Go or no-go decisions at the construction workface: Uncertainty, perceptions of readiness, making ready and making-do

Construction work is performed at the end of a chain of decisions made by the individuals involved in planning the work at increasingly detailed levels of resolution. At each step planners make decisions based on their perception of the state of readiness, or maturity, of the work, but there is always, by definition, some residual uncertainty. Therefore, fine-grained planning decisions are often required even after commitments are made in weekly work planning using the Last Planner® System. These decisions can result in abandoning (or stopping) the planned work or improvisation or 'making-do'. However, the motivations and context of these decisions are not well understood. Empirical data collected over eleven weeks at a large residential construction project enabled synthesis of a taxonomy of scenarios and proposal of a candidate flow chart of the decision-making process at the operational level. In doing so, we define questions for future research concerning the impact of uncertainty on decision-making in this context.