A two-week slip on a construction programme rarely costs two weeks.

By the time a delay on one trade package reaches the critical path, it has usually pulled preliminaries, financing costs and follow-on trades along with it — turning a scheduling issue into a commercial one. The packages most exposed are the ones with the least float and the most downstream dependents, which is precisely why they deserve disproportionate attention during planning, not just when they start running late.

The interventions that work are unglamorous: tracking float consumption weekly rather than only at monthly reporting, agreeing recovery triggers before they are needed, and keeping procurement lead times honest rather than optimistic. None of it prevents every delay — but it catches the ones that matter while they are still cheap to fix.