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Schedule Adjusments

6/14/19       
MarkB Member

How to you all handle changes in your delivery schedules that are affected by your customer?

I know everyone has some iron clad wordage in their contract that changes affecting the schedule, delays will be charged storage, and so on, but just wondering realistically how you all hand the interaction?

We are almost 100% commercial at this point and as of late jobs will hit a stall based on some possible change that affects our scope and we will go into a holding pattern. Most recently is one that stalled for weeks and after all that wound up being no change in our scope. But the contractor of course wants to resume and hold to the same delivery dates which is no longer possible. I know we can all refer them to the wordage in the contract and dig our heels in and Im envious of anyone in a position to be able to do that, we are not.

We are always tactful and try to accommodate the changes as best we can but just wondering about your tactics for handling it. What most commonly winds up happening in these situations for us is the contractor asks for partial deliveries or some other jump through hoops. They are typically willing to pay for additional deliveries but it seems for us at least your never able to bill the true cost of a change or adjustment. In my years in the GC world I heard it a million times when a customer would make a change that its "more money for you" but our simple fact was that you can never make money on a change.

We try to be fair, and I bust my hump up front to cross all the t's and dot all the i's and usually catch miles of mistakes in the drawings on quote but in the end it seems every job gets bumped out and Im feeling at this point like some additional verbiage in the contract is necessary.

Thanks, and have a great weekend and Fathers Day for all you fathers out there.

6/14/19       #2: Schedule Adjusments ...
Alan F. Member

If the schedule has you installing June 17th and they move it two weeks, send them a CO for OT to meet the REVISED schedule.
There is a real cost for multiple mobilizations. I did a job awhile back that was supposed to be 4 production runs and 6 deliveries. It ended up being 19 deliveries and 15 production runs.

It took me weeks to determine the impact, which we did about 6 different change orders for. Had we bid it that way on day 1 with the same margins it would have been much more.

Unfortunately you can't bill for lost opportunity.

6/14/19       #3: Schedule Adjusments ...
Larry Schweitzer

Seems to be just "normal" in commercial work. Been there way too often.

6/16/19       #4: Schedule Adjusments ...
cabinetmaker

You “must” make the GC aware of the. Impact to your schedule fiscally when it happens, to get it back to the customer immediately. Then it become a decision the architect, gc and owner can decide if they want to bear the brunt of the financial impact

We had a job where the concrete dropped two inches across 300 linear feet and the wall cladding (corian) increased by 90 square feet. I let them know BEFORE we cut, added the info of lot matching, and let them decide.

The fact of the matter is I got the info to the gc the day the field dimensions changed the scope due to field conditions.

6/17/19       #5: Schedule Adjusments ...
MarkB Member

Thanks guys,
We do convey the impact immediately however as I eluded to, while we dont allow ourselves to be steamrolled, and if there is any increase in material costs its of course covered in a CO. My main issue was with regards to the schedule and enforcing payment for things like overtime to meet, or even come close, to the original timeline.

I do site visits most always periodically in the beginning of a project (if its local-enough) because its all too often the shop drawings are approved and the site conditions or as-built in no way matches the shops. I could just sit back and make to the shops and when we ship them and they dont fit its on them. I try to avoid that with a bit of up front.

None the less as Larry mentions it seems to be the norm that delays occur and they push, we bill a bit on a CO, and they push. I'd hope at some point to just refer them to the contract and ship a bill like my lawyer and accountant does but we are not at that point.

6/17/19       #6: Schedule Adjusments ...
Alan F. Member

Mark the value of doing a labor and material CO is you can identify all the steps and costs. We also identify machine use rates without and operator


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