McHugh, K., Patel, V., and Dave, B. (2021). “Role of a Digital Last Planner® System to Ensuring Safe and Productive Workforce and Workflow in COVID-19 Pandemic.” Proc. 29 th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC29), Alarcon, L.F. and González, V.A. (eds.), Lima, Peru, pp. 87–96, doi.org/10.24928/2021/0102, online at iglc.net. Lean and BIM 87 ROLE OF A DIGITAL LAST PLANNER® SYSTEM TO ENSURING SAFE AND PRODUCTIVE WORKFORCE AND WORKFLOW IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC Kevin McHugh 1 ,Viranj Patel 2 , and Bhargav Dave 3 ABSTRACT To cope with the dynamics of production, construction managers spend a significant amount of time organising the workforce, managing logistics and controlling the flow. Underestimating the process of workforce allocation and management could lead to serious productivity, safety, logistics, and coordination problems. To exacerbate this situation, the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic has created a situation where unorganised workforce allocation and tracking could increase the health and safety risk for the project. The Last Planner® System (LPS) advocates and incorporates processes to sustain flow suggested in Lean Production theory. Hence, the complex job of creating the workforce-flow can potentially be simplified through the LPS proactive planning during lookahead discussions. The paper captures a case study where the same safety and productivity issues were heavily encountered in a project involving multiple trades (15+) and having hundreds of workers struggling in the pandemic situation. Implementing design Science approach, the team has discovered a digital workflow management system that exhibits significant improvement in coordination, control over productivity wastage and safe working environment. This research utilised a digital LPS powered by real-time cloud-based system, capable of actively tracking the agreed workforce boosting productivity whilst keeping the workforce safe and secure. KEYWORDS Workforce flow planning, digital, Last Planner® System, production planning and tracking. INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND Safety and safe working environments are an undivided part of construction projects, yet safety management practices are often treated as separate and isolated entity in construction management (Zhang et al., 2015). Project characteristics, and complexity 1 Associate Director, Mace Technology, Ireland, Kevin.McHugh@macegroup.com, orcid.org/0000- 0002-6017-4585 2 Customer Success Manager, VisiLean India Pvt. Ltd, India, viranj.patel@visilean.com, orcid.org/0000-0002-0886-874X 3 CEO, VisiLean Ltd, Finland, bhargav@visilean.com, orcid.org/0000-0003-4228-506X