Lead time can me a few things in construction. It can mean the total time from NTP to when an item is delivered or installed on site. It can also be a period of time within the longer lead time. It is fairly common to discuss lead time as it relates submittal approval and delivery on site. For example, a medium sized butterfly valve may have a 12 week lead time from when the its submittal is approved and released for fabrication to when it is delivered on site. Good vendors are conservative on their lead times but the actual duration often runs over or under the planned duration. Going over is obviously bad as it delays completion of certain scopes of work or maybe even the entire project. Go under can be bad as well. The project may not be ready to take delivery of an item. Certain items require special storage requirements that can't always be maintained on site so off site storage would have to be coordinated. Then additional loading, unloading, and trucking efforts would be required. Going back to the 12" butterfly valve, it is unlikely that early delivery would cause a big headache but late delivery could cause delays in system completion, startup, testing and commissioning. We have schedules for a reason so the best bet is to work with the supplier to plan and then hit the delivery date as accurately and closely as possible.
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