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 PROJECT MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
 Sep 1993; P. 23

CONSTRUCTION PLANNING: Revising the Paradigm
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 Alexander Laufer, National Building Research Institute,
Technion, Isreal Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Gregory A. Howell, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque. New Mexico
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The recommended DIDA approach to the project planning process and the typology of plans:
  1. Is more difficult to understand--it is not neat and straightforward; and
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  2. It makes planning more difficult--the planning process involves more judgment and collaboration;

    But...
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  3. It results in plans which are more implementable--the planning process produces models which reflect the real, imperfect world.
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It is time to change the theory of project planning. Approaches that are widely taught (and routinely required by company procedure) have been criticized because they fail to measure up to the demands of reality [5] [22] [23] [27]. Discontent, particularly among line managers, has been evident for some time. This discontent first became public in the Business Roundtable report "More Construction for the Money," which says that modern management tools, including planning systems, seldom realize their potential or live up to their promise [4] 15].
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Academic theory offers little help to practitioners who must make decisions in the face of uncertain environments. Thus instead of relying on methods described in textbooks, literature, and corporate manuals, experienced practitioners apply unique, often intuitive ways to cope with difficulties as they plan and complete projects. Lacking a theoretical basis, these managers cannot systematize, expand or improve their practice. Absent a theory for planning grounded in practice, academics find the methods used by managers difficult to explain or teach. Practice has outrun theory, but cannot develop further without adequate theory.
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Instead of complaining that the current dissatisfaction arises from inadequate implementation of "proven modern management techniques" by the untrained or unmotivated, this article argues that dissatisfaction flows from more basic defects in the paradigm that supports these "modern management techniques." Exposing these defects requires that assumptions and conceptual foundations inherent in the current paradigm be made explicit. As I.I. Mitroff says in Break-Away Thinking, "The new thinking we require cannot result unless we first understand the deeper patterns or road maps of reality that lie beneath the old way of thinking" [40].
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When change occurs at the paradigm level, formerly unquestioned assumptions and supposedly obvious procedures come into question as they become explicit. Principles once intuitively clear become unacceptable in the new light cast by the emerging paradigm. In turn, new empirical findings possible within the new paradigm add strength, supporting the emerging understanding. This article, based on conclusions from a five-year research project into construction planning, moves toward defining a new paradigm by showing that current academically defined techniques are internally inconsistent, rest on false assumptions about project circumstances, and fail to inform "best practices." Simply put, current approaches are inadequate in the face of the reality of uncertainty as experienced by practitioners.
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The article is broken into seven parts;
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  1. "Ten Currently Accepted Ground Rules" summarizes the prevailing academic theory or paradigm of planning.
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  2. "Major Premises--The Practitioner's Reality" provides the basis for a critical challenge to the Accepted Ground Rules.
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  3. "From Premises Toward a New Paradigm" presents important aspects of the new approach that also serve to sharpen the distinction between the old and new paradigm.
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  4. A"Typology of Plans."
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  5. "Why the Accepted Ground Rules are Faulty" critically reviews and chal- lenges ground rules presented in the first section.
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  6. "Where Do We Go from Here?" points new directions.
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  7. "Summary" closes the discussion.
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 TEN CURRENTLY-ACCEPTED GROUND RULES FOR
CONSTRUCTION PLANNING

Ten ground rules for effective construction planning represent the commonly- taught and -accepted approach. These rules, while not formally published, have been compiled, tested and verified by three sources. Note that these rules will be subsequently disavowed after being challenged by the premises drawn from the practitioners' reality.
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These ground rules were first compiled in discussions with more than 120 project managers at 11 U.S. construction-related firms L21]. There was strong agreement during in-house lectures and discussions with these managers that almost all formal education channels, including corporate and continuing education programs, stress these ground rules as the basis for planning.

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything."
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Dwight Eisenhower

