These Are Always Late!!!

Why the Same Three Scopes Are Always Late on Every Construction Project

Here is something every superintendent knows but few projects actually solve: walk into a hundred different construction projects and ask the team which scopes are causing the most pain, and the answers will be identical every time. The exterior skin. The elevators. The electrical service switchgear. The air handlers. Permanent utility connections to the building. Same scopes, same problems, same late deliveries, different projects, different teams, different markets. If everyone knows these things are always late, why are they still always late? The answer is not that people are incompetent. The answer is that the industry has normalized starting these conversations at the wrong point in the project, and then not tracking what happens between order and delivery.

The Problem Every Team Recognizes and Almost No Team Prevents

Every experienced superintendent knows that the exterior curtain wall and the elevators have long lead times. The awareness is universal. The action is not. Projects identify these scopes as critical, note them in the schedule, flag them in kickoff meetings, and then wait until the construction contract is awarded before actually engaging the trade partners. By the time the team is ready to move, the math has already failed. The fabrication window needed to deliver the exterior skin before the installation date requires procurement to have started months earlier, during design development, not after groundbreaking.

The gap between knowing and doing is where the schedule gets lost. It is not that the team forgot the exterior was a long lead item. It is that the team kept waiting for conditions that felt like the right moment to engage: a signed contract, a fully approved design, a funded GMP. All of those conditions are reasonable checkpoints. None of them change the physics of fabrication lead times. And by the time all of them are in place, the time that was needed to protect the schedule is already gone.

The System Created This Problem, Not the People

This needs to be said directly: the teams that keep experiencing late exterior skin and late elevator deliveries are not careless. They are working inside a procurement culture that has always defaulted to waiting for the contract before starting the vendor engagement. That default was established at a time when project schedules were longer, market capacity was more available, and the consequences of late delivery were more manageable. None of those conditions apply today. The system has not caught up with the schedule reality that most construction projects are now operating under. The system failed the team. The team did not fail the project.

The Lesson That Changed How Jason Schroeder Approaches Long Lead Procurement

Early in his career, Jason worked with a project manager named Ryan Young who pushed hard, in the middle of design development, to start weekly meetings with the exterior skin contractor and the elevator contractor. At the time, it felt premature. The design was not finished. The contract was not awarded. The scope was not fully defined. Jason’s instinct was to wait. Ryan’s instinct was to act.

Ryan was right. The team talked the owner into bringing those trade partners on in a design assist capacity before the construction contract was executed. They started producing preliminary submittals, building a detailed procurement schedule, and coordinating with the design team while the project was still being designed. By the time the construction contract was awarded, the exterior skin and elevator procurement were weeks ahead of where they would have been if the team had waited. That head start protected the schedule in ways that no amount of compression later in the project could have replicated.

The financial risk was real but small. A letter of intent. An owner-approved release of $20,000 to $30,000 for early submittals. A commitment to go at risk for a modest expenditure to protect a delivery date that the entire project depended on. That is a better trade than three months of schedule extension explained to an owner who trusted the team to manage procurement.

Why Tracking Release Points Is Not Optional

Knowing the lead time is not the same as managing the procurement. Most project teams can tell you approximately how many weeks a curtain wall system takes from shop drawing approval to delivery. Few of them have a system for tracking the five or six intermediate release points that determine whether that timeline actually holds.

For a unitized curtain wall system, those intermediate points run through preliminary sample approval, die approval for the extrusions that produce the mullion profiles, shop drawing production and review concurrent with the glass and panel order release, delivery of materials to the fabrication shop, fabrication of the unitized assemblies, shipping to the project site, stacking and staging by floor, and then installation in sequence with the adjacent structure and weather barrier work. Each of those is a step that cannot begin until the previous one is complete. Each of those has a date attached. And each of those dates is vulnerable to being missed if nobody is confirming that the action was taken.

Jason describes confirming that a purchase order for a curtain wall glass order was never executed because everyone assumed it had been after shop drawings were approved. The glass was six weeks late. Not three weeks. Six weeks, because by the time anyone checked, the fabrication slot had already been given to another project. That kind of miss does not happen when the team has a system for tracking release points. It happens when the team tracks the lead time at the beginning and trusts the process to handle itself the rest of the way.

What Needs to Happen Before the Contract Is Signed

If a project has any of the following critical scopes, procurement engagement needs to begin during design development, not after award:

• Exterior skin systems including unitized curtain wall, metal panel, custom window systems, and specialty cladding
• Elevator equipment including the cab, mechanical room package, controls, and door frames
• Electrical service equipment including switchgear, service entry section, and main distribution panels
• Major mechanical equipment including air handlers, cooling towers, boilers, and fan coil units
• Permanent utility connections including power, communications, gas, water, and sewer, each of which may require utility company coordination that adds months beyond the equipment procurement itself

For each of these, the question is the same: when does the material need to arrive at the project site relative to the installation window, and how far back from that date does the procurement chain need to start?

