Ask how long an investment will take, and the answer is usually the length of the project: from the day a team or contractor starts to the day the new equipment, building or system is handed over. That is an honest answer to the question asked. It is also often well under half of the time the business is actually waiting for a return.
The rest sits at the two ends. At the front is everything between the moment the business decided it wanted the investment and the moment someone started building it: preparing the business case, getting approvals, arranging finance, comparing quotes and waiting behind other priorities. At the back is everything between handover and the first day the investment earns money: commissioning, ramp-up, training, regulatory sign-off and customer approval. Neither end usually appears in the project schedule, and neither usually has an owner. That is why both are where time quietly disappears.
This article explains how to measure the full interval from decision to revenue, why the boundaries of a project are a management choice rather than a fact, what drives delays at the front and back ends, why speed needs commercial terms that reward it, and how a small business can make these intervals visible and owned.
Four marks and three intervals
A simple way to see the whole picture is to record four dates for every significant investment:
- Decided: the date the business committed to the investment in principle.
- Started: the date the project began in earnest, such as a contractor being engaged or equipment ordered.
- First production: the date the investment first produced usable output.
- First revenue: the date the output first earned money.
Between them sit three intervals: the front end (decided to started), the project (started to first production, or to handover if those differ) and the start-up (first production to first revenue). Most businesses manage the middle interval closely and barely measure the other two.
What the engineering literature says
Writing in the journal Cost Engineering in 2002, Kul Uppal defined project cycle time as starting “with the project team formation and ends with facilities in production”. That definition moves the finish line past handover and past the contractual completion milestone to the point where the facility is actually producing. On that view, a facility that is complete but not yet producing is not finished.
Uppal also cautioned that two projects identical except for one element, such as the site, the people, the systems or the season, are effectively different projects, which makes simple benchmarking of durations risky. And he identified three common drivers of a delayed start, none of which sits inside the project: research and development that must finish before a decision is made, business planning that fails to time the project to market conditions, and the availability of capital, including financing arrangements and internal competition for funds. These are decisions made by the business, not by whoever manages the project. Uppal further traced much project rework to poor definition of requirements before the estimate was prepared, and to unrecognised invalid assumptions, which are front-end conditions inherited by the project.
A year later, in the same journal, Nick Lavingia described a five-phase project process and described the first three phases, identifying the opportunity, selecting among alternatives and developing the preferred alternative for funding, as front-end loading, which he regarded as crucial to project success. The point for any business is that the front end is a real phase with work, outputs and a duration, and can therefore be planned and owned.
The measurement boundary is a choice
Where a project’s clock starts and stops looks like a reporting convention. In practice, it decides which intervals have an owner. Treating the project’s start date as the beginning has three consequences:
- The front end becomes invisible. A business case that sat in a queue for seven months has cost seven months, but no report shows it, and nobody is accountable for it lengthening.
- The project manager is measured on the wrong thing. Their interval is bounded by two events they did not control, and its length is heavily shaped by how well the work was defined before it reached them.
- Start-up is under-planned. Commissioning is scheduled as the tail of construction rather than the beginning of operations, and it is staffed and funded accordingly.
The fix is not simply to report a longer schedule, which can feel like an attack on whoever runs projects. It is to divide the whole interval into segments and give each segment a name and an owner.
The front end: where waiting hides
Front-end time is a mix of genuine work and waiting. Genuine work includes defining requirements, comparing options, getting quotes, preparing the business case and arranging finance. Waiting includes queues for approval, decisions deferred to the next monthly meeting, finance applications that wait for updated accounts, and proposals that sit behind other priorities.
The waiting is often longer than the work. Measuring it is the first step. For each significant investment, note how much of the front-end interval was spent actively working and how much was spent waiting for something or someone. Then look for steps that could run in parallel rather than in sequence. Finance pre-approval can often proceed while quotes are being compared. Early conversations with a council or regulator can run while the design is still developing. A decision that waits for a monthly meeting could be made by a smaller group with clear authority.
Good front-end work also shortens the project. Clear requirements, tested assumptions and a well-defined scope reduce the rework and changes that otherwise appear later, at much greater cost.
The start-up: where projects meet operations
Start-up is the interval between technical completion and earning money. It includes commissioning and testing, training operators and maintainers, updating procedures and safety documentation, obtaining regulatory approvals, running trial production, gaining customer approval of new products and waiting for the first payments.
Uppal argued that successful start-up depends on up-front planning and early preparation during project development, and that careful planning and execution of commissioning and start-up can reduce overall cycle time. In other words, the main lever on start-up time is not effort during start-up. It is preparation months earlier. A business that discovers commissioning problems during commissioning has already spent most of its opportunity to shorten it.