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Second, project management procedure manuals of 20 large owners or purchasers of construction services and 13 large contractors were examined with respect to their approach to overall project preparation and the development of project teams in a research project conducted for the Construction Industry Institute [14].
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Third was a series of studies performed over the past five years at the University of New Mexico, North Carolina State University, and Texas A&M University. More than 60 graduate students in construction, with an average of 3-5 years of practical experience, were polled. They fully agreed that the ground rules embody the material taught in their civil engineering and construction management curricula.
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The Ten Ground Rules
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  1. Construction plans should be prepared before the onset of construction, and as early as possible.
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  2. A plan's time horizon should be maximal and a plan should be comprehensive, detailed and complete.
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  3. Information input for planning is received primarily from the owner, the design engineers, the information system, subcontractors, suppliers, and the experience accumulated within the construction company.
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  4. The major functional areas of the plan are scheduling, site layout, production means, resources, and cash flow.
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  5. A progressive construction company has a planning and scheduling department responsible for preparing construction plans in cooperation with site management, which then approves them. Planning is performed with the aid of sophisticated methods, hardware, and software.
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  6. A progressive construction company will use the same formal standardized planning techniques and procedures for planning all projects.
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  7. In those particular cases in which project uncertainty is high, the use of statistically-based decision-making models is necessary. Investment in an advanced and fast information system is also required.
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  8. Following the start of construction, one proceeds from planning to the control stage. The essence of control is measurement and evaluation of output and performance, followed by corrective steps that adjust performance to the plan.
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  9. The timely and frequent updating of the construction plan of execution during construction is an indicator of effective control. Advanced means are needed in order to distribute revised plans to the site.
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  10. Managers competently trained in the techniques of project planning the techniques of project planning would eliminate most planning problems encountered.
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While these ground rules have been widely accepted as guidelines for teaching planning in academia and are embodied in corporate planning procedures, they do not ensure effective planning or useful plans. The group of 120 U.S. project managers mentioned above agreed that the demands of the industry and the way managers plan in practice are neither captured by nor reflected in these accep- ted rules. Nonetheless, these managers were unable to articulate a clear alter A fresh look at the assumptions or premises which underlie planning in the real world begins to explain the gap between the promise offered by the accepted rules and the limited achievement experienced in the field. These premises will show that the practitioner's reality is inconsistent with academic theory, i.e., the old planning paradigm. The premises describe that reality and serve as a basis for the new paradigm.
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 MAJOR PREMISES--
THE PRACTITIONER'S REALITY

Premises or mindsets, although seldom consciously identified, guide the plan- ning process and underlie the planners' activities. Argyris defines a premise as " . . . a fact or proposition that is proved or assumed to be proved. A premise is grounds for an inference and conclusion" [3]. Outlined below are five commonsense premises culled from the reflections and observed practice of 18 mature and competent practitioners. All were senior project managers with major well-established regional companies in the Western United States having had significant experience in managing large construction projects. They were selected by their companies to participate in research projects on the basis of senior management assessment of their competence, experience and accomplish- ments as demonstrated by their consistent high level of performance on a variety of challenging projects [31]. These premises shape the planners' work and form the basis for a revision of the accepted view. ..
Uncertainty, as defined by Galbraith, is the gap between the information required to perform a task and that already possessed by the organization [12]. The planner, therefore, experiences uncertainty when there is a gap between the two. As Duncan points out, uncertainty will be highest when the components of the environment in which planning and implementation take place are numerous, dissimilar, and in a continual process of change [9].
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According to Duncan [9], the environmental factors of construction (e.g., wea- ther, market conditions, clients, designers, suppliers, subcontractors, and resource inputs) result in high levels of uncertainty. With the super position of internal factors (e.g., fluctuations in the flow of new projects, labor turnover, and the high degree of interdependence among project tasks) it is not surprising to find that even projects considered to be "routine" are charact- erized by high levels of uncertainty in comparison with many other industries. Lawrence, who pioneered research on organizational environment and uncertainty, divided uncertainty into two types, which he termed "information domain" and "resource tension" [32]. He ranked various industries according to this classi- fication, listing construction first in the information domain.
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This ranking has also been demonstrated by a recent research study in which 93 managers of U.S. owner and construction companies from across the U.S. were asked to characterize their "typical project" [15]. The projects ranged from $1 million to more than $200 million, with an average of about $40 million. About two-thirds of the contracts were lump-sum and half of the projects were industrial facilities. They were then asked to rate the degree of uncertainty of the project's objectives at the beginning of construction. Project objectives were defined to include scope definition, performance requirements for the completed facility, and engineering design criteria. The managers used a four-point scale from "very low uncertainty" (meaning that the project's objectives were complete, clear, and stable) to "very high uncertainty" to rate the degree of uncertainty of their project.
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One would expect uncertainty about the project's objectives (determined primarily by the owner and design engineers) to be very low in almost every case at the start of construction. Nonetheless, the managers indicated that very low uncertainty existed on only 22 percent of their typical projects. In other words, high levels of uncertainty are the rule rather than the exception even under what appears to be the circumstances most conducive to low uncertainty.
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The evidence shows that uncertainty is and should be regarded as a "fact of life" in most construction projects rather than an isolated problem of limited importance. Hence, our goal is to assist project management teams by providing explicit strategies for diagnosing and coping with uncertainty rather than ignoring or denying it. ..
Since the future is inherently uncertain, the gap between available information and needed information widens as the time span between planning and action extends [l0] [33]. Some information regarding future activities can be acquired only after other preparatory activities have been completed. Harrison brings it ad absurdum by claiming that complete information is really available only after the project is more or less finished [13]. ..
Planning is always an inherently difficult and time-consuming process and becomes even more so under conditions of high uncertainty [21]. As the information gap widens, uncertainty increases and the planner's ability to get a handle on the project's "big picture" is impaired. Information is in a state of flu the instability often forcing revi- sion of whatever plans have been prepared. Then, in turn, a new set of questions arises with respect to reliability and/or sufficiency of the gathered information. These additional issues further aggravate the difficulty faced by the planner.
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The higher the uncertainty at the time of planning, the lower the accuracy of a plan; that is, the lower the likelihood that the plan will materialize as it stands. This relationship is well-established in cost estimation: namely, the more information one has, the higher the accuracy of the cost estimate [5] [6]. This has been shown to be equally valid for schedule variance: an increase in project uncertainty, such as that caused by a premature construction launch, may result in greatly reduced accuracy in the realization of the plan. In a recent study, managers overwhelmingly predicted a fivefold increase in schedule variance if a $20 million construction project scheduled to take 18 months is started at 20 percent rather than 50 percent design completion [25].
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The increase in planning difficulty and the decrease in planning effectiveness that result from high uncertainty often lead to problems related to planning motivation and accountability. The motivation to invest in planning will suffer as the planner does not perceive a strong linkage between the effort exerted in planning and the effectiveness of the plan. Accountability may also suffer, as it is difficult to pinpoint reasons for the plan's low effectiveness. ..
Used mainly for scheduling and resource allocation, these models incorporate probability analyses. Dean and Chaudhuri, summarizing developments in project- scheduling techniques, state:

