From vision to reality: Construction planning best practices for 2024

In the construction industry, project planning helps the management and planning team maximize resource allocation, reduce risks and ensure timely completion of projects. Once documented, it provides a clear outline for your internal project team, your external subcontractors and contacts and your client to refer to at any given phase of a construction timeline.

To ensure you don’t miss a step in the preconstruction planning process, it’s important to understand the work that goes into the creation of a construction project plan, what’s needed and who should be involved.

Here’s a comprehensive guide explaining everything you need to know about construction project planning.

What is construction project planning?

Construction project planning is the process of outlining a project throughout its entire lifecycle. This includes key phases of project ideation, planning, execution and closeout. 

The process includes planning, coordination, budgeting and overall monitoring through to completion. Although a construction project plan can require input from many different roles throughout a construction company, a construction project manager is typically responsible for the plan management from beginning to end.

The 5 steps of construction planning

There are five main steps in creating a successful construction plan.

Step 1: Project initiation

Project initiation begins after a homebuyer has contractually agreed to request project services from a construction company. From there, a project manager works to figure out the details that will impact the project scope.

Some examples may include conversations with the homebuyer to identify must-have design or floorplan requests, and initial budgets as well as project initiation documents. During this step, the project manager may also bring in other team members, like an architect and contractor, to help solidify project deliverables.

Step 2: Project planning

Using the findings of project initiation, the management team then gets to work on the details of mapping out the plan. This step involves everything remaining in the pre-construction phase, including:

• Delivering an accurate estimate that both wins you the job and ensures the project is profitable
• Signing off on the construction budget
• Determining the construction schedule
• Coordinating construction activities and contracts with subs
• Securing permits or entitlements
• Securing labor, materials and supplies

Step 3: Project execution

Once the plan has been finalized, the physical construction phase of a project can begin. This involves site preparation, framing and building, plumbing and electrical, landscaping and more.

The execution step relies on the details of the project plan to determine workflows, subcontractor schedules, equipment rentals and the timeline of bringing labor and resources to a job site. Success at this step is determinant on how well you planned ahead.

Step 4: Project progress monitoring

Although project progress monitoring is the fourth step in construction planning, it really happens at the same time as project execution.

In this step, the management team keeps a close eye on the real-time status of a project, identifying and resolving roadblocks. In some cases, project schedules need to shift based on supply chain delays or weather conditions. Budgets may need to be adjusted too, based on change order requests.

Your key to success is to stay in constant communication with everyone involved in the construction process, including general contractors and homebuyers, to minimize overruns and delays.

Step 5: Project closing and evaluation

During project closing and evaluation, a project manager reviews the construction plan to ensure everything has been completed based on the agreements of the contract.

While this may seem like a simple review process, it requires deep oversight from the project manager before a home can transfer ownership to the client.

Finishing the physical closeout process of a build includes client walkthroughs, adjustments and inspections. It also involves the contractual and financial closeout process of a build. Project managers must pay subs, close project accounts with suppliers, finalize the budget and collect final payments from the client.

Now that you’ve identified how a construction plan is made, you’ll need to identify who needs to be involved and what they’ll need to create a successful plan.

What is needed for a construction plan

While there are nuances and details involved in a construction planning process, there are five bare essentials you’ll need to create the framework of a plan:

• A signed contract by the customer and the company 
• A scope of work detailing the design, floorplan, landscaping and other agreements
• An estimated client budget to inform your construction budget
• A communication plan between planners, subs, contractors and homebuyers
• A working deadline

Who needs to be involved in the construction planning process?

Although the responsibility of a construction plan belongs to a project manager, there isare a short list of project stakeholders who are involved in strategizing and finalizing the details of the plan. Depending on the size of your construction company, some of these roles may be combined.

• Clients/homebuyers
• Architects
• Engineers
• Designers
• Contractors
• Project managers
• Cost estimators

Construction planning best practices

There are some key things to keep in mind to ensure a construction plan supports a build that’s completed on budget, on time and to the homebuyer’s satisfaction.

1. Set realistic timeframes

The potential for overruns and delays increases if a project timeline is unrealistic. It’s important to factor in potential issues that may come up to minimize the amount of timeline shifts or change orders needed to keep a project going. Factor in supply chain trends, rates of employee turnover, especially with construction crew members and the timelines of other projects to get a realistic idea of what’s doable by your construction team.

This isn’t a step a project manager has to do all on their own, either. Use resources at your disposal to help inform these decisions. Expert market research and economist insights, supplier relationships and group purchasing organizations can all help keep you informed on the latest trends that may impact your timeline.

2. Open channels of communication

Throughout a build, it’s critical to keep primary stakeholders in the loop.

For example, if there’s a change in the appliances requested by the homebuyer, you don’t want your contractor to find out about it three days after it’s already been installed.

Ensure you have a strong communication system in place. A customer portal is a great way to keep customers involved in the building process while ensuring quick responses to decisions that need to be made or change orders that need to be signed. A defined internal communication process ensures your contractors and subcontractors stay on top of notifications and updates using task tracking and reporting.

3. Keep daily logs

Daily logs are important both in executing and monitoring the progress of a construction plan. Daily logs act like journal entries, where the construction management team can keep those at the job site updated on what needs to happen that day, weather conditions and changes in specific tasks. This kind of feature is also helpful for project managers to stay in the know on the progress of a homeowner’s account, especially when they might be overseeing more than one build at a time.

Additionally, daily logs provide a detailed report of what work has been completed. This can help keep a project manager up-to-speed on work that’s in progress, without requiring them to be at a construction

4. Be able to adjust when needed

Even with the best efforts, builds rarely go exactly to plan. There are too many outside variables to accurately predict a build from day one of project initiation.

By constantly monitoring project objectives, you can better identify areas of risk and avoid rework. Still, there will be times when a bigger direction change is needed.

That’s why it’s important to stay flexible and have the right resources at your disposal to be able to adjust when a shipping delay, or a client change request, or permit delay derails the timeline.

Construction project planning with Buildertrend

There are a lot of moving pieces and people who need to be involved in a construction plan. Buildertrend simplifies the project management process by bringing together the top features needed to plan, execute and review a plan through to completion.

It offers the best in project planning tools, communication and messaging features and project review reports – all in one easy to use solution.

Not a Buildertrend user? Schedule a demo to learn how Buildertrend can support the construction planning process for your next project.

Construction project planning FAQs

Get answers to the most common construction project planning questions.