It is becoming increasingly clear that projects are becoming ever more frequently executed on tighter schedules to enable Clients to maximise their investment returns by generating revenue at the earliest opportunity. One of the impacts of these tighter project schedules is a tendency towards “just-in-time” procurement, culminating in a proportionate reduction in any available delivery schedule “float”. In other words, an ever increasing number of items are becoming schedule critical before the purchase orders have even been placed.

Marshsides’ professional commercially orientated expeditors represent the means by which the Client can minimise the risk of vendors failing to meet their contractual obligations, and subsequently also minimise or obviate any potential “knock-on” effect upon the overall project schedule.

The use of our expeditors ensures that any potential delays are identified as early as possible in the schedule, and that effective corrective actions are agreed between all parties and implemented on a timely and proactive basis.

Marshside provides two main categories of expediting services, which can be effected in isolation or in combination to suit the specific project requirements:

• Desk Expediting:          The expeditor mainly operates from either the Clients’ own offices or from his own home base office, and monitors vendor progress remotely via telecommunications and computer. This remote expediting is supplemented and augmented by regular, scheduled field expediting visits to the vendors’ own premises as required.

• Resident Expediting:    The expeditor mainly operates from the main vendors’ own premises and maintains regular communications with the Clients’ office. The expeditor is available on site to identify potential areas of delay and to advise and assist wherever possible to eliminate problems and/or minimise their impact. The resident expeditor will also, when appropriate, supplement the vendor’s personnel when dealing directly with sub-vendors to resolve any potential interim material delays.

Based on the above, the expediting personnel supplied via Marshside effectively become an integrated part of the Client’s own project team, and will actively subscribe to, and assist in, the development of a fully co-ordinated joint working ethos.

Dependent upon the individual Clients’ stated requirements, our expediting personnel will typically be involved in the following key activities:

• Perform a procurement milestone schedule review.
• Review the vendors’ own Quality Plan and manufacturing schedule submissions.
• Attend pre-production kick-off meetings.
• Perform continuous assessment of vendor performance.
• Ensure timely submissions of required vendor documentation in full accordance with stated schedule requirements.
• Ensure structured and timely control of documentation and technical queries requiring approval.
• Perform detailed desk expediting of vendors.
• Undertake hands on field expediting trips to both main vendor and sub-vendor premises.
• Arrange and chair meetings between Client and vendor(s) as required.
• Submit regular detailed and in-depth reports on vendor progress, clearly detailing any problem areas (actual or anticipated), and providing professional recommendations for their resolution or avoidance.
• Liaise effectively with QA/QC personnel, to ensure that the stated quality requirements sought by our Clients are complied with in full.

In summary, our effective co-ordination, coupled with our proven professional expertise, not only ensures that products meet the required specification parameters in full, but also minimises the risk of late deliveries and thereby effectively reduces any impact upon the overall construction schedule(s). This effectively also eliminates the risk of our Clients incurring “knock on” costs (either direct or indirect), due to late delivery of key equipment, which obviously represents a very important element of the overall project costing philosophy. The Marshside Groups’ expediting services have proved extremely effective in aiding our Clients’ in the following key project areas:

• Ensuring compliance with stated contractual delivery schedules (for equipment, materials, drawings and final documentation).
• Identifying potential problem areas at an early stage and effectively resolving them.
• Performing effective “trouble-shooting” in problem areas.
• Ensuring effective liaison and interface with Quality Assurance / Quality Control personnel.
• Ensuring that stated budget parameters are met in full.