Computer simulation is an excellent method for finding the expected completion time.... In this case activity times randomly selected for each activity from the corresponding frequency distribution. The project path length, duration and critical path are then calculated in the usual (CPM) way. The procedure is repeated thousands of times, using a computer program, and a record is kept of each run. An average project duration and standard deviation are calculated on the basis of the simulation. The resulting simulation estimates are usually more reliable than the PERT calculation ... [8]. ..
We agree that models may be useful to forecast the overall duration of a construction process [44]. However, they will hold true only when the logic of the network is firm (and changes are expected only in the duration of activities). When construction begins with uncertain objectives, one should expect significant changes in the scope and logic of the network itself. This expectation has been substantiated by Mason [36]. The planner can rarely construct a frequency distribution that describes changes in the relationships between network activities; therefore, statistical models are of little help when network logic itself is undergoing significant and unpredictable change.
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While there is great interest in developing artificial intelligence techniques, Kartam and Levitt, in a discussion on the limitations of progressive artificial intelligence techniques, concluded that they were useful "... only for addressing uncertainties for which discrete outcomes can be specified in advance ...," [18] a condition which rarely exists.
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Jans and Christensen negate the use of sophisticated planning models even under this restriction. "... planning times based on Monte Carlo simulations or other mathematical models may be dangerous because up to 80 percent of the total risk in a project are of a human or society-associated nature. These factors are not built into the traditional risk analysis method, which is an error of the highest order." When it comes to planning rather than forecasting, they conclude that "... such a model is not able to give the decision maker the real cause for uncertainty. Consequently, the project manager will be in doubt about the proper actions to be taken to counter the risks [16].
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In addition to the various specific drawbacks, forecasting models suffer from a fundamental flaw. Implicit in forecasting models is the assumption that the future is determined more by what has happened between the past and the present than by what will happen between now and the future. The more distant the point in time to which the plan refers, the less valid is this assumption [2]. Construction projects do not conform to this assumption because of changes in environment and in the objectives of the project, which render even the most sophisticated models useless . ..
Initiation of planning should allow sufficient time for the decision-making process to run its course. This process includes gathering and processing information, developing alternatives, analyzing and evaluating the alternaatives, and finally selecting one alternative as a plan of action.
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Moreover, early project planning prior to the launch of construction yields significant savings in time and cost. It is widely accepted [13] [43] that management's influence on cost performance declines dramatically as the project progresses. The critical reasor for the potential impact of early project plamnning lies in management's ability tc influence the broad parameters that will establish the essential nature of the project. These decisions strongly affect final costs prior to construction. As time passes the ability to influence costs falls off sharply. This influence can be exercised only if pre-project planning includes comprehensive thinking and examination of all relevant areas covering the breadth of the project, including construction methods, schedule, cost, organization and systems, site layout, logistics, production means, work methods, and resources.
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lt is, however, very difficult to estimate and prove the potential for saving or to determine responsibility for the success or failure of a project because of the inherent difficulty of evaluating the effectiveness of planning. The results might have been due to a wide number of variables other than planning, such as implementation and/or the environment. This applies particularly to early planning, when much effort is spent on eliminating many possible alternatives to prevent future undesirable states that would otherwise occur. It is always difficult to identify and estimate the economic impact of prevented states.
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Taken together these premises highlight the importance of coping with uncertainty in the planning process. Current academic theory offers no guidance to the manager who is always faced with the uncertainty-related dilemma of determining the timing of planning: should one plan and make decisions well ahead of implementation and benefit from wielding greater influence (premise #5); or postpone making the decisions until closer to implementation and secure higher planning accuracy (premises #2 and #3)?
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 FROM PREMISES TOWARD A NEW PARADIGM

