Late Deliverable Risk Catalog, Version 2.0

The fact that every construction site is both temporary and unique makes the timely onsite delivery of all resources crucial to successful project outcome. Indeed, since project schedules and budgets, and construction contracts and subcontracts are all based on assumed delivery dates, overall project success is contingent upon the on-time delivery of equipment and materials. However, late deliverables to the construction site continue to create impediments to project success throughout the industry. Beyond perhaps noting the immediate impacts to cost and schedule, project teams rarely trace the full range of impacts through the entire project. It is these secondary or knock-on effects of one or more late deliverables that can exacerbate their initial effects and lead to the pushing of schedule activities to the right; such schedule changes can place undue pressure on the traditional project goals of safety, quality, cost, and schedule. Furthermore, with the additional strain placed on meeting these goals, inordinate pressure is also placed on the individuals, teams, and organizations involved in the project. Thus, Research Team (RT) 300 kept its focus on the effects of late deliverables on the five project pillars of safety, quality, cost, schedule, and organizational capacity.

In order to understand fully the far-reaching impacts of late deliverables at the construction site, the Construction Industry Institute (CII), in collaboration with the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), commissioned RT300 to investigate how various types of late deliverables affect project cost, schedule, quality, safety, and organizational performance. The formal research objective of RT300, whose membership included experts from leading industry owners and contractors along with distinguished university academics, was to close this gap in knowledge, increase awareness of the broader range of impacts, and focus on mechanisms for industry improvement. Specifically, RT300 was charged with determining the most common types of late deliverables, identifying their full range of impacts on projects, and introducing tools and techniques to improved project performance.

To meet these objectives, RT300 conducted research with two primary goals: 1) assess how late deliverables and resulting impacts are currently perceived and managed by construction industry professionals; and 2) create an extensive database of late deliverables and their impacts, for use in the construction industry. Pursuing the first research goal, RT300 conducted surveys, questionnaires, and case studies to determine how industry professionals view late deliverables. To accomplish the second research goal, RT300 used these same methods to enumerate, categorize, and catalogue known late deliverables and their impacts. Consequently, the team developed the Late Deliverable Risk Catalog (LDRC)—the focus of this user guide—as an industry tool to communicate its findings to construction industry professionals and project teams.

RT300 established two primary purposes of the LDRC, based on the results of the first research goal: 1) increase industry awareness of the full range of impacts caused by late deliverables; and 2) promote owner-contractor alignment on the those impacts.

Overall, contractors rated the site-related impacts to the field consistently higher than did owners. This assessment included the following categories: Work Relocation and Re-sequencing; Overtime and Shift Work; Critical Path Management; Alternative and Additional Tools and Equipment; and Onsite Material Handling. Meanwhile, owners showed greater concern with impacts to scope and commissioning/start-up, and less with liquidated damages than contractors. While most of these differences would be expected, they are important to understanding the viewpoints of owners and contractors, promoting alignment when late deliverables occur, and helping to create a starting point for strategies to overcome late deliverables and prevent disagreements. It is the hope of RT 300 that the Late Deliverable Risk Catalog will succeed in promoting improved alignment between owners and contractors. A more detailed look into these and other research results can be found in Research Summary (RS) 300-1, The True Impacts of Late Deliverables at the Construction Site, and Research Report (RR) 300-11, The True Impacts of Late Deliverables at the Construction Site. RR300-11 also includes additional statistical analysis of the data presented in these graphs.

RT300 has prepared this implementation resource to help practitioners successfully apply the LDRC and understand the associated research. Chapter 2 briefly outlines the research background that is described in RS300-1 and detailed in RR300-11. After the team performed its literature review and collected expert input, it catalogued the knowledge gathered into a relational database. It further created the LDRC to give project teams a means of easily navigating and presenting the late deliverable data relevant to their respective projects. The LDRC is described in detail in Chapter 3, along with instructions for use, deployment recommendations, and example applications. Chapter 4 presents a set of lessons learned about late deliverables, developed from the RT300 case studies, along with several recommendations for preventing the most common types of late deliverables, and suggestions for incorporating the LDRC into company processes. Finally, Chapter 5 includes a summary of the expected benefits associated with a greater understanding of the true impacts of late deliverables to the construction site.