Long-lead equipment expediting
The vendor moved the switchgear ship date in an email to one buyer. The ERP still shows the old date, and you hear about it at the OAC meeting. At 22-month switchgear lead times, a missed factory slot can cost a full production cycle (Archdesk, 2026-04-16).
Request a sample runSee one register row
LeadTime Desk is a long-lead equipment expediting desk for US electrical contractors, electrical distributors and generator and UPS dealers. It keeps one register of every switchgear, transformer, generator and UPS order, reads vendor emails for date changes, flags slips against your required-on-site dates and drafts the chases your buyer sends. Run by Mike Rodgers, Denver.
What it costs when a date slips
Nobody skipped a task. The acknowledgment went to the buyer, the schedule belongs to the PM, the ERP holds whatever date someone typed in, and the owner wants a lookahead on every long-lead item by Friday. Monday morning is twenty emails to twenty vendors for the same update.
What changes
Every open long-lead PO line with its ERP date, the vendor's latest written date, the required-on-site date and float.Result: no promised date lives only in one inbox.Owner: your buyer confirms which lines are long-lead; you keep the register.
Acknowledgments and vendor emails are read for dates, each citing its source sentence; unclear ones are marked not read.Result: every date traces to the vendor's own words.Owner: your buyer; any date the desk cannot read goes to them as not read.
Float is the required-on-site date minus the vendor ship date and transit days. Lines under your threshold are listed for the PM.Result: a dated warning while float remains.Owner: your PM; your buyer sets the float threshold and transit days.
Each line gets a next chase date from your float bands, and chases plus the weekly owner update are drafted.Result: Monday is approving drafts, not writing twenty emails.Owner: your buyer, who edits and sends every message from their own mailbox.
Planning ranges, with sources
Pick a class. Public ranges tell you what to plan against; the register tracks what your vendor last put in writing.
Same desk, three buyer situations
The same four parts run on one register spine: Long-Lead Register, Ack Reader, Slip List and Chase Drafts. What changes by buyer is where the required date comes from and who gets the update.
LeadTime Desk for electrical contractorsRequired-on-site dates come from your P6 or MS Project export. Slips go to the PM, and the weekly owner or GC update is drafted for the PM to send.Open the page
LeadTime Desk for electrical distributorsRequired dates come from your customer's order. Manufacturer date changes are compared with what you promised the contractor.Open the page
LeadTime Desk for generator and UPS dealersShip, witness test and emissions package dates are tracked per factory order against your customer's required date.Open the pageWhat you pay for this today
The human route is an expediter. Most US expediters earn $60,000 to $95,000 base, and senior expediters on data center programs run $90,000 to $115,000, before benefits (iRecruit, irecruit.co/hire/expeditor, read 2026-09-25). The same recruiter quotes 3 to 4 weeks from scoping call to accepted offer.
The hidden route is a premium nobody tagged. Archdesk's 2025 to 2026 benchmark puts the average expediting cost buried in miscellaneous lines at $400,000 on jobs where premiums were not tagged at PO commitment (archdesk.com, 2026-04-16).
Your own cost of one late find is plain arithmetic: crew days idled times your crew day cost, plus any liquidated damages per day in the contract. You supply those numbers. We do not publish a typical figure.
The $1,500 Long-Lead Check costs less than one week of a data center expediter's base pay, which is $1,731 to $2,212 a week ($90,000 and $115,000 divided by 52). The desk does not replace your buyer. It takes the status chasing off their week.
The offer and its prices
A named desk with four parts, a written rulebook and three prices. Start with one project, and stop there if the register does not earn its keep.
Long-Lead Check (the sample run)
$1,500
One project, up to 50 open long-lead PO lines and 90 days of vendor emails. Report 10 business days after your exports arrive.
Build
$6,000
Four weeks: exports and a read-only email forward connected, float bands set, 2 weeks of parallel run beside your buyer, then an acceptance test.
Monthly run
$1,500 a month
Up to 3 active projects and 150 open long-lead lines. Weekly register and drafts, monthly KPI report. Month to month, 30 days notice.
Sign the build within 30 days of your Long-Lead Check report and the $1,500 comes off the setup in full.
All three prices are confirmed in a written statement of work before any work starts. No price depends on a result, and no delivery date is guaranteed.
