The cheapest programme time on any job is bought before anyone signs. Andy Pritchard on who needs to be in the room, and why price is the wrong reason to keep them out
Most programmes are written by one person, at a desk, before most of the people who will build the job have been appointed. The job then spends months finding out what that person could not have known.
The fix is easy to describe.
Before contract, put the customer, the designers, the contractor and the key trade partners in a room with the drawings and build the sequence together. Every clash, gap and optimistic duration found on paper is one nobody has to find with a crane standing. The workshops take a couple of days. If the original programme was optimistic, they may well add a month to it.
That is the month worth winning: found before contract, it costs a month. Found on site, it multiplies into several.
So why does it so rarely happen? Almost always, the answer is price.
The only reliable programme is a shared one
A programme is only as good as the knowledge behind it, and on any job that knowledge sits in different firms. The designer knows which information is late. The frame partner knows what fits on a lorry. The M&E contractor knows how long commissioning really takes. The customer knows how long their own approvals take, and rarely says.
What good looks like before contract:
- Fix what cannot move, and leave the rest open. Start, completion, sectional dates, gateway approvals, possession dates. A finished programme invites each trade to check its own line and nod. A draft invites them to fix it.
- Ask every trade what it needs from everyone else. That one question surfaces the interfaces, the missing information and the access clashes a desk programme never sees.
- Plan procurement backwards from the site date. Design, approval, manufacture and delivery of every critical package, contractor-designed portions included, planned back from when site needs it, not forward from when design finishes.
Win the buffer here. I aim to win at least 5% of the programme as a buffer before contract, and the rest of a 5% to 10% buffer in the first third of the works.
On a £22m secondary school built on a live site beside a working primary school, the team wrote its key sequences with the trades before a spade went in, and buffer was won pre-contract. A late design and build window package then left the envelope finishing 12 weeks behind. The school still handed over six weeks early. That is what the month buys: not a job where nothing goes wrong, but one that can absorb it when it does.
What stops you
The usual objection is that early engagement drives up the price. Bring the contractor and its partners in before the price is fixed and you lose competitive tension.
The early price is often higher than the lowest tender. But it is much closer to the outturn cost, because the team has priced the job it will actually build. The lowest tender tells you the real price at the end of the job, through variations, delay and disputes. Early engagement tells you at the start, while you can still do something about it.
The government’s own review of public sector frameworks, Constructing the Gold Standard, reports 18.5% efficiency savings on its trial alliance contracts, alongside better quality and safety, and recommends early supply chain involvement to repeat them.
Nobody wins when a job is late. The customer gets the building late, the contractor loses its margin, and the partners carry labour they cannot recover. Yet each side can believe it won: the low price and short programme at contract, then the dispute afterwards. Mostly that is confirmation bias, counting the win and not what it cost to get there. At worst it is a sales tactic: win it low, make it back later.
A procurement strategy that pays for the month
Early engagement asks something awkward of a trade partner: to give time and expertise to a job it may not deliver. That only works if the relationship makes it worthwhile over time.
Contractors cut the tender list. Three quotes per package is generally seen as the minimum, and some lowest-price contractors send a package to 10. If you are confident all three will return a price, three is the optimum. Each partner then wins its fair share, and the time it gives to workshops on jobs it loses is an investment rather than a write-off.
Partners commit to on time, every time. A shorter list is earned by delivery.
Customers buy the process, not just the price. Two-stage and early contractor involvement routes exist for exactly this, and the government’s Construction Playbook asks central government clients to involve suppliers early and to favour longer-term contracts.
Much of what passes for common sense on a programme is experience nobody has written down, and a partner who trusts the relationship will give it to you for free.
Do it this month, whichever seat you are in
- If you commission the job. Before tender, ask how much time your programme allows for the team to plan together, and who will be in the room. Budget for it the way you budget design fees.
- If you run the job. Count the partners on the tender lists for your biggest packages. At 10, each has a one in 10 chance of winning, so do not be surprised when none of them come to your workshops. At three, they are far more likely to.
- If you advise on the job. Put the customer’s decisions into the programme: design sign-offs, change approvals, and how long it takes to agree more money if the budget goes up. They are durations like any other, and the workshop is where to find them.
The month before contract is the cheapest time you will ever buy on a job. Every week you do not spend there, you spend on site, at site rates.
Andy Pritchard MCIOB is a business improvement consultant, Construction Manager of the Year Gold Medal winner and author of Going for Gold: Constructing Project Managers.
