PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 5 of 12 · Part B
The Pull-Plan Builder
Planning Process · Part B — Companion Reference & Interactive Tool
PM Excellence Academy
Grace Design Studios · Module 5 of 12 · Part B
Planning Process · Part B — Companion Reference & Interactive Tool
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.
Set the phase schedule; define “done” per deliverable (Deliverable / QA checklist).
Find 30/60/90% checkpoints; 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 process, not an event.
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 — with the hours you committed in the Part A Studio supplying the people. Open Planning Studio 2 →
Pull Planning sequences work backward from a milestone. Each row is a handoff: a discipline needs something, then provides something in a stated duration. The rows are listed in pull order (milestone first). The tool sums the critical-path durations and tells you how early the chain must start. It’s seeded with the Oakhaven 30% DD example — edit it, or build your own.
| Discipline | Needs (from upstream) | Provides (downstream) | Days |
|---|
Durations sum the critical-path design work. Add the client/owner review window (shown as the last handoff) to find the true start-by date. Reverse-sequencing exposes the decision that gates everything — while there’s still time to force it.
Segment 3a of the Studio is the 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 — what starts before its input exists, what finishes inside a review week, what breaks the milestone. Try it yourself before you let it pull-plan for you; then lock it and watch Segment 3b sort your network into the Gantt. Build the pull plan →
At each intermediate milestone, every discipline declares two lists: what it needs from the team, and what it provides to the team. These are the raw material of the pull plan.
| Discipline | Needs from others | Provides to the team |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | 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 | 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 | 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 not print deadlines — they are checkpoints where certain things must be determined for the team to reach the phase deliverable.
The Studio flags every same-week handoff in your network amber, with exactly this section’s discipline: legal, but tight — name the day and the format. Needs-and-provides is how those handoffs stop being hopes and start being commitments someone can actually plan against.
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, decluttered, 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 — and a one-click, cost-parity fix when it does. That table is what your first biweekly work plan should be written against. See the labor demand →