Turning Around a Major Construction Project

The project initially relied on a Primavera P6 master schedule and a three-week lookahead with daily huddles at the base camps focused only on next-day tasks.

This traditional planning approach overlooked constraints management, resulting in idle crews, costly rework, and missed milestones. Poor coordination between disciplines and field crews compounded delays, drove schedule overruns, and disrupted the critical path.

Schedule reliability was especially critical: electrical outages required to complete the work were locked in months in advance with the network operator, leaving virtually no tolerance for slippage.

To address these challenges, the contractor and asset owner agreed to implement the Last Planner System (LPS) — a lean construction methodology that shifts planning control to those closest to the work, enabling teams to make reliable commitments, proactively manage constraints, and continuously improve workflow predictability.

THE APPROACH

Over a four-month period, ORBIZ facilitated the design and implementation of a customised LPS framework across the project, working directly on-site to drive adoption at scale across five remote base camps and the project head office in Sydney.

Dedicated consultants embedded LPS practices into daily operations, engaging supervisors, superintendents, planners, and construction managers in structured 7-week lookahead cycles. This shifted the team’s focus from reactive scheduling — responding to problems as they arose — to proactive constraint management, identifying and clearing obstacles before they disrupted workflow.

Variance analysis was embedded as a core discipline, enabling teams to diagnose the root causes of missed commitments and build a continuous improvement loop into the planning rhythm.

Following the implementation phase, ORBIZ conducted monthly sustainability audits over six months to support teams in embedding the new practices into daily operations and driving further system improvements.

THE SOLUTION

LPS marked a clear turning point. The contractor moved from short-term, reactive planning to a structured, collaborative system that built reliability and accountability across every work front.

Weekly work planning cycles, underpinned by Percent Plan Complete (PPC) metrics, gave teams a clear, shared measure of schedule reliability. The visibility this created encouraged realistic commitments and strengthened trust and coordination across disciplines.

Proactive constraint management proved to be one of the most significant improvements. Rather than discovering blockers at the last minute, teams began identifying and resolving materials, engineering approvals, and resource issues well in advance. Idle time fell, rework reduced, and workflow stability improved across all fronts.

Daily reviews of planned activities reinforced individual and team accountability, creating a cadence of short-cycle feedback that kept performance visible and commitments honest.

The cultural shift was equally significant. Supervisors, planners, and construction managers moved away from siloed, discipline-first thinking and began planning collaboratively around shared milestones. Engineering and site teams aligned earlier than before, ensuring design and procurement challenges were resolved before they reached the field.

The result was a project that recovered its rhythm: multiple critical areas advanced ahead of schedule, tower construction productivity lifted 45%, steel erection costs were reduced by millions of dollars, and the working relationship between the contractor and asset owner was fundamentally transformed.