In a typical infrastructure project, certain material items have a long timeline for procurement and delivery. This long delivery timeline has a strong influence on the overall project schedule, as the subsequent construction and installation can start only after these items get delivered.

Such items are referred to as ‘long lead items’ in infrastructure projects.

It is important for any engineering and construction project manager to properly identify and manage these items. Otherwise, the whole project timeline can get derailed.

Long Lead Items for Solar Projects

Utility scale and rooftop based solar power projects are also infrastructure projects of a specific type. These projects are also done in stages of – Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EP&C).

Any delay in procurement of certain items will definitely delay the subsequent installation and ultimately derail project completion date.

So it is important for solar project managers to identify the long lead items having the longest timelines for purchase and delivery. Then they can expedite the design and ordering of these long lead items.

Usually following items are considered to be long lead items for solar installation projects – PV Panels, Inverters, Switchgears, DC Cables etc.

Depending on the type of project, choice of material make and suppliers, long lead items may vary for your project. But it is important that they should be identified and their impact on the project schedule should be accounted for.

Identify long lead items from solar project BOM

Identifying long lead items from your BOM can be done from your experience of past solar projects.

Alternatively, you can also maintain a thorough database of procurement activities for all projects under execution. Going forward this will help you in your future projects to accurately estimate lead times for different items from your BOS based on – item type, make, supplier, quantity etc.

Having this information handy will also help you in making well informed decisions regarding – type of material, make, supplier etc.

For this purpose, you can explore WorkPack’s procurement module. It tracks all the purchase orders issued by your purchase team. Further, it also tracks material deliveries against those POs. This information is available in a procurement history database, which will help you to –

• Accurately estimate lead times for purchase and delivery of certain items
• Estimate material costs based on certain item type, make, supplier etc.

Prioritize long lead items in project schedule

After identifying lead items for your solar project, next you should schedule your project accordingly. The design, purchase and delivery of these items should be given the highest priority in your project schedule.

So the engineering team should know that they have to prepare the material indent (or requisition), technical specifications and drawings for these items on priority.

Next, the RFQs (Request for Quotations) and Purchase order can also be expedited.

Tracking purchase and delivery

Sure you can prioritize the purchase of lead items in your project schedule.

BUT that does not necessarily ensure that the purchase team will in fact send out the PO on highest priority. You would still have to do some follow up. Otherwise, the project can still slip into delays.

You can exercise another preventive measure against these possible delays using your project management software.

Mark the Purchase Orders and Delivery of long lead items as critical milestones in your project management software. Further, enable your project management software to send you alerts in case these long lead milestones are getting delayed.

Click here to check out a project management software that proactively sends you alerts for critical items.

Use WorkPack to connect procurement and schedule

If you are not sure whether your project management software will allow this, check out WorkPack platform for solar projects. It has helped many solar project managers to connect procurement activities with the project schedule.

As an added benefit WorkPack can also give you proactive alerts by forecasting possible delays.

For example, consider the ‘Material Indent’ (Material Requisition) for inverters is delayed by engineering team. This will eventually delay the delivery of inverters and subsequent installation activities.

But since the ‘Material Requisition’ itself isn’t a critical milestone, this delay may get ignored.

This can happen in case of solar projects, as solar project managers are having to execute many fast tracked projects simultaneously.

WorkPack helps you to prevent this, by forecasting the delay of inverter purchase when material requisition gets delayed.

Do you think WorkPack can help your project team to track long lead items more proactively? Find out for yourself by creating a free account.

Let us know if you need any help to set up the free account or if you would like to schedule a demo session for your team.