The Significance of Work Preparation Planning for A Predictable Execution

Paper i proceeding, 2024

This research investigates the role of work preparation planning in enhancing cross-disciplinary
communication and collaboration within construction projects, focusing on two
case studies involving the assembly of rooftops. The design documentation in construction
projects has increased and become more detailed with the increasing complexity of
construction sites and projects. Thus, setting clear objectives to achieve a shared information
structure with a joint project language are increasingly important to manage construction
projects. In Sweden, there is an industry wide developed structure for work-preparation
planning. This has resulted in standardised work preparation tasks for most of the general
activities found during construction. These documents are not regularly applied to routine
tasks, and detailed planning is typically reserved for new or particularly risky activities.
However, there is a gap between the detailing of the construction documents and the work
planning. The hypothesis of this paper is that a shared breakdown structure between
disciplines and documents increases traceability and predictability regarding work preparation
planning and execution. This is studied through two cases of rooftop assemblies. These cases
were documented through semi-structured interviews and a thorough analysis of the project
documentation of the planning and execution phases. The findings show disconnection
between idealized work preparation plans and their practical execution. The cases differed in
how they used the breakdown structures. Only one of the cases used the shared breakdown
structure to further detail the rooftop assemblies. This created an interoperability between
costing, schedule and documentation that was not seen and could not be reproduced in the
other case. This also enabled a traceability with regards to costs and the schedule and helped
to build a predictability in the planning of future iterations of the roof assemblies. Thus, a
systematically classified information structure promises to bridge the gap between theoretical
planning and on-site execution.