Every Month Late Is Carry Plus Lost Lease-Up

Not from the framing. From permitting, from below-grade conditions, from long-lead equipment, and from the wet season if the envelope was not closed in time. All four are visible in preconstruction and all four are routinely compressed on the schedule everyone signs.

Long-lead equipment is the risk that behaves worst because it arrives at the end. Switchgear, elevators and generators are ordered early, manufactured against a schedule nobody on the project controls, and a delay surfaces when there is no float left and nothing else can recover it.

Ask to see where the float sits in the program and how much there is. Float distributed invisibly inside activity durations gets consumed without anybody noticing, and by the time the effect appears it has already been spent.

Float shown as its own item, against the risks it is there to absorb, can be managed. It is also the question that most reliably distinguishes a program somebody built from one somebody drew.

1. 01Build a schedule with the assumptions written down and visible.
2. 02Order long-lead equipment against the schedule, early.
3. 03Sequence to close the envelope before the wet season where possible.
4. 04Report honestly when the schedule moves, not at the end.
5. 05Self-perform below-grade so the biggest risk is ours to manage.

Order switchgear and elevators absurdly early. On current lead times they are frequently the binding constraint on occupancy, and no amount of speed elsewhere recovers a piece of equipment that has not arrived.

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