Plan the week so your crew actually follows it

What is a weekly site plan?

A weekly site plan is a short list of the specific tasks a crew will complete in the coming week, drawn from the master schedule and made concrete enough to act on Monday. It names what gets done, by which trade, in what order, and what each task needs to start. Unlike the master plan, which thinks in months, the weekly plan thinks in days and people. It is small on purpose, because a plan a foreman can hold in his head and check against reality is a plan that gets followed. SiteBoard lets you slice one week out of the full schedule without losing the link back to the whole job.

Match the plan to the crew you have

A week fails fast when the plan assumes more people than show up. Before committing the week, count the bodies you actually have, not the ones on the org chart. Two masons out sick changes what block work is realistic; a borrowed crew next door changes it back. Good weekly planning starts from real capacity and fills it, rather than starting from the wish list and discovering the shortfall on Wednesday. When you size the week to the crew on hand, the plan stays believable, and a believable plan is one the team treats as a commitment rather than a suggestion they quietly ignore.

Leave room for the unplanned

No week on a real site runs exactly as drawn. Rain arrives, an inspector reschedules, a delivery shows up half-complete, a key worker has a family emergency. A weekly plan packed to one hundred percent has no way to absorb any of this, so the first surprise breaks it and the crew stops trusting it. Plan to roughly eighty or ninety percent of capacity and keep a short list of useful catch-up tasks that need no dependencies, snagging, cleanup, prep for next week. Then a lost morning becomes a swap, not a setback, and the week still ends where you promised it would.

A worked example: Somchai's week

Imagine foreman Somchai planning a week on a small house build. Monday and Tuesday, plaster the two bedrooms; Wednesday, the electrician returns for second-fix while plaster cures; Thursday and Friday, tile the bathroom. He checks first that the tiles and adhesive are on site, which they are, and that the electrician confirmed Wednesday, which he did. Rain hits Tuesday afternoon, but plaster is interior work, so nothing stops. Because he left Friday afternoon loose, the half-day lost to a late grout delivery slides into that gap. The week closes on plan, not because nothing went wrong, but because the plan expected something would.

Make the plan visible to everyone

A weekly plan locked in the foreman's notebook only works while he is standing on site. The moment he leaves for another job, the crew is guessing again. A plan everyone can see, on the wall, on a phone, in a shared link, keeps working when he is not there. Subcontractors can check what is expected of them on Thursday without a phone call; the owner can see the week without asking. SiteBoard's shared view is built for this, giving each person the same picture of the week so the plan lives in one place instead of being retold, slightly differently, to everyone who asks.

Why weekly planning matters

The master Gantt is the strategy; the weekly plan is the execution. A 6-month project that is not broken into weekly commitments tends to drift — everyone is busy, but the work that actually needs to move this week does not always move. A deliberate weekly planning habit is what separates projects that finish on time from projects that are always "almost there."

Zoom in from the master plan

The full Gantt is for you. The crew needs this week. Filter the timeline to the next seven days so the foreman sees only the tasks that are live now — not a wall of bars stretching to handover. When the list is short and specific, it is actionable. When it is everything, nothing is urgent.

Assign and sequence clearly

Every task this week needs an owner and an order. When dependencies are set, the plan tells the crew what unblocks what, so nobody stands idle waiting on a pour that has not happened. Name names: not "brickwork team" but "Khun Somchai's crew, third floor north wall." Ambiguous ownership means the task belongs to everyone and therefore to no one.

Check materials before the week starts

Half of all on-site delays are materials that are not there when the crew is ready for them. On Friday afternoon, cross-check this week's tasks against your stock. If rebar delivery is confirmed for Tuesday but the footing pour is scheduled for Monday, the sequence is wrong. Fix it now, not at 7 am Monday when the crew is standing there.

The Monday morning briefing

Ten minutes at the start of Monday with the foreman and subcontractors. Walk through this week's tasks in order. Confirm who is doing what, flag any material or access issues, and agree on the handoff points between trades. This is not a long meeting — it is a sync. If the plan is clear, the conversation is fast.

Review on Friday, adjust for Monday

Pull up plan vs actual at the end of the week. Slide unfinished work forward, rebalance the crew, and the next week starts from reality instead of wishful thinking. If a task is 70 % done, do not leave it open-ended — assign a specific completion target for Monday. "Finish block work, north wall, by Tuesday noon" is a commitment; "continue block work" is noise.

When the week goes off plan

It will. Rain, material delays, crew absences — the site is not a factory. When something shifts, update the plan immediately, not at the end of the week. A plan that reflects reality as it changes is useful; a plan that is patched up on Friday night is archaeology. The crew should see the updated tasks before they start, not after.

The habit that compounds

Weekly planning is boring the first time you do it and automatic by the fourth. After a few months, your site rhythm becomes predictable enough that owners stop asking "how are things going?" because they already know. That predictability is what earns the reputation that brings the next job.