What to Track Once Procurement Is in Motion

Once a critical long lead scope is procured, the work of managing it is not finished. The release points between award and delivery are where the schedule is protected or lost. These are the actions that need to happen at specific times for the procurement to stay on track:

• Sample and mock-up submissions confirmed and approved
• Die or tooling approvals executed before fabrication tooling lead times begin
• Purchase orders for long lead materials within the scope, such as glass, released on the date required by the fabrication schedule
• Delivery of raw materials to the fabrication shop confirmed
• Field measurements taken for any components requiring site-specific dimensions
• Shipping schedule confirmed and tracked against the installation window

Jason’s method for keeping these visible is to create calendar invites for each critical release point and distribute them to the full project team. When the invite fires, someone makes the call to confirm the action was taken. If it was not taken, there is still time to recover. If nobody is watching the intermediate points, the first visible sign of a problem is often when the installation window has already opened and the material is not there.

Built for Teams That Deliver What They Promise

Procurement feeds production. That is not an abstract principle. It is the daily reality that every superintendent manages when a scope that should be ready to install is not, and the crew that was supposed to be in that zone is standing on a floor waiting. The exterior skin and the elevators do not have to be the scopes that blow up every schedule. They are in that position because the industry has normalized starting too late and not tracking closely enough. Changing that requires starting the procurement conversation during design, using creative options like letters of intent and design assist arrangements to move before the comfortable moment, and building a system for tracking release points that does not rely on anyone’s memory or good intentions. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

Get There Before the Problem Gets There First

The exterior skin is not going to manage itself. The elevator is not going to remind anyone that the cab release order was never executed. The switchgear is not going to flag that the shop drawing approval was three weeks late and the delivery date has already moved. That management belongs to the project team, starting in design development, continuing through the intermediate release points, and never assuming that silence means everything is on schedule.

As General George Patton understood about supply chains and military campaigns: a good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed too late. Start the procurement conversation before you have the perfect conditions for it. Track the release points before the consequence of missing them is already visible in the field. The schedule that finishes on time is the one where someone was watching the curtain wall glass order date three months before anyone else thought to ask.

On we go.

FAQ

Why are exterior skin and elevator procurement always late even when teams know they are long lead items?

Because knowing a scope has a long lead time is not the same as acting on that knowledge early enough. The industry default is to engage trade partners after the construction contract is awarded, but the fabrication timelines for these scopes often require procurement to begin during design development. Every week of delay in engaging the trade partner at the start of the process becomes a week of compression at the end, and compression at the end of a construction schedule is far more expensive and disruptive than the discomfort of starting before the contract is signed.

What creative options exist for engaging trade partners before the construction contract is executed?

Letters of intent allow a trade partner to begin preliminary submittals, coordination, and shop drawing production before the prime agreement is finalized. Design assist arrangements bring the trade partner into the design process formally, allowing them to contribute constructability input and begin procurement planning while the design is still being developed. An owner-approved release of funds for early submittal work, typically in the range of $20,000 to $30,000, covers the cost of getting the procurement sequence started before the commercial framework is fully in place. Going at risk for a small expenditure to protect a schedule that depends on early fabrication is a significantly better outcome than absorbing a multi-month delay.

What are critical release points and how should they be tracked?

Critical release points are the specific actions within a procurement sequence that must be executed by a specific person on a specific date for the next step to proceed on time. For exterior curtain wall, these include the die approval for extrusions, the glass purchase order release, shop drawing approval, delivery of materials to the fabrication shop, and field measurements for critical panel conditions. Tracking them means putting each one on the project schedule with a named owner and creating calendar reminders that fire on the relevant date. When the reminder fires, someone confirms the action was taken. If it was not, there is still time to respond before the delay becomes unrecoverable.

How does this procurement approach connect to the broader First Planner System?

The First Planner System begins in preconstruction by engineering the production system before boots hit the ground. Procurement planning is one of its core outputs: identifying long lead scopes, establishing the procurement sequence, and aligning the supply chain with the production plan before the work starts. Projects that engage long lead trade partners during design development are practicing First Planner discipline. Projects that wait until construction begins are starting the production system design after it was already needed, and they pay for that delay in schedule compression and cost overruns that show up later in the project.

What other scopes beyond exterior skin and elevators need this level of procurement management?

Any scope with a fabrication lead time that exceeds what the construction schedule assumes between contract award and installation. Electrical service switchgear and main distribution equipment frequently carry twelve to twenty-week lead times that projects underestimate. Major mechanical equipment including air handlers, cooling towers, and boilers has similar lead time exposure. Permanent utility connections to the building, including power, telecommunications, gas, and water, often require utility company coordination that adds months beyond the equipment procurement itself. Specialty finish materials with custom manufacturing requirements, including Italian tile, custom millwork, and specialty glazing systems, also need to be identified and procured well ahead of the installation window.