You can promise the customer a date. You cannot promise the scaffolder's, the DNO's or the roofer's, and the kit has a delivery date nobody promised you either. Every install date you give is five dates, and you control one of them.
Part of the series Planning and running the install.
"Tuesday the 14th", said in March
The customer signs in March and asks the question every customer asks: when? Somebody looks at the diary, sees the crew are free, and says "we're looking at Tuesday the 14th". The kit is ordered. The scaffold is booked by phone. The G99 application goes in.
Then the scaffolder rings: they can do the Wednesday, not the Monday. The inverter slips a week. The DNO has not answered, and nobody has chased them, because whose job was that? The roofer is on another site. On the 10th the customer rings the office to ask what time the crew will arrive. The office sees "Install, 14th" in the diary and says "morning, I think". Then they find out.
Nobody lied. The date the customer heard was a hope. The diary held one dependency out of five, and nothing showed the other four.
The date slipped because nobody was holding the other four
Trace a moved install back and you find one of these.
- The date was promised before the dependencies were listed. A free crew is not a job that can go ahead. Scaffold, kit, consent and the other trade were assumed, not checked.
- Nobody owned each dependency. Chasing the DNO was everyone's job, so it was nobody's. The scaffold was "sorted" because someone had rung once.
- It lived in phone calls and emails. The scaffolder's new day was in a text on the owner's phone. The delivery date was in a supplier email. The office had the diary and nothing else.
- Nobody looked at what was still open. There was no point in the week when someone went through every booked install and asked what was outstanding. The problems surfaced when the customer rang.
None of this is about effort. The firm had no way of seeing the work other people still owed it.
A date is provisional until the list is empty
This is the routine. It needs a list per job, a diary and a quarter of an hour a week. You can start it on a sheet of paper pinned above the office desk.
1. List the dependencies before a date is offered
For every job sold, write down everything that has to be true before the crew can turn up, with a name and a date against each line. The usual lines: scaffold up, kit delivered, DNO answered, roofer or other trade booked, crew booked, and the customer's own jobs (the loft cleared, the drive free, someone at home). A line without a name and a date is a dependency nobody is holding.
The DNO line goes first. On a G99 job the DNO's approval has to be in hand before the install, so their answer sets the date, not your crew. On a G98 job the DNO is notified within 28 days of commissioning, so it is not a dependency for the date at all. Both rules are the ENA's Engineering Recommendations G98 and G99.
2. Give two kinds of date, and say which one it is
A provisional date has open lines on the list. You tell the customer "we are aiming for the week of the 14th, and we will confirm by the 30th". A confirmed date has every line landing before the install, with the scaffold and crew booked for it. You tell the customer "Tuesday the 14th, the scaffold goes up the day before, the crew arrive at eight".
Use those words. A customer told "provisional, confirmed by the 30th" is calm and rings nobody. A customer told "Tuesday the 14th" who then gets a change has been let down. The day they will hear by goes in the diary as a task with a name on it, like any call-back.
3. Walk every open list once a week
One person, a fixed slot, every booked install in the next six weeks. For each job: which lines are still open, who is chasing them, has any date moved. Any line past its date gets a call that day. This is the quarter of an hour that finds the slipped scaffold on the 3rd instead of the 13th.
4. Move early, and tell the customer first
When a dependency slips and cannot be recovered, move the install now, while it is still two weeks away. A move with two weeks' notice is a rearrangement. A move the day before is a broken promise, and the customer remembers which one they got. Either way the customer hears it from you the same day, before they have a reason to ring.
5. Confirm again the week before
Walk the list one last time seven days out. Scaffold confirmed for the day before. Kit in the yard. DNO letter on file. Roofer's day confirmed. Customer told what time the crew arrive and how many days they will be there. Then the date is confirmed.
The routine stops in the week it was for
It fails two ways. The weekly walk is skipped in a busy week, which is the week three dates move at once. And the list lives with one person, so when they are on a roof the office is back to guessing.
Two things stop that. The walk has a fixed slot and a named person, with a stand-in. And the list, the date and what the customer was last told live where the office can see them.
Installa keeps the date where everyone can see it
- Stop guessing whether the crew are free. Booking an install on a job puts it on the team calendar. Pick the date, the lead installer and the crew, and before you save, Installa tells you who is already out on another install that day, later days of a multi-day job included. The team view shows each installer's days at a glance.
- Stop moving dates in silence. Drag an install to a new day on the calendar and Installa asks first if anyone clashes, writes the move on the job's history, and offers to email the customer their new date. The same choice is there when you book.
- Stop typing the date into everyone's phone. Each person has a private feed for their phone's calendar app: their surveys, installs and dated tasks, with the site address and a link back to the job.
- Stop wondering where the DNO is. The job file carries the DNO items with due dates worked out from the install date and the commissioning date: approval before the install on a G99 job, notification within 28 days of commissioning on a G98. Anything overdue, or due within a fortnight, sits on the dashboard's needs-attention list.
- Stop carrying the chasing in your head. Each line on the list becomes a task on the job with a name and a due date. The person it belongs to is told in Installa when it falls due, and the job's manager is told when an install date passes without the job moving on.
- Stop answering "when is it?" on the phone. The customer portal shows the customer where their job is, from survey to complete, the install date or "to be agreed with you", and how many working days the crew will be there.
A list per job, a provisional date until the list is empty, a weekly walk, and the customer told before they ask. That is the whole routine, and it is what the calendar and the job file are for. See how scheduling in Installa works.