Windows due in week twenty, ordered in week eighteen
The programme shows windows going in once the frame is up and the roof is on. The window supplier's lead time is well over a month from approved shop drawings. Shop drawings needed the architect's comments, which needed final opening sizes, which needed the structural engineer's lintel details. Each step happened, but late, and nobody added them up until the site manager asked where the windows were.
Steel frames, lifts, curtain walling, bespoke joinery and switchgear all follow the same pattern. The item is on the programme; the chain of approvals behind it is not.
Why long-lead items slip
A programme shows when things happen on site. It rarely shows the chain of design, approval, subcontract and manufacture that has to happen before a delivery. That chain belongs to several people: the design team, your procurement or commercial team, the subcontractor and its supplier. Nobody owns the whole of it.
- The programme shows installation, not the procurement steps before it.
- Lead times are quoted once at tender and not updated.
- Shop drawing approval by the design team has no tracked deadline.
- Subcontract appointment for a package runs late and eats into manufacture.
- Nobody sees that a small delay early has become a big one on site.
What late procurement costs
Programme slip is the obvious one, with the knock-on to every trade that follows. Premiums for expedited manufacture or delivery. Temporary works and protection while you wait for the building to be closed in. And time spent by the project team firefighting a delay that was visible months earlier if anyone had been looking at the right dates.
It also weakens your position in conversations about who caused the delay. If the architect's comments on the shop drawings were late, or the subcontractor sat on the order, you want that visible at the time, dated, rather than reconstructed from emails once the programme has already slipped. What any of that means under your contract is for your commercial team and advisers; the record is what we can give you.
The procurement schedule we build
- Long-lead packages are listed with their site start dates, read from your programme.
- Each package has its chain of steps: design information complete, subcontract appointed, shop drawings submitted, design team comments, approval, manufacture, delivery.
- Durations for each step are set from your experience and the supplier's latest quoted lead time, and the latest date for each step is worked back from the site date.
- Each step has an owner: the design manager, the package buyer, the subcontractor, the architect.
- Owners update their step when it is done. Suppliers can confirm lead times and delivery dates through a link.
- Any step running late, or any lead time that lengthens, recalculates the chain and warns the project manager if the site date is at risk.
- When the master programme changes, the procurement dates move with it.
| Step for windows | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Opening sizes fixed | Design manager | Done |
| Subcontract appointed | Package buyer | Done, late |
| Shop drawings submitted | Window subcontractor | Due this week |
| Design team comments | Architect | Not started |
| Manufacture and delivery | Supplier | Lead time reconfirmed |
Seeing slippage while it can still be fixed
The project team sees, months before installation, which packages are at risk and why. Design team members get clear deadlines for their approvals, linked to the site dates they protect. Buyers know when each package must be placed. When a supplier's lead time lengthens, the effect on site is shown the same day, while there is still time to do something about it.
It also makes the design team meeting more useful: the list of approvals that are about to hold up procurement is on the table, with dates.
Is your procurement running late like this?
- Long-lead items have arrived after they were needed on site.
- Lead times from tender have never been re-checked.
- Shop drawing approvals have no deadline.
- Package appointments run late.
- Nobody owns the chain from design to delivery.