Committing to Pull Planning at Hyatt Regency Seattle

During the design phase of the Hyatt Regency Seattle, the team tried a new concept. We decided to use pull planning to guide the entire design phase, setting in motion a higher level of integration, coordination and efficiency. We used the tool to reorganize and actively manage the design process. This was a team-wide commitment.

Throughout the next 15 months of design, leaders from all major disciplines met every three weeks to assess upcoming deadlines and “pull” to them, developing detailed deliverables for the approaching milestones. Eventually, the team became so efficient that a 40-minute weekly check-in was scaled down to 15 minutes.

Using pull planning in this way changed the way the team organized the design phase. Certain scopes were designed and bid out earlier than usual because they were needed to meet the deadlines and keep the project moving forward. Systems were well coordinated and designed to the budget early, and, in some cases, the shop drawings pulled double duty as the construction drawings. This high-level coordination allowed the team to avoid many issues in the field on this 1.5 million-square-foot project.