4D Planning Workshops- The bread and butter of 4D planning
‘A picture says a thousands words’ is a phrase we hear weekly when talking to different project teams, and that’s people first thought at 4D, is that it’s some nice fancy pictures. It is, it’s the final moment after all the build, review, change, and interrogation of that programme, that you effectively press print on the 50,000-word essay you have spent hours working on. Same argument for us, why spend hours building a programme and a model, that no one uses and it becomes a nice visual of how we would have built the project . . what a missed opportunity!!
At Validity our bread and butter, and where we see the true value of 4D planning, is through validation of as much site information as possible and integrating as many people into the process as possible. The true value is having more eyes on the visual, offering their opinion, suggestions and years of experience to derisk the potential problems and realise the opportunities that have been staring everyone in the eye, but not been seen until everyone sees a picture that makes it obvious. This is where 4D planning workshops replace your programme review meetings, become more fun and engaging than a ‘war room’ scenarios, and add more collaboration and structure to ‘Digital Rehearsals’.
A typical 4D planning workshop has to start with a bit of fun to kickstart things, and for us to get a gauge on where each person’s knowledge is at about the project. This would normally involve doing a visual click through week by week for a period, closing out all the key moving parts to each stage of work and then reviewing against all follow on activities and its logistics, ensuring things are coordinated in time. Team members are engaged throughout, wanting to get up to point at things on the screen, asking if things are right, actually engaging with a Gantt chart programme without even realising, collaborating and integrating themselves in the programme, through a visual aid; and actually, understanding complex logic and flow. To finish, we would check in with each team member on what they have gained, and the attendees are usually shocked by how much their knowledge of the whole project (not just their packages), has improved throughout.
At Validity these workshops become the safe space, for everyone to ask the ‘stupid questions’ which end up being great questions, with a real nugget of opportunity that gets people thinking differently. Team members understand what their other team members are doing and looking after. When each subcontractor needs to get into where at what point, and how the project will look, but most important of all; it gets all the teams heads up, looking ahead, weeks ahead, and that ‘picture’ has stayed with them, so they know exactly how the project will look. They know where temporary works is going to be at, what plant will be on site, and how they will be access and feeding the job.
Why spend all the time and money building a programme that ‘works’ on paper, but no one understand the links, logic, critical path, and there are huge risks and opportunities missed? 4D Planning and workshops are the golden bullet, but they will definitely help build a smoother, lower stress, more collaborative and confident delivery.
Validity wants to build your project but let’s workshop it first. Get in touch today!
