What is interactive planning and how to organise interactive planning sessions

Projects of every type and size consist of connected groups of activity. And in the construction industry, those activities are extremely interdependent, relying on different trades, suppliers, contractors, etc.

Keeping this interdependency in mind is key for effective planning. But what’s the best way to do that?

It’s time to consider a new approach: Interactive planning.

Free eBook: Quick guide to Lean practices for construction professionals

What are interactive planning sessions?

Interactive planning sessions are crucial to the integrated project delivery model – a methodology designed to increase productivity and efficiency by improving communication and collaboration.

At its simplest, interactive planning involves bringing all project stakeholders and workers together so they can discuss each particular aspect of the project. During the session, they map out milestones and determine the scheduling considerations and necessary activities to reach them.

This high level of communication ensures that everyone from the project owner to key subcontractors understands the project’s overall objective to find the most effective means of reaching it.

A typical interactive planning session consists of 5 key discussions:

1. Reviewing the project’s scope and milestones
2. Defining roles and responsibilities
3. Setting goals and objectives
4. Determining what “done” means for the project
5. Identifying what must happen in the next 4-8 weeks

With that in mind, let’s explore how to organise and prepare for an effective interactive planning session.

Preparing for your first interactive planning session

While the concept of an interactive planning session is simple – you have to gather everyone together, right?—organising and executing an efficient session is something that many project managers find challenging.

1. Introduce interactive planning to project stakeholders

If you haven’t held an interactive planning session before, many of those you need to involve likely aren’t familiar with the concept.

So instead of expecting everyone to participate, ensure that all project stakeholders understand the process and importance of interactive planning.

Make sure that they know you are organising the session and what you expect from them during the planning process.

More to read: 3 benefits of location-based planning in construction

2. Map out your interactive planning strategy

After introducing interactive planning to key stakeholders, you have to, well, plan the planning session—we know that’s a lot of planning, but we’ll walk you through it.

First, you’ll need to consider how many interactive planning sessions you want to hold over the project’s lifespan. For larger, more complex projects, we recommend three.

1. The first meeting doesn’t need to involve everyone—it can be as simple as inviting your project manager and supervisors to finalise your approach and goals for the session.
2. During the second interactive planning session, you’ll want to include any higher-level workers and discuss more technical aspects of the project to start putting together a game plan.
3. For the final session, invite everyone involved in the project to set milestones, determine start/finish dates, and schedule activities and tasks to help ensure teams hit their objectives on time and on budget.

What your interactive planning sessions should look like from start to finish

Now, let’s explore what that final interactive planning session should look like—if you want to simplify the process or are working on a less-complex project, this could be your one and only meeting.

1. Starting the session

Large projects will have large teams—we like to start off our planning sessions by introducing the attendees. Then you want to ensure that everyone involved understands how the meeting will work by explaining your approach and the interactive planning session’s agenda.

2. During the session

Let stakeholders plan their jobs (to an extent) rather than laying out a set-in-stone plan for them. Start with those whose scope of work feeds into other trades or interacts with multiple activities and work your way down the list.

Your role here is to identify schedule conflicts, facilitate collaboration, and lead the discussion toward your interactive planning target.

3. Ending the session

To close the session, you want to have a schedule of all activities – who’s doing what, where is the work happening, and when will they start/finish? At this point, all milestones should be accounted for, and everyone should have a plan of action to hit those milestones.

4. After the session

Finally, it’s always a good idea to prepare minutes of the meeting document after your interactive planning session to send to each team and stakeholder. This is how you’ll create a finalised schedule.

Your minutes of the meeting should include that schedule, potential concerns, plans for action, and a list of milestones.

You might also like: Trade coordination: how to coordinate technical teams on site efficiently without BIM

What comes next?

After organising and holding your interactive planning session(s), the work isn’t done yet—there’s still the challenge of keeping everyone accountable and on track.

That’s where we come in.

• LB Geniebelt is a multi-project communication platform that allows teams to share progress in real-time from anywhere easily, create field reports with one click, and keep everyone updated on and offline.
• LB Coordination helps site managers coordinate trades, optimise schedules, measure project health, and fill in gaps on delayed projects ASAP.

Come talk with us at LetsBuild and see our construction management software and interactive planning tools in action – book your personalised demo to find out how we can help you plan better to reduce cost and schedule overruns.