The Last Planner System in Construction
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
The Last Planner System in Construction: Everything You Need to Know About LPS Benefits, Limits, and the Next Evolution
For years, the Last Planner System (LPS) was hailed as the answer to unpredictable schedules and fragmented project teams. Emerging from Lean Construction, it offered something the industry desperately needed: a way to improve reliability, align trade partners, and reduce wasted effort.
And in many cases, it worked.
Yet owners and executives today face a different challenge. Projects are larger, riskier, and more complex than ever. Even with Last Planner in place, schedules still slip, budgets still balloon, and punch lists still grow longer than expected.
The truth is this: The system that once moved the industry forward now shows its limits.
Last Planner can make planning more reliable, but it cannot guarantee project outcomes. That’s why leading organizations are looking beyond Lean to evolved approaches—like the Midion Method—that integrate governance, leadership, and execution discipline into the construction process.
For a deeper look at how Lean has evolved, read: Lean to Limitless.
What to Do When the Last Planner Falls Short
Every construction leader knows the story. The project begins with high hopes and polished schedules. The team aligns on milestones. Then, slowly and almost predictably, the cracks appear. Coordination breaks down. Variability increases. Deadlines slip. Costs escalate. Owners are left asking why, despite their investment in planning systems, the industry still struggles with overruns and delays.
At Midion, we’ve lived and studied these limits first-hand. Through the Midion Method, we’ve evolved beyond Lean Construction principles to create a project delivery model that eliminates the guesswork, mitigates execution risk, and gives owners certainty, even in the most complex builds.
This article explores the Last Planner System in depth:
- What it is and how it works.
- Why it’s effective—and why it often falls short.
- The role of Lean Construction in shaping industry practices.
- How the Midion Method represents an evolution beyond Lean.
- When and why project leaders should demand more than LPS.
What is the Last Planner System?
The Last Planner System is a collaborative production planning process widely used in Lean Construction. Developed in the 1990s by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, it is designed to improve schedule reliability by involving those closest to the work (the “last planners”) in creating and committing to short-term, detailed work plans.
In practice, LPS works by:
- Breaking down master schedules into smaller, manageable commitments.
- Engaging trade partners and subcontractors in weekly planning sessions.
- Tracking commitments vs. completions (often measured as Percent Plan Complete, or PPC).
- Identifying and removing constraints before they block progress.
Instead of a rigid, top-down schedule, the Last Planner System builds planning around what can realistically be done, given constraints, resource availability, and coordination needs.
For many organizations, this represents a significant cultural shift: from compliance-driven scheduling to a collaborative, commitment-based approach.
Benefits of the Last Planner System
The Last Planner System has clear advantages, especially when compared to traditional CPM (Critical Path Method) scheduling, also known as siloed planning:
- Improved Reliability: By focusing on achievable tasks, LPS increases the likelihood that planned work is completed as promised.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Trade partners and field teams have a voice, which increases accountability and ownership.
- Transparency: Variances and reasons for non-completion are visible, enabling root-cause analysis.
- Reduced Waste: LPS aligns with Lean Construction’s emphasis on reducing inefficiencies, such as waiting time and rework.
- Stronger Morale: Teams feel empowered when their input shapes the plan.
It’s not surprising that LPS is now a staple in commercial construction projects worldwide. Owners see measurable productivity gains. Contractors report fewer conflicts. On paper, it feels like the industry has solved the age-old scheduling problem.
The Limits of the Last Planner System
Yet despite these benefits, delays, overruns, and execution failures remain pervasive. Research shows that only about 8.5% of construction projects finish on time and on budget. Why so low? The Last Planner System, while useful, addresses only part of the problem.
Key Limitations:
- Reactive by Design
LPS focuses on short-term commitments. It identifies and removes constraints, but often only after they’ve become visible. Complex builds demand for more proactive, predictive systems. - Dependent on Culture
Success depends heavily on team buy-in and collaboration. In reality, competing incentives among contractors and owners can undermine this. - Limited to Planning Reliability
LPS improves schedule reliability, but it doesn’t solve deeper challenges like design integration, supply chain disruption, or scope ambiguity. - Not Built for Complexity
As projects scale in size and complexity, planning systems alone cannot address the intertwined financial, operational, and leadership challenges.
For leaders of complex commercial construction projects, this means that LPS helps, but it doesn’t ensure success.
Why Construction Still Suffers from Delays and Overruns
Even with the Last Planner System in place, projects regularly encounter:
- Budget Escalation: Cost uncertainty that spirals into overruns.
- Design Changes: Inadequate integration of design and construction phases.
- Coordination Gaps: Misalignment across multiple contractors and trades.
- Schedule Variability: External factors (supply chain, permitting, weather) still disrupt plans.
