Weekly Work Plan (WWP) in Construction
The Weekly Work Plan is where the Last Planner System lives or dies. It is a time-boxed, trade-level list of activities the last planners have committed to deliver over the coming week — each line a reliable promise, not a Gantt extraction. Only activities that have cleared constraint analysis in the lookahead reach the WWP. At the end of the week, the ratio of promises kept to promises made becomes PPC — the single number that tells you whether the project is running on commitments or on optimism.
What is a Weekly Work Plan?
The Weekly Work Plan (WWP) is the output of the Last Planner System commitment conversation — a time-boxed, trade-level list of constraint-free activities the last planners have committed to deliver in the coming week. It is the input to PPC measurement at week end and the connective tissue between the lookahead screening and the daily huddle on site.
Also known as: WWP, weekly commitment plan, weekly plan, promises board. The acronym WWP is standard across LPS literature; the full name varies by region.
Seven fields every WWP line needs, plus its week-end status
A WWP is a commitment set, not a status report. These seven fields, and the done-or-not-done status recorded against them at week end, are what distinguish a WWP line from a Gantt row — each one closes a loophole that otherwise lets vague commitments pass.
Activity
Specific enough that a crew can start work from the line alone. “MEP first-fix” is not; “MEP first-fix, risers A1–A4 on level 7” is.
Trade / crew
Who is doing the work. Not the subcontractor company name — the specific crew or foreman who will be on site.
Duration
Hours or days. If the activity does not fit inside the committing week, break it into weekly chunks — a WWP line that spans two weeks hides whether week one slipped.
Location
Where on site. Zone, floor, area, span. Links the WWP to the location-based plan and makes trade conflicts visible.
Quantity
Measurable progress indicator. 40 doors, 12 pours, 800 m² of partition. Lets completion be judged at week end without argument.
Handoff condition
What state the activity leaves behind for the next trade. “Walls plumb, services tested, surfaces clean, access cleared.” A disagreement on the handoff is the single most valuable thing a WWP meeting surfaces.
Committed by
Name of the last planner who agreed to deliver this line. Not the main-contractor planner — the person whose crew will actually do the work.
Status at week end
Done or not done. Partial completions do not count — a WWP line is one or zero, not 0.8. The reason code for any zero drives the next lookahead.
Worked example: a WWP for a mid-project week
A commercial fit-out team committed to seven activities for the week commencing Monday. The table below is the WWP as it looked on the Friday commitment meeting of the previous week — one row per promise.
| Activity + location | Trade | Handoff condition | Committed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partition framing, zone 1 | Partitions | Framing plumb, services roughed-in, access clear | R. Shah |
| Partition boarding, zone 1 | Partitions | Boards fixed and taped, ready for painter | R. Shah |
| Ceiling grid, zone 2 | Ceiling installer | Grid installed, services dropped, lighting positions marked | A. Patel |
| MEP first-fix, zone 2 | MEP | All conduits run, boxes installed, trunking tested | D. Kumar |
| Painter prep + first coat, zone 1 | Painter | Walls dust-free, first coat on, snagging areas identified | S. Khan |
| Flooring delivery, zone 3 | Logistics | Stock on site, staged in zone 3, protected | T. Logistics |
| Snagging walk, zone 1 | Fit-out | Defects list issued, owners assigned, revisit date agreed | F. Mehta |
Why each line is a promise, not a Gantt row
Four things make this a WWP rather than a schedule extract. Every line names a specific crew and location, not just an activity. Every line has a handoff condition in the trade's own words. Every line is small enough to be done or not done inside one week. And every line has a human name next to it — a person who will be in the Friday meeting next week either reporting completion or explaining why.
At week end, suppose five lines closed and two slipped (MEP first-fix hit by a late RFI; flooring delivery missed its slot). PPC = 5 ÷ 7 = 71%. Both reason codes — design (RFI) and materials (delivery) — go into Monday's lookahead meeting as the top screening priorities for the next week.
Where Weekly Work Plans fail on real projects
The template is in most project handbooks. The four failure modes below are what distinguish teams whose PPC climbs over the project from teams whose WWP meeting drifts into status reporting.
Last planners not in the room
The main-contractor planner writes the WWP and emails it round. The foremen and subcontractor leads who will actually do the work never commit to anything in their own words — so the WWP is a schedule extract wearing a commitment label.