In the face of these premises, construction planning must be reconsidered. In the new paradigm, the concept and process of planning is expanded by identifying the stages of planning and different types of plans. These were drawn from observations of experts in the field at work and were subsequently verified through extensive review by experienced practitioners, and at a number of leading construction companies in the United States [31].
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The new approach to construction planning includes four stages:
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  1. Diagnosis
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  2. Information-gathering
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  3. Deferring and splitting decisions
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  4. Absorbing uncertainty

    (the "DIDA" approach).
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Since it is easier to explain the diagnostic activity after the other three are understood, the discussion begins with the information-gathering step. A new typology related to the DIDA approach is provided after discussing the four steps.
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Information-Gathering

As previously stated, missing information means uncertainty. Therefore, this step is intended to reduce uncertainty through an active, dynamic approach to information-gathering. But first it is necessary to put the information-gathering stage to a systematic, formal procedure of scrutiny. The role of the planning coordinator (e.g., the project engineer) should be to collect, verify and exchange information.
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The planning coordinator, guided and assisted by site management, should determine whether all relevant information has been collected. Items on the information-gathering checklist should include: ..
Planning coordinators should continually judge the relevance, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of their information-gathering efforts. If additional information is required, are the necessary information gathering resources cost-effective? Will the process of further information-gathering leave sufficient time for its exploitation? These issues are particularly significant for schedule-driven projects. A recent study [24] indicates that when uncertainty is high, practitioners intensify their information-gathering efforts.
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Deferring and Splitting Decisions

This step refers to the timing of decisions and an intervening splitting cess. Once all possible measures have been taken to reduce uncertainty in the information-gathering step, it is recommended that explicit efforts be made to adapt to uncertain situations by splitting and deferring more detailed decisions. The degree of detail involved is a key determinant of the effectiveness of the plan, as shown to be the case by Harrison [13], Lichtenberg [34], and Mason l36l. The most common error is probably that of too much detail, too soon [41]. Some of the negative ramifications of an overly-detailed plan, prepared too early, include: ..
We recommend that plans be prepared initially to a low level of detail. The detail should vary inversely with the planning horizon, i.e., decisions about details should be made as late as possible in the planning process. This does not imply that decisions should be arbitrarily "put off until later." Rather, it is a stage of deliberately splitting off those planning aspects which can be acted upon more opportunely in the future. In essence, the authors recommend that planners deliberately and formally decide to postpone making certain decisions.
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This concept is intended to help site management to make firmer decisions. As both the situation and the related information become more stable with the progress of time, the level of detail should be raised. This automatically reduces the plan's level of uncertainty because decisions about highly unstable situations are made closer to the point of implementation.
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The authors do not advocate delaying the start of planning. To the contrary, when partial solutions (i.e., initial planning with a low degree of detail) are given their rightful place, early planning becomes meaningful. This planning style provides for planning in greater detail at the appropriate stage of the project.
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A note of caution should be added: Splitting decisions may impair the consistency of a plan (itself a system of integrated decisions), causing confusion and leading to later possible overlooking of details.
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The level of detail should, therefore, be considered on merit. It is advisable to work to a level commensurate with the project's degree of certainty. If uncertainty is low either because the technology is well-established by past experience, or because the project objectives are not problematical and environmental conditions are stable -- the plan should provide a correspondingly higher degree of detail. (The relationship between the time horizon and the degree of detail, and ways to maintain the consistency of the plan, are illuminated by a new typology of project plans presented later.)
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Absorbing Uncertainty

