed, the weekly meeting becomes a review of what already went wrong, and the only thing holding the job together is a handful of people firefighting.
The Last Planner System replaces that with a weekly rhythm the team runs themselves: work is made ready before it is promised, promises are made by the people doing the work, and every miss is traced to a reason that can be fixed. Six days is enough to install it on one job and leave it running.
What happens, day by day
Two days of training, three days on your live job, and a return visit a few weeks later to see it working without us.
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Day 1
Why plans fail
The five levels of planning, and why a programme issued from the office stops matching the site. You open the session yourself, then leave the room so your team can speak freely — which is the point, and the part that tells us most.
They map what actually pushes a job forward and what holds it back, then sort their own problems into should, can, will and did.
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Day 2
Reliable promising
How to ask for work, and how to answer honestly. A clear no on Monday beats a broken yes on Friday.
We take ten of their own tasks and score each one against five tests: is it defined, is it sound, is it in the right sequence, is it the right size, and will anyone learn anything if it slips.
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Day 3
The pull plan
On site. The foreman of every trade builds the plan backwards from a real milestone, saying what they need handed over and in what state before they can start.
The padding everyone had hidden in their own durations comes out and becomes one shared buffer that the team can see and defend together.
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Day 4
Look-ahead and make-ready
A six-week look-ahead, and a constraint log where every single line has a person’s name against it and a date.
Your buyer confirms lead times from the room, so procurement stops being a thing that happens somewhere else.
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Day 5
The first weekly work plan
Each trade writes its own promises, and every one is tested before it goes on the board. Nothing goes up that is not genuinely ready.
The fifteen-minute morning huddle starts, and your site manager takes the chair — not us.
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Return visit
A few weeks later
The team runs its own meeting while we watch. We plot the share of promises kept, take the biggest reason for misses, and trace it back to its root until it is something you can actually fix.
Then the team presents what they have been doing to you.
What you keep
- The pull plan for the phase
- The six-week look-ahead
- The constraint log, with owners and dates
- The weekly work plan
- The daily huddle
- The promises-kept (PPC) tracker
- A photographic record of every day
- A team that runs it without anyone’s help
What we need from you
- You, or your MD, open Day 1 in person and close Day 6.
- Your subcontractors’ foremen are there on Days 3, 4 and 5, and at the weekly meeting afterwards. If that isn’t in the subcontract, we’ll talk about how you get them there.
- One live job, with a real milestone to plan backwards from.
Questions
About Commit specifically. The questions about choosing between our four services are on the homepage.
Why do I have to leave the room on Day 1?
Because your team will not tell you what really holds the job back while you are sitting there. They will tell each other. You get all of it on the last day, from them, which lands rather differently than it would from us.
A week sounds short for changing how a site runs.
It is short, and it is deliberately narrow. One job, one system, one team. We are not redesigning your business — that is Blueprint. We are putting a working routine on one project and proving it holds.
What if my subcontractors won’t turn up?
Then it will not work, and we should talk about that before you book rather than after. Most of the time it is a contract and a conversation, not a refusal. It comes up on the call.
Why does the return visit matter?
Because anything can look good on the Friday we leave. The return visit a few weeks later is the only honest test of whether your team is still running it, and it is where we fix what has quietly drifted back to the old way.
Is this just a better progress meeting?
No, and the difference is the whole point. A progress meeting asks what happened. This asks what you will finish, from the person who will finish it, and then counts whether they did. That number is uncomfortable for a month and then it starts moving.
Learn the method
If you want the detail before you decide, this explains the whole system in plain English, free and with nothing to sign up for.
What is the Last Planner System?
The four questions, the five levels of planning, and why promising beats instructing.
Not sure if this is the right one? Let’s talk.
You tell me what keeps going wrong. I’ll ask how your jobs run from win to handover. Then I’ll tell you straight which of these is right for you, if any.
- 30 minutes, by video call
- With me, not a sales team
- No slides, no pitch
Pick a time that suits you
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