QUANTIFYING IMPACTS OF LAST PLANNER IMPLEMENTATION IN INDUSTRIAL MINING PROJECTS

Abstract

Over the years an increasing number of companies have implemented the Last Planner System (LPS) and several research efforts have provided evidence of its impact on performance in construction projects. However, very scarce evidence exists of the impacts in industrial mining projects. These projects are generally schedule driven with tight schedules, complex and diverse in construction challenges, frequent scope changes, high logistic complexity and very high economic impact. These characteristics seem to be an obstacle to a sustained implementation of the LPS in this type of projects.
This paper reports on research focused on industrial mining projects, in an effort to quantify the impacts of the LPS implementation on several aspects of project performance. Over a period of two years, the authors investigated the implementation of the LPS and its impacts in several projects of a single company, comparing projects with and without implementation and assessing the impacts of implementation with statistical data obtained from the projects before and after implementation.
Statistical data from three projects with LPS implementation was used to explore quantitative impacts. The research confirmed correlations, explored in previous studies, between LPS planning reliability measure, Percent of Plan Completed (PPC), with performance measures used in traditional project management practices such as Schedule Performance Index (SPI) and Cost Performance Index (CPI). All the projects with LPS implementation finished on schedule and with no accidents. These projects reached company objectives and obtained an increase in profit margins compared with company historic performance. Client satisfaction was also studied and measured showing an important increase when projects with LPS implementation were compared with projects without implementation.