- Leadership Challenges: Project managers lack authority or visibility across all moving parts.
This is where the industry often stops short. But as Midion highlights in Lean Construction Limitations: Why Lean Principles Aren’t Always Enough, Lean frameworks improve parts of the process but rarely solve the entire equation.
The Evolution Beyond Lean: The Midion Method
At Midion, we recognize the value of the Last Planner System, but we also see its boundaries. That’s why we’ve developed the Midion Method: a next-generation approach that ensures owners can achieve certainty in delivery, even for the most complex builds. Where Lean Construction focuses on eliminating waste, the Midion Method focuses on ensuring outcomes. It is:
- Predictive: Anticipates risks and builds controls before problems appear.
- Integrated: Goes beyond planning to connect leadership, operations, design, and execution.
- Scalable: Effective not only on small projects but also on large, multi-stakeholder, high-risk environments.
- Owner-Centric: Ensures alignment with owner outcomes rather than just contractor efficiency.
In other words: Where the Last Planner System stops, the Midion Method begins.
Last Planner vs. Midion Method: A Comparison
Last Planner System
Primary Focus: Planning reliability
Approach: Collaborative scheduling
Scope: Short-term task commitments
Risk Mitigation: Identifies constraints reactively
Applicability: Works best on moderately complex projects
Midion Method
Primary Focus: End-to-end project certainty
Approach: Integrated leadership, design, and execution
Scope: Strategic + tactical alignment
Risk Mitigation: Anticipates and prevents systemic risks
Applicability: Designed for highly complex builds
For more details about how Midion compares to Lean, see The Midion Method vs. Lean Construction.
When to Use the Last Planner System…and When it’s Not Enough
There’s no doubt the Last Planner System is valuable. For many organizations, it represents a meaningful improvement in the construction process. But leaders should ask: When is LPS sufficient, and when does it fall short?
When LPS Helps:
- Mid-sized projects with limited complexity.
- Teams with strong cultural alignment and trust.
- Projects where variability is the main concern.
When You Need More Than LPS:
- Large-scale or complex construction projects with multiple stakeholders.
- Projects at risk of construction overruns or delays due to systemic challenges.
- Design-build construction projects that require integration across phases.
- Situations demanding stronger quality control and assurance in construction beyond task-level planning.
For a deeper look at managing complexity, see Managing Large Complex Projects: Solving Execution Challenges in Construction.
Lessons from Projects that Lean Alone Couldn’t Save
Even with Lean Construction principles in place, complex healthcare projects can still face delays, cost overruns, and execution challenges. For example, Midion partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on three major projects: a cancer treatment center, a hospital bed tower, and an education campus – totaling more than $1 billion across three locations. By implementing the Midion Method, Midion aligned leadership, project teams, and trade partners around a single, coordinated plan.
The results speak for themselves: all three projects were completed on time and at or below budget, marking the most intensive construction effort in the Clinic’s history. This approach not only delivered predictable outcomes for the Clinic but also transformed their approach to capital projects, proving that Lean tools alone aren’t always enough. For the full project story, see Transforming Delivery for Healthcare Projects.
Midion has been brought into numerous projects at this stage, where Lean tools are in place but failing to solve the execution challenge. Our role is to reset, realign, and re-establish control.
See Navigating Project Execution Challenges: How to Get Complex, Failing Builds Back on Track for examples.
The Role of Leadership in Moving Beyond Last Planner
The effectiveness of any planning system ultimately depends on leadership. LPS empowers teams to plan, but leaders must still:
- Align stakeholders with owner outcomes.
- Make critical trade-off decisions across scope, budget, and schedule.
- Establish accountability across contractors and consultants.
- Drive a culture of collaboration without losing authority.
This scenario, then, requires more than a scheduling tool. It requires leadership and project management expertise. Midion partners with owners as a Project Delivery Partner, ensuring governance structures are in place to align every decision with the intended outcome.
From Lean to Limitless
The Last Planner System reflects a key insight: better planning leads to better outcomes. But planning alone cannot overcome the systemic challenges of today’s projects. That’s why at Midion, we speak of moving from Lean to limitless. Our approach is an evolution of Lean principles, focused not just on process efficiency but on outcome certainty.
Explore more in From Lean to Limitless.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Path Forward
The Last Planner System remains one of the most effective tools developed under Lean Construction. It fosters collaboration, improves reliability, and reduces waste. But for owners leading complex, high-stakes builds, LPS is not enough to eliminate risk. If you’re seeking more than incremental improvement—if you want to eliminate overruns, delays, and execution failures—you need a partner who can integrate beyond Lean. That’s what the Midion Method delivers.
Ready to Move Beyond Lean?
Talk to Midion today about how we help owners deliver certainty in commercial construction projects, from design-build initiatives to complex program management.
