The three-week look-ahead: running the next 15 working days of a job site

Why the master schedule is not enough on site

The master schedule shows “Interior framing, levels 2 to 4: 30 days”. The framing foreman needs to know which floor starts Monday, whether the steel studs are on site, whether the layout change on level 3 has been approved and whether the electrician's sleeves are in the slab. The look-ahead is where those questions get asked early enough to matter.

Three weeks is the usual window because it matches what can still be influenced: short enough to be detailed, long enough to order a standard material, get an RFI answered or schedule an inspection. Long-lead items, such as switchgear, elevators, curtain wall or rooftop units, need a separate procurement log with a horizon of months, not weeks.

Building it from the master schedule

1. Take the activities of the master schedule that fall in the next three weeks, plus anything already late.
2. Break each one down to the level a foreman plans: by floor, zone or area, in days, with the crew responsible.
3. For each activity, list its constraints: material, drawings and approvals, information (RFIs), the previous trade, equipment, inspections and permits, access and space, and pending changes.
4. Give each open constraint an owner and a date by which it must be cleared, in practice a few days before the activity starts.
5. Mark critical-path activities so the meeting spends its time where a lost day costs a day at the finish.

An example

Read it as a list of risks with names on them. The roofing membrane is already in trouble: with a four-week lead time, it will arrive a week after the roofer is scheduled. Either the roofing moves, or someone finds a supplier with stock this week. That is exactly the kind of problem a look-ahead exists to surface three weeks before it stops the job, not on the morning it does.

Running it in the weekly site meeting

• Review last week first: what was planned, what was done, and why the rest was not. Track the percentage of planned activities completed; a team that keeps it above about 80% has a reliable plan.
• Go through the next three weeks activity by activity with the trades who will do the work, not only their office.
• Spend the time on constraints, not on activities that are ready. For each open constraint: who, by when, and what happens if it is not cleared.
• Write the commitments into the meeting minutes with an owner and a date, and start the next meeting by reviewing them.
• Update the master schedule with what the look-ahead revealed: if level 3 framing is going to take five days longer, the critical path needs to know.

Procurement, RFIs and changes: the usual blockers

Most activities that fail to start on time were waiting for one of three things. Material: a purchase order not issued, shop drawings not approved, a delivery not confirmed. Keep each order tied to the activity that needs it, with the lead time, so “order by” dates fall out of the schedule. Information: an RFI with no answer. Each RFI should name the activity it blocks; an RFI that blocks a critical activity gets a phone call, not a second email. Decisions: a change waiting for the owner. Show the date by which the decision is needed to keep the schedule, and put it in writing. See change order management.

Common mistakes

• A look-ahead copied from the master schedule without breakdown or constraints: it is a calendar, not a plan.
• Constraints without an owner and a date: everyone agrees they are a problem, nobody clears them.
• Only the general contractor's staff in the meeting: the trades who do the work know their constraints best.
• A look-ahead that never feeds back into the master schedule: the critical path ends up describing a job that no longer exists. See critical path and baseline.

Applying it in Teyvor

Teyvor's look-ahead is built from the schedule itself, over the next 3, 6 or 12 weeks, and lists for each task what is blocking it: material not ordered yet, an open RFI, a change waiting for a decision. Budget lines marked to order that no commitment covers yet are listed in the order their tasks start, a delivery expected after its task's start is flagged, RFIs and changes keep the task they hold up, and meeting minutes carry the actions with their owner and due date from one meeting to the next.