Two weeks or three: choosing the look-ahead horizon from your own lead times
Thursday’s planning meeting finds that next Tuesday’s work needs an answer that nobody has requested. The team has used a two-week sheet for months. The sheet contains dates, but the decisions behind those dates need longer than the sheet allows.
Choose the look-ahead horizon from the decisions and constraints you must clear before crews can work. Review delivery confirmation, inspections, design answers, workface access and crew mobilization with their owners. Use a short horizon for detailed commitments and enough forward visibility to reveal the next obstacles. Longer-lead items still belong in purchasing and the overall schedule; extending one sheet does not replace those controls.
Find the useful reach of the plan
- List the recurring blockers. Look at recent misses and the coming sequence. Name what prevented a ready task: an unanswered detail, an unavailable area or an unconfirmed delivery is more useful than the label coordination.
- Ask each owner about the required lead time. Confirm what information starts the process and when the answer or resource can realistically be ready. Mark an unconfirmed period as an assumption to check, not an established supplier promise.
- Choose the forward view together. Test whether two weeks reveals the next constraints early enough or whether three or more are useful. Base the choice on this work phase rather than treating a particular number of weeks as an industry requirement.
- Separate detail from certainty. Show near-term ready commitments clearly and later work as planned pending named conditions. A task should not become firm just because it moves into the first column next week.
- Keep the longer-lead register connected. Refer to purchasing and decision items outside the detailed horizon. Bring their upcoming release dates into the meeting before they become urgent, without filling every future week with false detail.
- Recheck when the phase changes. Repeating finishes, a tie-in and a new envelope package may have different constraints. Adjust the view and record why, while keeping one current issue for the people making commitments.
Common mistakes
- Increasing the number of weeks without assigning constraint owners.
- Treating all activities on the sheet as equally certain.
- Dropping a long-lead decision because installation is outside the horizon.
Action list
Test your current horizon
- Name the next work phase and its blockers.
- Confirm the lead time and starting input for each.
- Choose a horizon that exposes those actions.
- Distinguish ready commitments from tentative work.
- Connect longer-lead items to their own register.
Check your understanding
A purchase decision is needed now for installation beyond the look-ahead. Can it wait until installation appears on the sheet?
