Four Week Look-Aheads

Ardent employs four week look-ahead plans to enable successful medium-term planning. The four week look-ahead plans examine work at a level of detail generally not achievable in the integrated electronic schedule.

Four week look-ahead plans require foremen and senior craft supervisors to analyze and prepare for the work of the coming four weeks. Four week look-ahead plans are prompted by the overall electronic CPM schedule but are completed in the field by field supervisors and are filled out by hand.

In producing his or her four week look-ahead, each supervisor must consider the tools, materials, craft, equipment, information and safety resources required to complete the work during the four weeks looking ahead.

The supervisor must include any foreseeable constraints to getting the work accomplished in the four week window, whether it be Ardent controlled constraints, or more importantly, outside constraints. The four week look-ahead exercise is intended to enable each craft supervisor to plan the work and then work the plan.

While project dynamics rarely allow supervisors to work the plan precisely as planned, the four week look-ahead provides assurance that field supervisors have examined the work, prepared for its execution, and have received all necessary materials, information and safety items well in advance of commencing the work.