Construction projects require effective planning and management of site equipment. Tower cranes are heavily employed on large-scale construction projects, thus incurring additional costs and delays if used inefficiently. This research aims to optimize crane operations on high-rise buildings by considering the overlap space between cranes. Look-ahead planning (LAP) is employed to perform daily operations' planning and provide a reliable, constraint-free daily schedule of crane operations. A simulation model performing metaheuristic optimization is developed to optimize in near real time the allocation of cranes to tasks on the LAP schedule while calculating crane movements in a three-dimensional environment and checking for collisions. The LAP simulation model is tested on a case study project, and results show that having overlaps and coupling LAP with optimization can better reduce duration and balance the work demand. This study provides practitioners with a daily planning and optimization process and tool to enhance crane operations. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.