PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 5 of 12 · Part B
Quick Reference · The Pull-Plan Builder
Planning Process · Part B · Companion Reference Guide
PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 5 of 12 · Part B
Planning Process · Part B · Companion Reference Guide
Steps 5 to 7
Logic-Based Planning runs in five frameworks, sequenced from the whole phase down to this week’s work. Each keeps the team aligned to the deliverables that matter. The five frameworks are how you Control Advancement across a phase, and they carry Steps 5 through 7 of the seven step plan.
Set the phase schedule. Define “done” per deliverable (Deliverable / QA checklist).
Find the intermediate checkpoints inside the phase. Separate deliverables from information. Reverse-sequence to the critical path.
Each discipline plans its parallel work in a rolling two-week look-ahead.
Move the right information between disciplines on time, so no one stalls.
Revisit and adjust on a cadence. Planning is a continuing process.
Planning Studio 2 runs this stack on Oakhaven DD: milestones planted first, the phase pull plan built backward from them, and the labor demand your biweekly work plans will have to honor. The hours committed in the Part A Studio supply the people. Open Planning Studio 2 →
A worked example
Pull Planning sequences Grace’s own work backward from a milestone. Architecture’s tasks are planned in detail. Structural and Mechanical are outside consultants on Oakhaven: Grace tracks the commitment, what they owe the team and by when, not how they plan their own work internally. Below is the Oakhaven 50 percent progress set, read exactly as you will read your own.
Grace does not plan the work of outside consultants. Rows tagged Consultant track what they owe the team and when, a commitment, not a task Grace schedules for them.
Milestone · 50% DD Progress Set
| Discipline | Needs (from upstream) | Provides (downstream) | Days | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milestone | Milestone | The 50% progress set must be reachable | — | 0 |
| ↑ | ||||
| Pull 1 | Structural Consultant | Initial floor plan (Arch) | Shear-wall locations | 3 |
| ↑ | ||||
| Pull 2 | Architecture | Equip sizes, clearances & room req’ts (Mech) | Initial floor plan | 3 |
| ↑ | ||||
| Pull 3 | Mechanical Consultant | Mechanical system selection (Owner) | Equipment sizes & room req’ts | 2 |
| ↑ | ||||
| Pull 4 | Owner | Three system options (PM) | System selection | 10 |
| ↑ | ||||
| Pull 5 | Project Manager | Initiates the chain | Three system options to owner | 0 |
Durations sum the critical-path work: Grace’s own tasks plus the consultant commitment windows. The client/owner review window (Pull 4) is added separately to find the true start-by date. Reverse-sequencing exposes the decision that governs everything, while there is still time to force it. Build your own chain in Planning Studio 2.
The Pull pass of Step 5 is this pull-plan builder with prerequisite intelligence: deadlines derive from your milestones, QAQC weeks are reserved before you place a single bar, and every violation is named in plain language. The checker reports what starts before its input exists, what finishes inside a review week, and what breaks the milestone. Try it yourself before letting it pull-plan for you. Then lock it and watch the Post pass sort your network into the Gantt. Build the pull plan →
The raw material
At each intermediate milestone, Grace’s own disciplines and its outside consultants each declare two lists: what they need from the team, and what they provide to it. For Grace’s own work, these lists drive detailed task planning. For consultants, they are commitments Grace tracks, not tasks Grace plans.
Grace does not plan the work of outside consultants. Rows tagged Consultant track what they owe the team and when, a commitment, not a task Grace schedules for them.
| Discipline | Needs from others | Provides to the team |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture Grace | Equipment for preliminary bidding, initial structural sizing/depth, initial MEP system sizing, initial code review. | Initial code-compliance plan, initial floor plan, elevations, preliminary wall construction type. |
| Structural Consultant | Lateral frame locations, non-standard opening locations, roof/floor-to-floor heights, locations & weights of mechanical loads. | Initial column grid, bearing-wall locations, initial framing scheme, shear-wall locations. |
| Mechanical Consultant | Mechanical room locations identified, preliminary equipment locations. | Main piping & duct routes/sizes, major equipment layout, exhaust/pump locations, initial heating/cooling system. |
Intermediate milestones are checkpoints rather than print deadlines. At each one, certain things must be determined for the team to reach the phase deliverable. Grace plans its own rows in detail. Consultant rows are commitments to track, not schedules to build.
The Studio flags every same-week handoff in your network amber, applying exactly this section’s discipline: legal but tight, so name the day and the format. Needs-and-provides turns those handoffs into commitments the team can plan against.
Between milestones
The milestone plan holds only the shared, critical handoffs. Each discipline’s parallel work lives in its own biweekly plan, a rolling two-week look-ahead pulled back from its milestone commitments.
The biweekly plan becomes the source of truth for each discipline’s work between milestones: fast to maintain, uncluttered, and visible to every other group without intermixing.
The Studio’s labor demand table is the bridge from this page to the roster: every role’s committed hours, spread the way planned value lands, week by week, with hot weeks flagged wherever demand exceeds one full-time person. A one-click, cost-parity fix is available when it does. Write your first biweekly work plan against that table. See the labor demand →
What is left
The frameworks above deliver Step 5, a sequenced schedule. Two steps remain, and both belong to Part B. Work them in Planning Studio 2.
| Step | The question it answers | What you do | The artifact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Step 6 Hard resource the plan | Which named people, in which weeks? | Put names against the roles, week by week, and check that nobody is asked for more than one person can give. Flag every week over 40 hours and fix it before the phase starts. | Labor demand table |
| Step 7 Draw the Earned Value Plan | How does the fee get earned? | Weight each work package by its share of the fee, spread it across the sequenced weeks, and read the cumulative curve. That curve is the line you measure every week against. | Earned Value Plan and S-curve |
Soft resourcing (Step 3) asked what kind of person does the work. Hard resourcing asks whether the plan is physically staffable by the people Grace actually has. A budget that balances and a roster that cannot deliver it is still a plan that fails.