Every contractor produces a three-week look-ahead. Most of them are the master programme filtered to the next 21 days, reprinted weekly, and read by nobody who holds a tool.
That document is not planning. It is reporting wearing planning’s clothes.
The question a master programme cannot answer
A master programme tells you what should happen. It cannot tell you whether the thing that should happen is actually possible next week, because it does not know whether the material arrived, the drawing is approved, the permit is signed, the crew exists, or the area is handed over.
So our look-ahead asks one question per activity: what would stop this from starting on time? Every activity carries its constraints explicitly — information, materials, labour, plant, predecessor, permit, access. An activity with an open constraint does not go into next week’s commitments. It goes into the constraint log with an owner and a date.
Commitments, not intentions
The difference between an intention and a commitment is that someone’s name is on it and it gets measured.
We track percent plan complete — of the activities the team committed to last week, how many actually finished? Not progress against the master programme; progress against what the team themselves said they would do.
A team running 45% PPC is not a lazy team. It is a team whose constraints are not being cleared upstream, and the reasons-for-variance log will tell you which constraint keeps repeating. Usually it is information: a drawing, an RFI, a technical submittal sitting in someone’s approval queue.
What it changed for us
Three things:
- The constraint log became the real agenda. The weekly meeting stopped being a progress recital and became a list of blockers with owners.
- Reasons for variance got specific. “Delayed” is not a reason. “Fire damper submittal not approved” is a reason, and it names the queue that needs attention.
- Subcontractors started planning with us. Once they saw that a declared constraint got cleared rather than held against them, they declared them earlier.
The honest caveat
This is harder than a Gantt filter, and it fails quietly if leadership treats PPC as a stick. The moment a site manager believes a low PPC will be used against them, they will commit only to what is already certain — and the number becomes 98% and meaningless.
PPC is a diagnostic, not a KPI. We report it internally and we do not bonus against it.