Touchplan
A digital pull-planning board that replaces sticky notes on a wall with a collaborative, trackable schedule.
Quick Answer
Touchplan is lean construction scheduling software that digitizes pull planning and the Last Planner System. Teams build a collaborative schedule of tasks and commitments, track what's actually completed versus planned each week, and generate look-ahead schedules from that data. It's used by trade partners, superintendents, and schedulers to run lean-led planning sessions without physical sticky notes.
The Full Picture
Touchplan exists because lean scheduling methods like pull planning were traditionally run with sticky notes on a conference room wall — powerful for collaboration in the room, but disconnected from the master schedule and impossible to analyze once the meeting ended. Touchplan moves that same collaborative session onto a shared digital board that persists and generates data.
Mechanically, trade partners and the project team build a pull plan together, sequencing tasks backward from milestones and making explicit commitments about when work will happen. Touchplan tracks percent plan complete (PPC) — how often committed work actually finishes on time — and surfaces variance reasons, turning what used to be an intuitive room exercise into a measured, repeatable process.
In practice, Touchplan is used in weekly and look-ahead planning meetings, often projected on a screen so the whole team edits the plan together in real time. It syncs with a project's master schedule (built in tools like Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project) so the detailed lean planning stays connected to the overall CPM schedule rather than living as a separate exercise.
Touchplan sits downstream of design and estimating — it's a construction-phase execution tool for sequencing and coordinating trades, not a preconstruction estimating or bidding tool. Its value shows up most on complex, trade-heavy phases where poor coordination between crews causes the most schedule slippage.
Real Examples
Common Misconceptions
People assume: Touchplan replaces a CPM scheduling tool like Primavera P6.
Actually: Touchplan handles the detailed, collaborative short-interval planning that lean methods use; it's designed to sync with, not replace, a master CPM schedule for contractual milestones and overall project sequencing.
People assume: Digitizing pull planning is just a convenience — the sticky-note version works the same.
Actually: The point of digitizing isn't just convenience; it's that Touchplan captures percent-plan-complete data and variance reasons over time, letting teams measure and improve reliability. A wall of sticky notes gets erased after the meeting; the data doesn't persist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who makes Touchplan?
Touchplan is developed by Touchplan, Inc. (touchplan.io), a US-based construction software company focused on lean construction planning tools.
What is Touchplan used for?
It's used to run pull planning and Last Planner System sessions digitally — building a collaborative task schedule, tracking commitment reliability (percent plan complete), and generating look-ahead schedules from that detailed plan.
How is Touchplan different from a Gantt chart tool like Microsoft Project?
A Gantt tool models a top-down project schedule set mostly by the scheduler. Touchplan supports bottom-up, collaborative planning where trade partners commit to specific tasks together, then tracks whether those commitments were kept — a different discipline aimed at improving reliability, not just sequencing.
Does Touchplan require the Last Planner System?
Touchplan is built around Last Planner and pull-planning principles, so teams get the most value using those methods. The software supports the collaborative workflow those methods require rather than working as a generic scheduling tool.