What is a long lead item?
A long lead item is any equipment or material whose time from order to delivery is longer than the time the rest of the project can wait for it. In energy projects the usual examples are main power transformers (MPT), switchgear, inverters, wind turbine components and high voltage cable. Each one is made to a specification, often tested in the factory before shipment, and delivered to a site that cannot move on until it arrives.
Size and price are not the test. A set of protection relays or a substation control cabinet can hold energisation for as long as a large transformer if it is ordered late. The question to ask of every item is simple: if this arrives the day it is needed, does the work start, and if it arrives a month late, what stops?
Why are lead times so long now?
Wood Mackenzie, a market analyst, reported in April 2024 that transformer lead times had risen from around 50 weeks in 2021 to 120 weeks on average in 2024. The same analysis gave a range of 80 to 210 weeks for large transformers, both substation power and generator step up units. It put much of the cause down to supply shortages and an inflexible market.
The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2023 that utilities face supply chain problems that include long and increasing manufacturing lead times. These figures move from year to year, so the quote from the manufacturer is the number to plan with, and a published average is only a starting point for the conversation with the supplier.
How do you plan backwards from a delivery?
Start from the need date, the day the equipment must be on site for the next stage to begin, and work back. Subtract the time for the factory acceptance test (FAT), shipping, customs and unloading, then the manufacturing time the supplier has quoted. The result is the latest order date. A plan built forward from today usually finds the problem a few months too late, when the options have gone.
In Reperline each long lead item is a milestone with its own planned start and planned end. The order is a commitment on the matching budget item, and it counts in forecast spend on the day it is signed, so finance sees the cost of the order before any invoice arrives. The delivery is a separate milestone with its own planned date. When the factory test is done, the site team enters it as a fact with the test sheet photographed and a note.
There is no energy template in Reperline, so an energy project is built from a general template or by hand, and its schedule can be imported from a PDF. The energy projects page is the place to start, and the schedule module explains how the planned dates are kept.
What should expediting check each week?
Expediting is the routine work of confirming that a supplier is still on the date it gave. A useful weekly check is short and written down, so the next person can see what was asked and what came back.
- Whether the supplier has confirmed a production slot in writing, against the order date.
- Whether the FAT has a planned day, not just a month.
- Whether shipping, customs and transport are booked, and who books them.
- Whether the receiving works are ready, such as foundations, cable trenches and crane access.
- Whether the delivery milestone has a forecast date later than its planned date, and by how many days.
- Whether the network operator has been told about any change that touches the energisation date.
What should you watch once the order is placed?
The early warning comes from the schedule, not from the purchase order. Reperline raises a signal when a milestone is overdue, and when its forecast end runs more than 7 days past its planned date. A delivery milestone gets a linear forecast only when progress is reported, because the forecast is the start plus the time spent divided by the share done. No progress means no forecast, and the gap is shown as a gap.
When the supplier moves the slot, someone who knows the supplier can enter a manual forecast date. It replaces the calculated one, and it is a person's estimate, so write the date it was given and the source in the note. Reperline has no critical path. When a delivery slips, it does not move the stages after it, and the people responsible decide which stages change. That is why the note matters. Where a delivery has to land inside a hard window, read seasonal windows in renewable construction, and for how facts from a remote site reach the office, read remote site progress reporting.
What does a delivery plan look like in practice?
Take one main power transformer as an example. The site needs the unit on the day the foundations and the cable trenches are ready to take it, and that day is the need date. The planned delivery is set a few weeks earlier, to leave room for unloading and for the crane. The order date is set back from the production slot the supplier has confirmed. Each of those dates is a planned date on its own milestone, so a change in one shows in the schedule rather than staying in an email.
The same logic applies to switchgear, inverters and cable, which often arrive in several shipments. Plan each shipment as its own delivery, with its own planned date and its own order commitment, instead of one line for the whole package. A late shipment of cable then shows as one late delivery, and not as a vague slip across the whole installation.
Keep the planned dates of the first plan even after the forecast moves. The gap between the two is the story of the order, and it is the first thing a new project manager will ask about.
Where does Reperline stop?
Reperline keeps the plan, the commitments, the facts reported from site and the forecasts that follow from them. It does not manage the supplier, inspect the factory, book the crane or read the network operator's outage calendar. It does not replace SCADA, monitoring or dispatch systems, which watch the plant once it runs. A delivery date that nobody has entered is invisible to the project, and so is a promise made on a phone call. The budget module shows the commitments side by side with the plan, and the plans are at €39 a month per project, with a 14 day free trial and no card needed, on the pricing page.