Understanding Percent Plan Complete (PPC)

Improving the success rate of your short term plans

Making sure short terms plans are carried out with as few delays as possible is essential to keeping your project on track. To do that effectively, you need a way of measuring the success rate of your plans and discovering potential issues.

We’ve outlined one of the most widely adopted methods of quantifying, analysing, and improving the success rate of short term plans. Percent Plan Complete.

1. What is Percent Plan Complete (PPC)
2. How to work out Percent Plan Complete
3. Getting the most out of Percent Plan Complete 
4. Putting Percent Plan Complete into practice

What is Percent Plan Complete?

Percent Plan Complete is a construction management tool used to assess the performance of your short-term plans. This is calculated by dividing the number of successfully completed shifts or tasks by the number of planned shifts or tasks over a given period of time (usually a week). 

From that, you are able to gauge how smoothly your project is running on a day-to-day basis and identify potential areas of improvement.

The important thing to understand about PPC, is that the real benefits come from unearthing problems on-site and holes in your short-term plan.

By questioning ‘WHY’ shifts aren’t going to plan you’ll discover recurring reasons for delays that you can then take action on. Doing this on a regular basis will allow you to make frequent adjustments, prevent missing milestones, and ultimately help keep the master plan on schedule and budget.

PPC is also considered to be one of the core principles of lean construction management. So if you're working on a project that practices lean methodology, then it's something you should get familiar with. 

How to work out Percent Plan Complete

Like many other construction reports and metrics, the theory behind calculating Percent Plan Complete is really quite straightforward.

The Formula

Example

At the start of the week, you planned five shifts

Three shifts were successfully complete

Two were unsuccessful (due to plant failure)

3 / 5 = 0.6 x 100

PPC = 60%

This metric will start to give you some idea of how well organised your project is. If only 60% of the shifts you plan are successful then there are clearly some underlying issues that need to be addressed.

Every time a shift is unsuccessful you should be collating information about why the shift did not go to plan. The issues can then be resolved and your PPC score should improve.

Enjoying this article? You'll love The Ultimate Guide To Construction Reporting.

Getting the most out of Percent Plan Complete 

Remember, the real value of PPC comes from unearthing underlying issues and being able to respond to them before they cause major delays.

For the best output, you should aim to create an environment where operatives feel comfortable reporting failures. Doing this will allow you to identify recurring problems, carry out root cause analysis, and resolve deeper problems on the project.

When it comes to the math, you should not be aiming to hit 100% (because that would mean that the team aren’t pushing themselves). The goal is to strive for slow, incremental improvements over time; an initial target of 75-80% might be a good starting point.

You should also bear in mind that your target percentage may have to be reviewed and adjusted periodically. If you are constantly completing all of your planned tasks then it is likely that there is scope to achieve more. If the team is frequently struggling to keep up with the number of planned tasks then the team may be stretched too thin or the plans may be too ambitious.

Putting Percent Plan Complete into practice

Whilst the theory is simple, PPC has historically been a difficult and arduous task to carry out.

The first challenge is collating all of the information from site operatives and tradespeople. In the past, this has been a very manual task that requires team huddles and frequent follow-ups with various individuals (often via different mediums). Trying to manage this at scale can be difficult but the information gathered is incredibly valuable.

The second challenge is trying to collate and analyse all of the information once you’ve obtained it. Fortunately, the introduction of new tools and technology like Aphex and Power BI has made this process much easier.

However you decide to go about putting PPC into practice, the model is bound to vastly improve the productivity of your project.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about driving short term performance in construction, you should check out The Ultimate Guide To Construction Reporting.