Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) is a construction planning methodology that aligns engineering, procurement, and construction around a construction-driven plan. By organizing work into sequenced packages and removing constraints early, AWP helps improve productivity, reduce costs, and deliver capital projects with greater schedule and cost certainty.
What Is Advanced Work Packaging in Capital Construction?
Capital projects have been around for hundreds of years, expanding in size, expense and complexity over time. They also have a well-documented reputation for exceeding budgets and timelines, putting the focus on productivity issues as a culprit.
In the last 20 years, however, a different approach to project planning has emerged. Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) can boost productivity (time on tools) up to 25% and shave 10% off of total installed cost.
When you consider the substantial expenditures involved in building large-scale capital projects, this can translate into a significant impact on the bottom line.
Now considered an industry best practice, advanced work packaging can be a rather complex planning process — and an increasingly required one. With that in mind, let’s take a high-level look at what it is, how it differs from standard work packaging, and what construction companies stand to gain by implementing it.
How Advanced Work Packaging Improves Construction Planning Through Early Alignment
Construction managers often have not been included as part of early-stage planning and discussions. Rather, they’ve merely been expected to show up just as ground is ready to be broken.
That late-stage involvement may have been a key factor leading to budgets and schedules that were overshot because they adhered to the more standard work package for engineering and design rather than a more real-world-focused one for construction. With advanced work packaging, construction managers are brought in at the very beginning to organize the actual work.
How Advanced Work Packaging Aligns Engineering, Procurement, and Construction
Construction does not operate as a siloed function. AWP brings together construction, engineering and procurement into a collaborative relationship to determine their respective deliverables in support of the construction-driven plan — before work begins on-site, hence, advanced work packaging.
What this does is bridge the well-worn gulf between plan details normally determined by engineering and design, and what construction actually needs to build the project. Advanced work packaging hyper focuses the project scope by taking an incremental approach to organizing the work from the perspective of construction’s role. How? By arranging workflow along a start-to-finish timeline, called a Path of Construction, which continues through commissioning and up to handover to the client. The work is broken down into more easily manageable chunks of sequenced tasks (work packages) throughout this path.
Advanced Work Packaging Ensures Materials, Resources, and Information Are Available When Needed
Organizing units of work along this construction continuum gives more control over not just the process but especially the constraints that impede productivity. Chief among these are the unavailability of jobsite resources and a lack of job-specific details.
Naturally, work slowdowns occur if scaffolding has yet to be built, not enough tools or supplies are on hand, materials are delayed in transit, or heavy equipment is delivered to the wrong area of the jobsite.
Just as important as those resources is access to job task information. This can include access to:
- The latest drawings and 3D models
- Material safety data
- Installation instructions
- Checklists
- Permits
Not having the right permissions to view these items or being faced with missing, insufficient or obsolete information merely adds to the waiting game (especially if they’re in hard copy and have to be retrieved from a jobsite trailer).
In both instances, they put a ding in the ability to keep costs and delays in check. And that will be reflected in earned value management metrics — including schedule performance index and cost performance index — that track job performance.
Installation Work Packages (IWPs): The Building Blocks of Advanced Work Packaging
The advanced work packaging process meticulously determines what is needed, when it is needed and where it is needed, so everything is available for site crews to properly execute the work. Think of it as a “mini project in a box.” All the components that a single-discipline or multi-discipline site crew needs to complete a specific task — from tools and materials to digitized information — are “packaged up” for that unit of work, known as an Installation Work Package (IWP).
Key Benefits of Advanced Work Packaging for Cost, Schedule, and Productivity
Besides more effective project planning, less downtime for site crews and tighter control over costs and schedules, proactively removing constraints early in the process through AWP can yield other positive effects, too.
Key benefits of implementing advanced work packaging include:
- Reduced labor costs: Less idle time and fewer productivity losses on site
- Higher construction quality: Fewer change orders and reduced rework
- Improved schedule and cost performance: Outcomes validated through earned value management metrics
- More efficient inspection and commissioning: Fewer incomplete or unsatisfactory items appearing on punch lists
- Reduced contractual risk: Lower likelihood of withheld retention or liquidated damages disputes
- More predictable project delivery: Incremental planning and early constraint identification improve on-time and on-budget performance
Advanced work packaging is a solid concept that, used to its best advantage, can do wonders for your project outcomes.
InEight delivers construction software designed to support advanced work packaging and proactive project risk management across complex capital projects. By connecting schedule, cost, and construction planning data, InEight helps project teams remove constraints earlier, improve productivity, and make more informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle.
Updated On: December 12, 2025