The rulebook
Mike Rodgers answers for every miss. When a check fails, the line is corrected, the miss is written into a change log you keep, and the fix is shown to your buyer before the next weekly register. The build ends with an acceptance test on your own lines over the 2-week parallel run.
How it works
A 45-minute intake call, then you send one project's PO export, vendor email export and schedule export. On day 8 we review the register with your buyer and one PM. On day 10 you get the report, and it is yours to keep.
Week 1 connects a weekly ERP and schedule export and a read-only email forward. Week 2 sets float bands, transit days and templates. Weeks 3 and 4 run beside your buyer, then the acceptance test.
The register updates weekly, chases and the owner update are drafted, and a monthly KPI report shows stale dates, days of warning per slip and ERP disagreements.
What a sample run returns
Demonstration, not a client result
A Long-Lead Check turns a PO export, a schedule export and a folder of vendor emails into one row per long-lead line. The row below was written by hand for this page to show the format. It is not taken from any client file, vendor or project, and it is not software output.
| PO and line | PO 24-118, line 3 |
|---|---|
| Item | 15 kV metal-clad switchgear lineup |
| Vendor | Vendor B (fictional) |
| ERP promise date | Ship 2026-10-05 |
| Vendor's latest written date | Ship 2026-11-09, from a vendor email dated 2026-09-21: "revised ship date is November 9 pending factory test" |
| Required-on-site date | 2026-11-23, from the schedule export |
| Transit days | 7, set by your buyer |
| Float | 1 week now; it was 6 weeks on the ERP date |
| Flags | On the slip list (under your 2-week threshold). ERP date disagrees with the vendor's date. |
| Drafted for your buyer | A chase asking Vendor B to confirm the factory test date and whether an earlier ship slot exists. Nothing is sent until your buyer sends it. |
| Drafted for your PM | One owner update line: the new ship date, the float lost and the options being checked. |
A real Long-Lead Check report also counts how many of your lines carry a vendor date older than 14 days and how many ERP dates disagree with the vendor's latest written date.
Lead time guides
Medium-voltage switchgear: 52 to 80 weeks for 15 kV class gear (Terrapin), a 22-month average on 2026 orders (Archdesk), and the dated gates to track.
Read the guide40 to 65 wksPad-mount, 0 to 5 MVA (Terrapin)Pad-mount 40 to 65 weeks, substation 65 to 110 weeks, generator step-up 100 weeks or more (Terrapin), and the gates from submittal to set.
Read the guide50 to 78 wksDiesel, 1,500 to 3,000 kW (Terrapin)Diesel generators 32 to 110 weeks by size, static UPS 20 to 60 weeks, transfer switches 24 to 40 weeks (Terrapin), and the witness test and submittal gates.
Read the guideStraight answers
The Long-Lead Check is $1,500 for one project, reported 10 business days after your exports arrive. The build is $6,000 over 4 weeks, and the monthly run is $1,500 a month, month to month with 30 days notice. Sign the build within 30 days of the report and the $1,500 comes off the setup.
No. The desk has no send function. Every chase and owner update is a draft, and your buyer or PM edits and sends it from their own mailbox, so vendor relationships stay with your people.
For the Long-Lead Check, only exports: open PO lines from your ERP or PO log, 90 days of vendor emails for those POs, and required-on-site dates from the schedule. For the monthly run, a weekly export and a forwarding rule for listed POs to a read-only desk mailbox. We never get ERP write access or mailbox send rights.
The ERP holds the date someone typed in. The register compares it with the vendor's latest written date and the date the job needs the gear, and the Long-Lead Check counts how many of your lines disagree.
No. Tracking does not change a factory slot. It tells your team sooner, so you can resequence, ask for a partial shipment or warn the owner, and the monthly report measures days of warning per slip on your own POs.
You own your data and every output. Models run on hardware we own by default, and a third-party model API is used only if you opt in writing. Your documents are not used to train any model, and files are deleted within 30 days of the end of the engagement, with written confirmation.
Who runs it
Mike Rodgers runs LeadTime Desk from Denver and serves contractors and suppliers across the United States remotely. He scopes each Long-Lead Check, reviews the register with your buyer and answers for every miss in the rulebook. This page shows public research and a labelled demonstration; it claims no client results.
Start with one project
Tell us the project, the long-lead equipment still open and roughly how many PO lines that is. Mike Rodgers replies by email with the export list and a start date for the $1,500 Long-Lead Check. No call is needed to get that reply.
