How to Plan and Assign Weekly Work in Shape

This guide explains how to use the Weekly Work Planner in Shape to plan, assign, and track construction work on a weekly basis. It’s designed to help teams stay organised, accountable, and aligned with the project schedule—while making it easier to coordinate work, monitor readiness, and respond quickly when things change.

What Is the Weekly Work Planner?

The Weekly Work Planner (WWP) is a planning and tracking tool within Shape tool that helps teams to publish and manage their committed weekly plans. It enables engineers, supervisors, and planners to coordinate activities on a daily basis based on what’s ready, what’s blocked, and what needs to be done each day to stay on track.

Rather than using separate spreadsheets or whiteboards, teams can use the WWP to:

• Create and update weekly plans using project activities from the programme

• Track readiness and record daily progress

• Link site work to your master schedule

• Record delays and reasons for variance, and create recovery plans

• Export PDF reports for planning and progress reviews

Because the Weekly Work Planner is integrated with the rest of Shape, any progress, blockers, or issues recorded during the week are automatically linked to your project data—making it easier to track what happened, when, and why.

Step-by-Step Guide

Accessing the Weekly Work Planner

To begin using the Weekly Work Planner, follow these steps:

1. From the left-hand navigation, click on Weekly Work Plans.

2. Click New Work Plan to start.         

3. Add a title and select the plan duration (usually one week).

4. You’ll enter the Plan Editor, where you can build and manage the plan.

Adding Activities to the Plan

Activities can be added to your weekly plan through two primary methods:

Method 1: Manual Entry

1. Click on an empty cell under Activity Name.

2. Select an activity from the dropdown list to add it to the plan.

Method 2: Bulk Import

1. Click Add Activities (top-right of the Plan Editor).

2. Use filters to find relevant activities:

   • Plan Start / Finish Date

   • Responsible Person

   • Organisation

   • Location

3. Select activities and click Add Selected.

• Note you can also select Prefill from previous to populate the activities with the last created Work Plan.

Configuring Your Weekly Plan

The following details can be configured for each Activity in the plan:

• Location – where the work takes place

• Organisation – team or subcontractor responsible

• Responsible Person – person overseeing the task

• Status - Not Started or In Progress

• Readiness – Checkbox to indicate if activity can start.

• Requirements - Opens up a list of any Requirements or Blockers for the activity. Note Blockers are Issues that are linked to the Activity.

• Planned or Fallback 

• Planned Progress – expected completion by the end of the period.

• Schedule – tick working days directly in the schedule grid

Once ready, click Publish Plan.

A PDF version of your Weekly Work Plan will be automatically generated.

Tracking Progress During the Week

Using the Progress Tracker

Once you have a published plan, you can use the Progress and Lookback section to record progress and update activity records as the week progresses.

1. Go to the Progress & Lookback tab in the plan.

2. For each activity, you can:

   • Record actual progress and update the % complete

   • Add photos or documents as evidence

   • Note any delays or blockers

   • Suggest recovery strategies for missed work

3. Click Publish Look Back to finalise.

4. A PDF End-of-Week Report will be generated for review or sharing.

• Note the PPC %. This is the Planned Percentage Complete and measures how close the plan was to the actual completion report.

Understanding the day cards in the Progress Tracker

• A day card is green with 1/1 if progress was planned and recorded.

• A day card is yellow with 0/1 if progress was planned but not recorded.

• A day card is blank if no progress was planned or recorded.

• The 0/1 or 1/1 indicates whether a progress log has been recorded for that day and activity when progress was planned. 

Summary

With the Weekly Work Planner, you can:

• Develop structured weekly work plans aligned with your master schedule.

• Utilise filters and bulk import tools for efficient plan creation.

• Assign responsibilities and monitor readiness.

• Update progress either in real-time or through comprehensive end-of-week reviews.

• Attach evidence, explain variances, and document recovery strategies.

• Instantly produce professional PDF reports for both planning and tracking purposes.

For support, reach out to your Shape representative or refer back to this guide.