The final step in the DIDA approach is to help the planner absorb uncertainty by facilitating flexible responses to future changes. By increasing the flexibility in the content of the decisions (e.g., incorporating redundancy and duplicating resources), the planner allows for unexpected contingencies.
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One example of this flexibility is seen in the erection of a building skeleton. For identical work packages (e.g., successive floors in a high-rise building), it is usually beneficial to select a uniform pace of progress for the basic skeleton activities (e.g., form work, bricklaying, and concrete placing). This can be achieved by adjusting crew sizes. In order to overcome uncertainty, time buffers can be added between activities to avoid an overly rigid schedule.
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Flexible planning that allows for various contingencies is expensive. In essence, it calls for a deliberate, careful, and confined slackening of resources. However, when done properly, flexible planning reduces actual incurred cost. As an illustration, the benefit of the additional time buffers in the above example lies not only in reducing the time required for planning and re-planning but also, more importantly, in absorbing many unexpected delays (which might be caused by a single trade), without altering the timetable for the entire work force. Budgetary contingency does not change the production process. Flexible planning does. That's why it can lower project costs.
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Diagnosis

The diagnostic activity, the first step in the DIDA approach, is part of charting the planning process [27]. It focuses on the methodology of planning and on ways to cope with uncertainty. Analysis of the project's unique environment and its technological and organizational aspects is carried out prior to the launch of, and periodically throughout, the project. The diagnosis is intended to find the correct balance between: (I) information-gathering efforts: too much will be too expensive and possibly too late for use, while too little will lead to baseless decisions; (2) splitting and deferring decisions: too late will not be useful, while too early will produce unfounded decisions; and (3) absorbing uncertainty: overly-flexible decisions will lead to undue expense, while overly-rigid ones will be vulnerable to frequent changes and their attendant expenses.
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Examining DIDA with regard to the decision-making process shows that each step is associated with a different aspect of decision-making: ..
 TYPOLOGY OF PROJECT PLANS

Types of Plans

A plan can be viewed as an attempt to model reality. The act of planning is an attempt to create maps for the future that capture the essential ingredients and dynamics of achieving goals and objectives. The process of planning is characterized by a series of interrelated decisions, while the documented results are referred to as "plans." In this regard we shall analyze the second stage of DIDA, that of deferring and splitting declsions .
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The typology presented in Table I describes three basic types of plans categorized by their purposes. They can be identified and grouped into action plans, decision guides, and forecasts, ranging from process-oriented project decisions (first category) to preliminary action models (second category) to final, product-oriented plans (third category).

Action plan
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In an action plan, an implementor converts a model into reality. This plan is characterized by its short time horizon, typically less than one month, and by its very high level of detail. Action plans are intended to provide the basis for a commitment to implement activities. They result in direct assignment of work to be done, including decisions about who will do what, when, and how. Action plans are typically used by their preparers (e.g., the site managers) and/or the preparers' subordinates. One example of an action plan is a foreman's weekly work schedule [30].
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Decision guides

These are models used for creating expanded and more-detailed plans, and they eventually result in action plans. Decision guides involve only a moderate degree of detail and typically have a time frame of one to six months. They can be thought of as preparation and study for action plans, and they ensure the continuity and consistency of decisions throughout the project's implementation phase.
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An important additional feature of the decision guide is that it offers a global--rather than local--perspective. The superintendent who prepares a decision guide (for example, a rolling three-month plan) for use by five subordinate general foremen takes into account the scarcity of shared resources (e.g., a crane) which would otherwise not be part of the individual general foreman's action plan.
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Decision guides, primarily used by subordinates of the preparer, provide some or all of the following: (I) criteria for their later decisions (i.e., intermediate objectives and constraints); (2) a methodology for finding solutions to problems at their respective levels (e.g., lower management must follow given procedures in order to address their own detailed decisions); and (3) a constraining framework for the possible alternatives.
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The decision guide is also used as an outline and basis for coordination by managers of peer units, both inside the organization (e.g., purchasing and plant managers) and outside (e.g., subcontractors, suppliers). Whether used as a guide or as an outline, the preparer should expect -- and even encourage -- modifications of the plan based on feedback from users.
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In more stable organizational environments the guidelines are provided by standing organizational policies. Examples of the various evolutionary stages of decision guides are found in the engineering design profession (e.g., conceptual, preliminary, and detailed designs). The unique feature of decision guides in construction planning is the need to make and revise them throughout the life of the project.
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While both action plans and decision guides document decisions with limited time horizons, it is recommended that the planning process leading up to these documents consider a long, or even a very long, period of time. Plans should cover a limited time horizon, but planning should not; planning should start very early and encompass a long time horizon. One should always be peering into the long-term future while making concrete action plans and decision guides for the near-term. Studying long-term implica- tions, opportunities, changes of assumptions, objectives, and constraints -- while not requiring full documentation in a plan -- may exact rigorous analysis and cause major strategic decisions and new directions.
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Forecast

