Lead Times

Prior to physical construction or assembly works being undertaken on a project, planners and schedulers nearly always have to consider how long the design, procurement and manufacturing stages will take for components. This section of the web-site will give details of each industries major component lead times.

At present, the PEO has concentrated on the building construction industry and have set out below lead time information for that industry.

Commentary - 4 April 2008

Rotary and Pre-cast Piling both pre-cast piling and rotary piling have stabilised at 7 and 5 weeks respectively following their slight drop last quarter.

Concrete Works lead time remains at 10 weeks for a further quarter.

Structural Steel frames the previous increase has now stabilised and remains at 15 weeks.

Cladding – re-constructed stone and Natural Material lead times have both fluctuated with reconstituted stone falling by 4 weeks and natural material rising by 3 weeks, to 22 weeks and 32 weeks respectively

Cladding – Curtain Walling system following the previous increases there has now been a fall in the lead time to 44 weeks.

Cladding – Metal Panellised system remains static with a lead in of 36 weeks

Atrium Roof Average lead times have increased by 2 weeks to 27 weeks.

Roof Finish - profiled metal following on from a series of falls in the lead times over the past 6 months they seem now to be stabilizing with no reported change.

Roof Finishes –asphalt / membrane despite the market forecasting an increase there has been a slight fall of 1 week to 9 weeks this quarter.

Façade Cleaning equipment lead times have remained static at 35 weeks for the past 12 months.

Brickworks and Blockwork both continue to stand at 10 weeks are reporting that they are not anticipating significant change over the next quarter.

Metal Doors Lead times remain at 8 weeks with no change forecast.

Drylining Lead times remain at 8 weeks with no forecast increase for the next quarter.

Demountable partitions lead times remain at 8 weeks as order books remain constant.

General Joinery lead time remains at 11 weeks for the second quarter and Specialist Joinery has also stabilised at 15 weeks despite having previously forecast the market to get busier this quarter

Raised Floors lead times remains static at 6 weeks; there has been no change in this lead in time for the past year.

Suspended ceiling lead time has become static at 15 weeks having previously fluctuated between 15 and 16.

Architectural metalwork lead times have remained static at 12 weeks for the past 12 months

Decorative wall covering the average lead-in of suppliers has remained at 4 weeks for the past 21 months – the order books for the next quarter are forecast to remain steady.

internal stone floor and wall finish return to its steady increase following the levelling off last quarter and is up 2 weeks to 24 weeks.

Soft Floor Finish lead times remains at 7 weeks.

Passenger Lift -non standard lead time remains at 31 weeks despite a predicted increase, standard lifts can reduce this lead time by around 15 weeks.

Escalator lead times remain at 24 weeks having levelled off last quarter.

Electrical packages and Mechanical packages remain static and report 23 and 20 weeks lead times respectively.

Ductwork lead in time remain at 7 weeks.

Controls are reporting that lead times have stabilised following the fall last quarter.

Boiler rooms and M&E plant and equipment including air conditioning, VAV units, uninterruptible power supplies, switch gear, generators, data and voice cabling and sprinklers continues to remain unchanged from the previous report

Last quarter saw a number of the specialist contractors reporting a reduction in lead times, the workload now seems to be stabilising with only 6 packages reporting any change. Whilst the majority of the contractors are reporting no change there is still a relatively high proportion that are continuing to forecast a rise in the coming months.

The specialists contractors are reporting shortages of staff particularly in the areas of project management, estimating and specialist design.

Data capture and analysis by Mace Business School, part of the Mace Group. For more details on the article and the contributors please visit www.macebusinessschool.co.uk/foresite/

The PEO are indebted to Mace for allowing the PEO to replicate their construction industry lead time information on our website.