Missed delivery dates
Drawing approval was pending. The clock ran anyway.
Fabrication dates break because the lead time starts at drawing approval but the customer counts from the purchase order. State the starting point in the quotation and hold the committed date against approval, and the delay stops being yours.
In short
Fabrication dates break because the lead time starts at drawing approval but the customer counts from the purchase order. State the starting point in the quotation and hold the committed date against approval, and the delay stops being yours.
The cost
What the gap takes every month.
1 to 3 weeks
Typical approval delay on structural jobs
Consultant comments, site changes and a client's internal sign-off.
Your fault
How the delay is usually recorded
Because nothing documents when approval actually arrived.
One ordinary week
How it actually happens.
Your quotation says six weeks. The client places the order on the first and returns the approved drawing on the nineteenth.
Your shop delivers six weeks from approval, which is seven and a half weeks from the order, and the client treats it as a delay and holds a payment.
When the order records the approval date and recalculates the committed date from it, the conversation is a fact, not an argument.
The fix
Three steps, in this order.
01
Review the order before it reaches the floor
Specification complete, price approved, material position known, before any date goes to the customer.
02
Commit the date from the production board
The date comes from the current load and material lead time, not from the negotiating table.
03
Record progress at the job card
Status is a by-product of production, so slippage is visible days before the customer notices.
Straight answers
What owners ask us here.
Clients rarely accept a conditional date.
They accept it when it is in the quotation from the start and the record shows exactly when approval came back.
What if the drawing changes after approval?
That is a revision, with its own effect on the date, recorded and communicated when it happens rather than at delivery.
How do we handle staged site deliveries?
Line-level balances track what has been dispatched and what is still owed against each stage.
Questions people ask
Straight answers, no sales talk.
System of Marketing & Sales
Put enquiry to dispatch on one governed line.
Tell us how your plant sells today. We'll show you where the line breaks and what it takes to close it.