Forecasting involves estimating project performance at specified future milestones. It is essentially an information process based primarily on past performance, serving the needs of the preparer and upper management. Its time horizon stretches one or more years into the future (to the end of the project) and includes few details. A forecast initially determines objectives and is used later to evaluate and control project performance. It serves as a basis for the assumptions needed for decision-making and upper-management planning, (e.g., based on the forecast, the owner may set or revise the tenant occupancy schedule). "Project CPM" and "PERT charts" are common forms for these plans.
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A forecast is not really a plan of documented decisions, even though it is based on high management directives (i.e., objectives and sub-objectives as milestones). Currently, a forecast is often the only formal planning document serving as a "master plan" or "project plan," while the fact that it is only an estimate is overlooked [27l [28]. Since forecasts are considered to be plans, the authors will use the term here; they qualify it, however, by adding the modifier "initial."
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We stress that an early start of the decision-making process gives management greater influence (e.g., on project cost) in two respects:
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  1. a decision guide permits an early study of the general setting and the specific elements, and
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  2. a forecast provides managers and/or planners with early knowledge of where to expect problems and holdups. An early start gives the planner a chance first to influence upcoming developments early and, second, to direct attention to areas requiring early intervention (i.e., to set up priority listings for decision-making).
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Multiple Time Horizons

It would be a mistake to assume that the three plans are distinguishable only by a technical, hierarchical order or planning horizon, and that they are easily expanded downward or summarized upward. This is not so. The plans differ greatly and none of them lends itself to extrapolation, particularly not the decision guides.
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Every project plan should contain all three of the distinct "sub-plans" discussed above: action plans for the short-term, decision guides for the medium- term, and forecasts for the long term. The three sub-plans together will enable us to do continuous mixed scanning, to identify broad fundamental choices and to make incremental decisions. This method is highly compatible with the recommendations of Etzioni in the Harvard Business Review [11].
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While many construction organizations develop and maintain plans with different time horizons and levels of detail, neither the planning process nor the resultant plans demonstrate the differences of purpose, focus and product shown in Table 1. The three types in Table 1 represent the result of a different planning approach and process.
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 WHY THE ACCEPTED GROUND RULES ARE FAULTY

