Lookahead planning: overview of its application in construction

Abstract Medium-term planning (MTP) is one of the hierarchical levels of the Last Planner System of production control, and constitutes an essential step to assure that plans defined at the long-term planning level will materialise at the operational level in construction projects. This paper describes a systematic literature review, whose objective is to identify the main practices associated with MTP, the main failures related to its implementation, and existing gaps on this topic. The results point to a plethora of practices associated with MTP, which can be considered in future studies, and also be incorporated in the production planning and control process used by construction companies. However, in general terms, the results of this study show that MTP practices are not being properly implemented. Additionally, the study identified gaps in the literature regarding the impact of MTP on project performance and the use of building information modeling (BIM) to support MTP functions. Hence, this topic merits additional research to improve the efficacy of MTP in construction projects, considering that it represents an essential step to remove project constraints and, consequently, to achieve a continuous flow of activities during the life of a project.