Lines too vague to commit to
“MEP first-fix” is a programme line, not a weekly commitment. Without location, quantity and handoff condition, there is nothing a crew can start from and nothing a reviewer can score at week end. Vague lines pass week after week because nobody can tell they failed.
Commitments made for work with open constraints
Constraint analysis gets skipped and activities with open design, materials or prerequisite issues flow onto the WWP. The commitments then fail predictably at week end — the WWP captures the symptom while the lookahead was the actual broken step.
Missed commitments carry no cost
If a missed WWP line produces no rescheduling conversation, no reason code and no change in next week's screening priority, PPC drifts toward zero. The absence of visible consequence is not kindness — it is the mechanism by which the whole system becomes theatre.
How VisiLean supports the Weekly Work Plan loop
VisiLean Planner runs the Weekly Work Plan as a view of the same schedule that holds the CPM master and the lookahead — the three views reconcile automatically so the WWP, the lookahead and the master never disagree about what is scheduled.
- The weekly commitment set is drawn from the lookahead's constraint-free pool, so activities with open constraints cannot accidentally flow onto the WWP.
- Last planners mark lines complete and attach reason codes from LiveSite, the same mobile app that captures field progress and photo updates.
- PPC is calculated continuously as the week progresses, not reconstructed on Friday — so trends are visible before the committing meeting rather than after it.
- Weekly Work Plans extracted per sub-contractor for submissions are generated from the same source as the planners' view — no copy-paste reconciliation.
- Reason-code trends from the previous week's WWP open the next Monday's lookahead meeting, closing the learning loop that keeps PPC rising week over week.
Related methods
Last Planner System
The production-control system the WWP sits inside. The five conversations, how the WWP feeds PPC, and the full LPS loop.
Read morePPC — Percent Plan Complete
The reliability metric computed from the WWP at week end. Formula, benchmarks and reason codes.
Read moreLookahead Planning
The six-week screening step that filters the WWP's candidate set. Lookahead sets the pool; the WWP commits from it.
Read morePull Planning
The reverse-pass session where the sequence the WWP commits to is originally agreed by the trades.
Read moreFrequently asked questions
What is a Weekly Work Plan in construction?
A Weekly Work Plan (WWP) is the output of the Last Planner System commitment conversation — a time-boxed, trade-level list of activities that the last planners (foremen, subcontractor leads) have promised to complete during the coming week. Each line is a reliable commitment, not a wish-list item. Only activities that have passed constraint analysis in the lookahead reach the WWP. At the end of the week, every commitment is counted as done or not done, and the ratio becomes PPC (Percent Plan Complete).
What belongs on a Weekly Work Plan?
Each line should contain: the activity (specific enough that a crew can start work from it), the trade or crew making the commitment, the duration (hours or days), the location on site, the quantity (so progress can be measured), the handoff condition the activity will leave behind for the next trade, and the name of the last planner who committed. Activities that are vague, that span multiple weeks, or that depend on unresolved constraints do not belong on the WWP — they belong back in the lookahead until they can be committed to reliably.
How does the Friday commitment meeting work?
The meeting runs 30 to 60 minutes with the main-contractor planner facilitating and the last planners for every active trade attending. The agenda is: review the previous week's PPC and reason codes, review the current week's commitments against actual field completion, then walk the next week's candidate activities (filtered to constraint-free by the lookahead) and have each last planner commit — in their own words — to what they will complete. The output is the new WWP and the next week's constraint-screening priority.
How is a Weekly Work Plan different from a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a programme — a planner's view of what should happen across months or years. A WWP is a promise set — the last planners' view of what will happen in one specific week. The two are not substitutes. The master Gantt (usually CPM) drives the lookahead; the lookahead filters for constraint-free activities; the WWP captures the reliable commitments against those activities for the coming week. In mature LPS teams, all three coexist and reinforce each other.
What makes a Weekly Work Plan reliable?
Three things. First, every item on it has passed constraint analysis — no open constraints at the two-weeks-out line. Second, the last planner who will do the work makes the commitment in their own words rather than agreeing to what the planner wrote. Third, missed commitments carry visible consequences — not punishment, but a rescheduling cost that the whole team sees. Mature LPS programmes with these three disciplines sustain PPC in the 75–85% range week over week. Programmes that treat the WWP as a status report rather than a commitment set rarely clear 60%.
See the WWP running on a live schedule
VisiLean runs the Weekly Work Plan as a view of the same schedule as the CPM master and the lookahead — so the WWP, the plan and the field all stay in sync.