Clearly, the ten ground rules outlined in the first section of this article, upon which construction has relied in classroom and in practice, require closer critical evaluation, as in varying degrees they fall short of addressing the real issues and problems faced by planners. As a system, the current paradigm glosses over vital items and fails altogether in providing guidance for planning. It has led construction planners to produce ineffective and partly useless plans. Below, the ten points are presented again, this time with elaboration on critical elements shown in bold typeface.
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  1. Construction plans should be prepared before the onset of construction, and as early as possible.
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  2. A plan's time horizon should be maximal and the plan itself should be comprehensive, detailed and complete.
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Plans, the time horizon they cover, the timing of their preparation, and the degree of detail involved, should depend on and reflect:
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  • The type of plan intended,
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  • The organizational level it is designed to serve, and
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  • The degree of uncertainty involved or the size of the "information gap" the planner faces.
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Planning should start early, but should not be completed in full detail prior to construction. Completing the plan is an iterative process that unfolds throughout construction. ..
Planning is inherently active, not passive. Unlike the design engineer who is handed most of the necessary information, the planner is not a passive recipient. The planner relies little on the information provided, but plays a proactive, dynamic role in the information-gathering process -- collecting, trading, and verifying information, and tailoring information-gathering tools and sources to the project's specific needs. ..
In addition to developing the plans mentioned, the planner must consider issues of construction technology (constructability), organizational structure, staffing, contractual strategies, work methods, and quality and safety systems. Emphasis should be shifted from preparing product-oriented plans for control (mainly scheduling for forecasting) to making process-oriented plans (mainly logistics, production means, and work methods for implementation) [31]. ..
The separation between planners and plan implementors is always fraught with difficulty [28] [29l. Often when planning and doing are separated, "planning is given the kiss of death" [ 1 ] . Under uncertain conditions, such as those common at the construction site, plans must be updated frequently. This demands speedy communication between, first, the source of the changes in the plan (the site); second, the locus of decision-making (the planning department); and third, the implementation arena (again, the site). With its ongoing operations the site cannot normally wait for this process, even when it is expedited; placing the planner on site may help. Even when planners are located on-site, however, active participation by the site manager is essential in crucial stages of the planning process [29]. It is a fallacy to assume that a manager can approve plans comprising hundreds of interrelated decisions if the plans were prepared by a staff specialist without the manager's active, significant involvement.
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Sophisticated methods are helpful mainly in the processing of information. Uncertainty, however, makes planning difficult both at the information-gathering stage and at the point of communicating the plans' contents in usable form. Situations of high uncertainty demand uncomplicated, flexible planning organization and methods. ..
An organized body such as a construction company must, of course, adopt formal procedures, but the "one best way" approach to problem-solving should be avoided. A situational analysis approach should be adopted that tailors the problem-solving method to the particular situation at hand [22]. The diagnosis section of the DIDA approach addresses precisely this issue. ..
The usefulness of statistical models in forecasting is limited to conditions where available data describe the stochastic behavior of the variables involved, and only if the future can be reasonably deduced from the past. The constantly-changing information and dynamic environment of most construction projects, especially with project objectives in flux, calls into question the value of such models in making and integrating numerous highly interrelated decisions. ..
Under the typically uncertain conditions prevalent at most construction sites, planning is not a one-shot operation performed prior to the beginning of construction. Instead, planning is an ongoing effort that continues throughout the life of the project. As project uncertainty in- creases, control is less a "governor" of execution (ensuring that implementation conforms to plans), and more a data collection and analysis function [26]. ..
"Capacious planning" assumes predictability of the future. "Good planning" assumes that the future is not predictable. Since models and software are designed for revisions, and paper accommodates them, planners often see updating as one of their primary purposes. But site management in real life situations finds it difficult to cope with frequent changes in the master plan. By adapting the plan's time horizons, degree of detail, and frequency of revisions both to prevailing uncertainty and to management level, effective planning and comntrol may be realized. Thus, updating means preparing a detailed short-term plan based on new information gathered. The action plan is the one that should be updated frequently.
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Advanced means may be an asset for redistributing plans, but it is unlikely that anything less than site management's real involvement in re-planning will bring about a genuine attempt to adhere to the revisions. It is worth reitering that when uncertainty is high, communications should be as speedy as possible and most of the planning must be done on-site. ..
The current problems in planning are beyond the responsibility of the managers alone. The problems lie in the qualification, orientation, and motivation of all parties involved. This holds true throughout the life cycle of planning -- beginning with research and development of planning techniques by academics and system analysts, to application of these techniques by engineers, and lastly, to utilization of the plans by managers [27] .
..
Training in techniques is only one factor affecting the ability of managers to plan effectively. Emphasis should be shifted from training managers in techniques (and certainly not in currently recommended techniques), but rather to addressing the numerous issues presented in this article. Mintzberg castigates U.S. business schools' overemphasis on techniques. He demonstrates, with research findings by professors of Harvard Business School, and others, that business schools were partly responsible for the current misguided obsession with technical analysis [38l. No correlation was found between grades at Harvard Business School and subsequent success in management jobs.
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 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

