Having the right materials and equipment at a project when they are needed is the goal of procurement and essential to meeting a schedule. How long it takes to do that is frequently mis-understood, even by professionals.
A typical procurement process proceeds like this: specify, quote, analyze, purchase, prepare submittals, approve submittals, release for fabrication, fabricate, and deliver. The time it takes to do all this is frequently called “lead time” and is generally referred to in weeks of time.
Most buyers expect “lead time” provided in vendor quotes to include all the time required from date of purchase to delivery. However, many times vendors use the same term (“lead time”) for the part of the procurement process they control beginning with approved submittals. Vendors do this for a good reason – the time to secure approved submittals is mostly beyond their control and many have been burned by the “approve submittal” step taking much longer than expected. “8 weeks lead time” in a vendor quote is almost always from date of approved submittals and sometimes that qualification is not clear, especially when quote is verbal.
That’s where a lot of problems begin.
Depending on what is being procured, the time for the steps from “purchase” through “approve submittals” can take as long (or longer) as the time from “release for fabrication” through “deliver”. The “8 weeks lead time” quoted by vendor could be 16 weeks or more from date of purchase. It will almost certainly be longer than 8 weeks from purchase.
For complicated, critical, or near critical items, we typically request lead time be quoted as “weeks to delivery from date of purchase including X weeks for required approvals” to get a clearer picture about total lead time for a purchase. For non-critical items, we typically double the lead time quoted “after approval” for planning purposes.
If you plan your project using the wrong “lead time”, the outcome won’t be good. Ask a question or two about lead time when you’re reviewing quotes – it could save time, money, and a lot of frustration.