Key Indicators for Linguistic Action Perspective in the Last Planner® System

Abstract

Since 2001, a link has been established between the Last Planner® System (LPS) and Linguistic Action Perspective (LAP). However, to date, it has not been studied in sufficient depth. This research developed a system of indicators to measure and control the management of commitments, through the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, and thus contribute to the development of the social dimension of sustainability that is often neglected in construction management research. The main contributions of this paper are a proposal of five main activities to apply the DSR method, a checklist to analyze the engagement of meeting participants, a notebook for last planners, delve into the variations that can occur to the basic movements of LAP, and the creation of a system of indicators hence updating the Percent Plan Complete (PPC) with a reliability indicator. The main limitation of this research is that the system was only validated in two South American countries that implemented LPS. In future studies, we propose to apply case studies in weekly planning meetings in other industries worldwide and to determine the recommended values to improve communication and achieve the proper implementation of LAP with LPS and without LPS.

Results of Key Indicators From Linguistic Action Perspective in Pandemic: Case Study

“…Recently and as part of a pandemic labour reactivation strategy, the company began to make use of the "Engagement" indicators proposed by Salazar et al (2020), in order to control and improve interpersonal relationships at work and engagement during weekly work planning meetings.…”

“…When reviewing the Web of Science database, the authors found four articles regarding "Linguistic Action Perspective" or "Language Action" in construction projects (Isatto et al 2015;Salazar et al 2020;Viana et al 2017;Zegarra and Alarcon 2017). However, from these studies, including the countless IGLC publications (Howell et al 2004;Long and Arroyo 2018;Viana et al 2011;Zegarra and Alarcón 2013), there is only one proposal for LAP indicators (Salazar et al 2018(Salazar et al , 2019(Salazar et al , 2020, but it does not explain the relationship between how these commitments are established and the outcome. In addition, only partial results of the relationship between some LAP indicators, Percentage Plan Completed (PPC) and Social Networks are shown in the publication of Retamal et al (2020).…”

“…According to the above, we found a shortage of studies detailing how LPS directly affects constructions projects, since most authors propose indicators and they show the results, but do not explain how they achieved those results. Adding the particular situation we are currently living with the pandemic, we consider it essential to focus on interpersonal relationships at work, engagement and labour productivity, measuring and controlling the indicators proposed by Salazar et al (2020) about LAP as a complement to LPS. This due to the fact that the greatest amount of effort has been made in reducing waste from tangible materials, neglecting waste from intangible resources and human behavior (Hamzeh et al 2019).…”

“…For all of the above, our purpose is to measure and analyze key LAP indicators to review commitment management at weekly LPS meeting during the pandemic (virtual and face-to-face meetings), particularly the "Engagement" indicators proposed by Salazar et al (2020). For this reason, we focus our study especially in the first two stages from the network or chain of commitments: preparation of a request, and negotiation and agreements.…”

“…LAP is based on four stages, which form the network of commitments: 1) preparation of a request; 2) negotiation and agreements; 3) execution and declaration of compliance; and 4) acceptance and declaration of satisfaction (Salazar et al 2018). To properly measure and control commitment management, Salazar et al (2020) propose a LAP Indicator System, through the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology.…”