In the last few years, the ideas expressed here have been brought before two different groups. First are various assemblies of people charged with "doing" in the world of action, e.g., managers attending construction companies' in-house seminars. Second are professors and consultants attending academic gatherings at a number of European and American universities. The reactions of the two groups differed sharply.
..
Practical people, largely experienced construction project managers either in forums sponsored by the Construction Industry Institute and in-house seminars or those who have reviewed drafts of this article (and are acknowledged at the end of the article) received the ideas enthusiastically. Some already operate on this basis, at least partly if not fully. Others have asked to incorporate the recommendations into company practices and training sessions. Generally they clamor for more specificity in this direction. In the words of one project manager who expresses the thoughts of many: "Now, at last, I feel I have useful working principles at my disposal which will protect me from an overdose of management science techniques on the one hand, and from relying too much on my intuitive gut feeling on the other. What we need now are a large number of examples of problems and good solutions taken from real life situations from which more detailed procedures could be developed." Even more encouraging are the positive reports from managers (some mentioned in the acknowledgment) actively employing the DIDA process and the typology of plans.
..
The response from academicians was quite the opposite. Most rejected the ideas out of hand, perhaps feeling that hallowed (if unspoken) principles are in jeopardy. This corresponds closely to what Thomas Kuhn ll9] [20] had to say (primarily about academicians from the exact sciences): The scientific communi- ty is held together by bonds and commitments, the most fundamental of these being the bonds which concern the world view scientists share and which underwrites their approach to scientific enquiry (paraphrased).
..
In recent years, paradigms quite different from those long-established at the universities have been introduced by Kanter [117], Pascale [42], and Senge [46]. All three are members of reputable establishments (Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively). Unlike their colleagues, these academicians have worked closely with practitioners. Hopefully, the discipline of construction management will follow a similar process.
..
Clearly, much of the current methodology does not measure up to reality, because some rules were conceived in error and because important aspects -- particularly uncertainty -- were given insufficient weight. In this article the authors point to new concepts as a basis for future work on development of a comprehensive system to cope with construction planning under uncertain conditions. The research and academic communities have a responsibility to clarify, define, and express rules for effective project planning under conditions of uncertainty. They owe the industry an attempt at developing rules that mirror the successful experience of the practitioner. Schon wrote: "... competent practitioners usu- ally know more than they can say.... They know about coping intuitively with uncertainty and effective project planning" [45]. The practitioners must, in collaboration with the research and academic communities, reflect on their work to promote the development of a realistic theory of planning that will contribute to more effective execution of construction projects.
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 SUMMARY

As a group, the ten commonly accepted ground rules for construction planning:
  1. Are simple to understand--they make for a compact orderly theory; and
    ..
  2. Are convenient as a basis for planning--the planning process is relatively simple if followed;

    But...
    ..
  3. They result in plans which are impossible to implement ment -- they ignore the issues of turbulence and uncertainty that are inherent characteristics of the industry.
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The recommended DIDA approach to the project planning process and the typology of plans:
  1. Is more difficult to understand--it is not neat and straighfforward; and
    ..
  2. It makes planning more difficult--the planning process involves more judgment and collaboration;

    But...
    ..
  3. It results in plans which are more implementable -- the planning process produces models which reflect the real, imperfect world.
..
That planning problems can be eliminated altogether is wishful thinking. Preparing and implementing operational plans entails many difficulties, and explanations for the final outcome should be tempered with moderation. For planning to become effective, methods should be changed (e.g., gathering and communicating of information), policies modified (e.g., roles of planning and control), assumptions adjusted (e.g., attitudes toward uncertainty), and the overll philosophy and underlying paradigm of project management re-examined.
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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The nature of the research reported here requires verification by leaders in the field. The following persons have provided vital feedback and assistance:
..
Glenn Ballard - Ballard Management Services

Len Harris - Brown & Root Braun

Dr. Richard Tucker; Chuck McGinnis - Construction Industry Institute
..
H.R. Benton; Pete Richmond - E.I. duPont de Nemours

Steve Braunstein; Neil L. MacFarlane;
Ed McGuire; Edward Wynant -
Exxon Research and EngineeringAlvin Burkhart - Hensel-Phelps

Theodore J. Kratt - J.A. Jones Construction Co.
..
James R. Carroll; Dr. James M. Neil - Morrison-Knudsen

Hasan Hammami - Procter & Gamble

C.H. Oglesby; Henry Parker - Stanford University

Donald T. Killilea - Stone and Webster Engineering
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Lauri Koskela - Technical Research Center of Finland

Dr. George Stukhart - Texas A&M University

Vally N. Kovary - The International Foundation Center
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Dr. John Borcherding - University of Texas


..
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  3. Argyris, C.1982. Reasoning, Lea~ning and Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

  4. Business Roundtable. 1983a. More Construction for the Money. Summary Report of the Construction Industry Cost Effectiveness Project. The Business Roundtable. New York.
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  6. Clark, F.D. and Lorenzoni, A.B. 1978. Applied Cost and Engineering. New York: Marcel Dekker.
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 AUTHORS

Alexander Lauler is a faculty member in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He is also head of the Department of Construction and Economics at the National Building Research Institute. Dr. Laufer obtained his Ph.D. in construction engineering and management at the University of Texas, following which he taught at Texas A&M University. He also spent a year at North Carolina State University as a visiting associate professor.
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Gregory A. Howell received his B.S.C.E. and M.S.C.E. in construction management from Stanford University. He is a registered Professional Civil Engineer in California, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Project Management Institute. He is an associate professor in civil engineer- ing at the University of New Mexico, where he was honored with the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 1991.