Question 15 · Repair & Reuse · Procurement choices
Buy delivery protection, not a promised earlier launch
Which supplier choices protect the critical path within the budget?
Base-case recommendation: for a schedule-first launch, provisionally choose Expedited. Its £8,000 premium buys two weeks of equipment delivery protection and keeps the modelled launch at week 12 for £226,400, leaving £13,600 below the £240,000 cap after contingency. It does not accelerate the launch: fit-out already runs to week 6.
Backup is the £5,000, one-week hedge. Standard is cheapest but has no equipment float. No reliability, quality or contractual evidence is supplied, so this is a conditional planning recommendation; a verified supplier must still pass the purchase checkpoints below.
Fictional what-if workspace. Changes stay in this tab and reset on reload; no record is saved and no external system is changed.
The dependency to protect
Integration waits for both fit-out and usable equipment. With all six staff assigned to fit-out, 24 staff-weeks take four weeks after the two-week design. Integration, pilot and readiness then consume six sequential weeks. To finish at week 12, both branches must be ready at week 6.
Standard: equipment and fit-out jointly control. Backup or Expedited: fit-out controls until delivery slippage uses their one- or two-week margin. Shared staff or equipment conflicts that delay fit-out cannot be cured by purchasing faster equipment alone.
Stress the purchasing choice
Controls are assumptions, not observed supplier performance. Delivery slippage is applied equally to all three offers for a like-for-like stress test. Staff remain fixed at six; costs include keeping that team for the entire modelled launch.
| Offer | Equipment usable | Launch / lateness | Total / cap headroom | Controlling branch | Plan result |
|---|
Selected dependency chain
Elapsed project weeks from the 5 January 2026 baseline; week 12 is 30 March 2026. Bars show durations, not probabilities. Dashed red line marks the week-12 target.
Three supply risks that matter
- Late equipment or a late order release. Standard has zero float; Backup has one week and Expedited two. Require a dated production/dispatch commitment for the full two-hub quantity. Review at design freeze and at the supplier's confirmed dispatch milestone. The stress test does not assign failure probabilities.
- Unusable or incomplete equipment at handover. Compatibility, safety evidence, missing accessories or partial delivery can block integration even if a shipment arrives on time. Define acceptance criteria before purchase, inspect documentation before dispatch and hold the week-6 integration gate until the responsible assessor accepts the equipment.
- A nominal fallback that shares the same bottleneck. “Backup” is only a fixture label: stock, underlying manufacturer, carrier independence and six-person integration capacity are unknown. Check real availability and common dependencies before relying on it. Adding a second order, cancellation or switching costs are not priced here.
This ranking is authored from critical-path exposure, not an incident history or quantified likelihood. Supplier acceleration leaves the separate fit-out risk fully exposed.
Purchase checkpoints and a reviewable decision
| When | Evidence / action | Hold point |
|---|---|---|
| Before week 2 | Confirm specification, quantities for both hubs, safety/compatibility criteria and named assessor. Obtain all-in quotes and reserve a delivery slot if contractually possible. | No binding order based on a lead-time label alone. |
| Design freeze, week 2 | Responsible purchaser checks budget, authority, delivery commitment and acceptance obligations before any actual order. | |
| Latest release is a mathematical limit, not a reason to wait. Escalate before margin reaches zero. | ||
| Supplier-confirmed dispatch milestone | Reconcile remaining lead time with the week-6 usable-equipment requirement. Request proof of complete kit and acceptance documents. | If recovery is unproven, re-plan; do not count an uncontracted alternative as secured. |
| Week 6 integration gate | Both hubs' fit-out and usable equipment must be ready; assessor accepts safety and compatibility evidence. | A favourable cost or schedule calculation cannot waive safety or approve launch. |
For this simulation only: mark evidence you want to assume has been verified. These boxes do not verify anything or confer purchasing authority.
Produces a result below, in this tab. Correct the controls or assumed checks and run again. Reset clears the result; reload also discards it. No order, saved file, approval or supplier contact is created.
Evidence, assumptions and decision rule
Supplied synthetic fixtures
- Case: 12 weeks, £240,000 budget, six cross-trained staff.
- Design 2 weeks; fit-out 24 staff-weeks; integration, pilot and readiness each 2 weeks.
- Standard: 4-week lead, no premium. Backup: 3-week lead, £5,000 premium. Expedited: 2-week lead, £8,000 premium.
- Fixed cost £120,000; staff £1,200 per person-week; contingency £12,000.
Sources: benchmark v1.0.0, question 15, taskFixtures.suppliers and case.fixtures. These are the only substantive inputs used.
Interpretation and limits
- Fit-out and supplier lead time start after design. Integration → pilot → readiness is sequential. No extra stage overlap or two-hub staggering is assumed.
- The full six-person team is paid from start to finish, including any waiting. All six can perform fit-out; no separate staff demand is modelled in parallel.
- Fixed launch cost is assumed to include Standard equipment; supplier premiums are added once. Check that inclusion before trusting totals.
- Lead time means usable equipment for both hubs. Testing, shipment defects and acceptance delays must be included as slippage if not already covered.
- Contingency stays reserved at £12,000 in every scenario; “headroom” is additional room below the cap. No taxes, cancellation, dual-source costs or probabilistic risk valuation are supplied.
Fit-out ready = 2 + 24 / 6 + extra fit-out weeks Equipment ready = 2 + release delay + supplier lead + delivery slippage Launch = max(fit-out ready, equipment ready) + 2 + 2 + 2 Cost = £120,000 + 6 × £1,200 × launch weeks + £12,000 + supplier premium A feasible plan requires launch ≤ 12 AND cost ≤ £240,000. A simulated procurement-review candidate also requires all four assumed evidence checks. No simulated result constitutes actual approval or proof of supplier capability.
The base-case choice is therefore a preference trade-off: Standard saves £8,000 against Expedited; Backup saves £3,000 but gives up one week of equipment protection. Expedited is the schedule-first choice, not a proven expected-value winner. All three need evidence checks. Without supplier probabilities or delay consequences beyond staff cost, the optimal risk-adjusted purchase cannot be established.
Acceptance checks and authoring status
Controlling dependencies and three supply risks are identified above. Every supplier scenario exposes readiness, launch, cost and budget status; the purchasing table shows design freeze, latest release, dispatch and integration checkpoints. Local arithmetic and interaction checks are documented privately for the reviewer. Browser review is a separate parent-agent step; this page does not assert field validation or operational performance improvement.