Building a three-week look-ahead crews will follow
Monday's coordination meeting opens with the master schedule on the wall, and the next month of work on level 2 is a single bar: "Interior finishes — 30 days". The drywall, electrical and paint foremen each read it differently. By Wednesday, two crews are in the same corridor and a third is waiting for an inspection nobody booked.
A master schedule is built to show months, milestones and the critical path, and its activities are too large for a foreman to staff or finish in a week. A look-ahead is a short-interval plan, rolled forward every week, that breaks the next few weeks into tasks a crew can act on, so that what each task needs can be cleared before it is due. Lean planning guidance describes look-ahead windows of three to twelve weeks, with six preferred on most projects. Three weeks is enough for crew-level detail, provided orders, submittals and shop drawings with longer lead times are tracked further out, in a long-lead log.
- Pull every activity that touches the next three weeks from the current schedule: what starts, continues or should finish, and anything whose predecessor finishes in the window.
- Break each activity into crew-sized tasks by area and trade. A rule of thumb from lean planning: if a piece of work takes more than a week, split it.
- Write one name against each task: the foreman who will run the crew, not the company.
- Sequence by area so each trade hands a finished area to the next, and show the handoff dates.
- Add a readiness column that says what must be true before each task starts — drawings, material, inspection, access — and who is clearing it. Keep the detail in a constraints log.
- Review the draft with the foremen before issuing it. Change any date a foreman says the crew cannot meet, or record why it stands.
- Roll it every week: drop the finished week, add a new third week, and mark what was planned but not done, with the reason.
Common mistakes
- Copying master-schedule bars into a three-week window without breaking them down.
- Writing the look-ahead alone in the office and handing it out at the meeting.
- Listing tasks without saying whether they are ready to start.
- Issuing it once and letting it go stale by the second week.
Checklist
Before you issue this week's look-ahead
- Every task is a week or shorter
- Every task has a foreman's name
- Areas are sequenced, with handoff dates
- Critical activities are marked
- Each task shows what it needs and who is clearing it
- The foremen have reviewed their dates
- Last week's misses are noted, with reasons
Check your understanding
A foreman says a task will take eight working days. Why split it before it goes on the look-ahead?
