What actually delays a steel erection job

We deploy crews of twenty-five to forty men on structural packages and commit to completion periods measured in months. When a job slips, the cause is almost never the rate of bolting. It is one of the following.

1. Foundations that are not ready, or not right

The most common single cause. Anchor bolts set out of position or out of level stop erection dead, because a column that will not sit on its base cannot be plumbed, and nothing above it can go up. A half-day check of the bolt layout against the drawing, before the steel arrives, saves weeks.

2. Drawings still under revision

Fabrication cannot start on a drawing that is going to change, and if it starts anyway the members get made twice. Where a client needs to begin before design is frozen, the honest approach is to fabricate only the parts that are settled — usually columns and main bracing — and hold the connections and platforms until the layout is final.

3. Crane access planned too late

On a tight process plot the crane position is a design decision, not a site decision. If it is left until erection day, you discover that the only standing position for the required radius is where the pipe rack has already been built. Plan lift heights, radii and machine positions with the erection sequence, before the first column.

4. Material arriving out of sequence

Steel delivered by convenience rather than by erection order fills the yard with members you cannot use yet and buries the ones you need. Marking and sequencing at the fabrication stage — matching each member to where it goes and when — costs nothing and prevents this entirely.

5. Permits and shared access on a live plant

In a running plant, hot work permits, shutdown windows, restricted slew and night-only access all cut into working hours. The programme has to be built around the plant's schedule from the start. A programme that assumes clear access on an operating site is a programme that will not be met.

What we do about it

Before mobilising, we check the foundation setting-out, confirm which drawings are frozen, agree crane positions and the erection sequence, and mark members to that sequence. None of that is glamorous. It is the difference between a five-month job finishing in five months and finishing in seven.