[liketochill]

I’m also in industrial automation and know the challenges of being “last” in years long projects.

We are very deliberate about setting deliverable dates in time after the required inputs by others are available, and when inevitably they are not, we have a spreadsheet sent to the customer every 2 weeks which shows what information we are missing and the delay that is causing to our progress. As we are liable for damages if we delay the project it is necessary for us to have the proof that we did not cause the project to be behind schedule. This often means having these difficult conversations only a month in to a year long project when vendor drawings we were promised are not delivered.

[c_o_n_v_e_x]

I "grew up" in industrial automation, I feel ya on delays. I relocated overseas for DCS project on a new chemical plant. The planned length of the assignment was 14 months...4.5 years later, we were finished. One EPC was not able to get the underground utilities installed in time before other EPCs (there were 4) started moving in pipe racks, equipment modules, etc. Imagine trying to put in all your underground cables, sewers, pipes, etc. after the site had already been built on top.

Another EPC was moving so fast to try and meet a project milestone in order to get paid, they installed an instrument enclosure totally backwards (huge crane required to drop enclosure into place). They still got paid as the milestone didn't specify the enclosure had to be installed correctly.

One of annoying aspects about controls is that non-technical stakeholders see a mechanically complete object/machine/plant and wonder why it isn't working yet. Also, I always found that the controls guys were the first to get yelled at if something at site stopped working.

[taneq]

> We are very deliberate about setting deliverable dates in time after the required inputs by others are available, and when inevitably they are not, we have a spreadsheet sent to the customer every 2 weeks which shows what information we are missing and the delay that is causing to our progress.

This is a great approach if you can stay that organised. It reminds me of one of my fundamental rules of business - the two benchmarks you're compared to are the previous entry in the Gantt chart and your counterpart in the client organisation. If you can stay ahead of both of those, you're golden!