The procurement stage in Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) projects can often have a significant impact on the project schedule.

In complex infrastructure projects, certain specialty items have a long delivery period. For example in industries such as – Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Nuclear Power etc. procurement of certain special equipment can take months or even more than a year.

Special items like a wellhead in the upstream oil and gas industry is one such example of long lead items. Distillation columns can have long lead times in the downstream petroleum industry. But even other common equipment like compressors, generators, heat exchangers etc. can also take longer times to procure, depending on their size, complexity, special material or fabrication requirements etc.

Such long timelines for purchase and delivery mean that installation, construction and commissioning activities are heavily dependent on delivery of these items. Hence preliminary design and ordering of these items has to be prioritized.

Such material items with longer overall purchase and delivery timelines are commonly referred to as ‘long lead items’. The engineering design and purchase of these items are always on highest priority in an EPC project.

Why are long lead items important

An EPC project starts with the design of the facilities to be built. Based on the engineering design drawings and Balance of Materials (BOM), material needed for construction is purchased. Construction begins after the purchased material is delivered.

The construction phase and final project completion are very sensitive to delays in procurement. Since long lead items already have long delivery times, any delay there can cause big delays in final project delivery.

Additionally, any material delivery delays also mean that construction team on site will be idle. This has a direct cost impact on construction budget.

Hence it is important that –

• Long lead items should be correctly identified at the start of the project
• Project schedule should assign the highest priority to design and ordering of long lead items
• Fabrication and delivery progress of long lead items should be periodically tracked to forecast any delays so that the cost impact of this delay can be minimized

Manage procurement and delivery of long lead items

Given how the purchase timelines for long lead items have an important effect on the project schedule, it is always advisable to connect the procurement and logistics management platform with your project planning platform.

This can help with –

• Creating comprehensive procurement timelines for all items including long lead items
• Tracking the procurement of long lead items against planned timeline from the project schedule
• Alert project and procurement managers in case of potential delays in delivery of long lead items.

Typically, most of the communication and coordination with vendors happens with emails and the progress of procurement activities is often tracked in spreadsheets.

Hence the ideal platform for tracking the purchase and delivery of long lead items should connect – emails, spreadsheet and project schedule.

WorkPack for Procurement Management

Meet WorkPack. It is a project and document management platform for engineering & construction projects.

It also facilitates easy tracking and management of procurement process within engineering & construction projects.

WorkPack combines emails, spreadsheets, project schedule and a workflow engine. Together it is a powerful platform where you can have end to end visibility of long lead procurement.

WorkPack has already helped project managers from different industries to streamline project management and execution.

Do you think it can also help your project team to have better visibility of long lead procurement?

Find out by creating a free account for yourself and your team. Let us know in case of any questions or if you would like for us to set up a demo session for your team.