Practical preparation includes naming an operations person to own start-up from the beginning of the project, writing the commissioning and acceptance plan during design, training staff before handover, updating procedures and safety documents in parallel with installation, and starting regulatory or customer approval processes as early as they allow.
Speed at start-up must never come at the expense of safety. Rushing commissioning can lead to equipment damage, operating errors and injuries. The aim is to remove waiting and unpreparedness, not necessary care.
Speed needs terms that reward it
Uppal made a further point that is easy to overlook: reductions in cycle time depend on genuine cooperation between owner, contractor and supplier, and can be achieved only when every party has the opportunity to improve both its performance and its profitability.
In practice, this means that asking a contractor or supplier to go faster without changing what they earn rarely works. A party asked to absorb compression at its own cost will protect itself through sequencing, staffing and claims, and will be right to. If speed genuinely matters, structure the arrangement so the other party benefits from delivering it, for example through an early-completion incentive tied to clear acceptance tests, prompt payment or a simpler approval process. If the business will not change the terms, it should stop describing speed as a requirement.
Beware simple benchmarks
It is tempting to compare durations across projects: the last fit-out took four months, so this one should too. But a different site, team, supplier, season or regulatory pathway can change the timeline materially. Use past projects to learn where time went and which intervals were longest, rather than as fixed targets.
A boundary statement for every investment
A one-page table on every significant investment proposal makes the full interval visible:
| Mark | Planned date | Actual date | Owner of the interval that follows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decided | Front end | ||
| Started | Project | ||
| First production | Start-up | ||
| First revenue | — |
Three questions then test the plan:
- The gap test: how long is the front end, and who is accountable for it? If the answer is “a committee” or “everyone”, nobody is.
- The preparation test: which start-up activities have been planned and resourced before the project begins?
- The terms test: does the schedule assume any party will move faster than its commercial terms reward?
A worked example
This is an illustration. A small food manufacturer decides in February to add a new product line requiring a new oven and packing equipment. The business case assumes the line will earn revenue within six months, and estimates the line’s contribution at about $25,000 a month once running.
What actually happens:
- Front end, February to September (seven months): the bank finance application waits for updated accounts, quotes are compared one at a time, a council approval for a ventilation change is lodged only after the design is final, and the decision to order waits for two monthly meetings.
- Project, September to January (four months): equipment is delivered and installed on schedule. The project is reported as a success.
- Start-up, January to March (two months): commissioning finds that staff have not been trained, the food safety plan has not been updated for the new process, and trial runs are needed before the retailer approves the product.
- To first revenue, March to May (two months): the retailer ranges the product and pays on 60-day terms.
From decision to first revenue takes fifteen months, not six. The project itself took four. The nine-month gap against the business case defers about $225,000 of contribution (nine months at $25,000), assuming demand was there.
For the next investment, the owner names owners for each interval. The owner and the accountant own the front end: finance pre-approval runs in parallel with quotes, a pre-lodgement meeting is held with the council early in design, and a small decision group can approve orders between monthly meetings. The production manager owns start-up from the day the project starts: training is scheduled before handover, the food safety plan is updated during installation, and the retailer receives samples from pilot runs. The installer is offered a modest bonus for early commissioning that passes agreed acceptance tests. The next comparable investment reaches first revenue in about nine months.
How this applies to a small Australian business
Small businesses often feel the front and back ends most sharply, because the owner handles many steps personally and approvals, finance and customer onboarding have their own timetables. Practical steps:
- Record the four marks for your last few significant investments. The results are often surprising.
- Separate working time from waiting time in the front end.
- Run steps in parallel where possible: finance, quotes, approvals and design.
- Talk to councils, regulators and certifiers early about what approvals are needed and how long they typically take.
- Name a start-up owner at the beginning of the project.
- Plan training, documentation and customer approvals during the project, not after it.
- Allow for customer payment terms when estimating time to revenue.
- Reward speed in contracts if speed matters.
The articles on the best long-term technology may not be your next investment and writing a project report or business case cover related planning.
Signals worth watching
- Time from decision to start lengthening across successive investments.
- Long gaps between handover and first revenue.
- Front-end time dominated by waiting rather than work.
- Commissioning appearing in the plan only after construction starts.
- Suppliers declining, or quietly failing to deliver, acceleration requests.
- Schedules compressed while commercial terms stay the same.
Common mistakes
- Treating the project schedule as the whole timeline.
- Leaving the front end and start-up without owners.
- Running front-end steps one after another when they could overlap.
- Planning commissioning and training too late.
- Asking suppliers for speed without changing their terms.
- Benchmarking durations blindly across different projects.
- Rushing start-up at the expense of safety.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth tracking this for small investments? For small, routine purchases, probably not. For investments where months of delay would materially affect cash flow or customers, the four marks take minutes to record and often reveal the largest opportunity to speed up returns.
Who should own the front end? Usually the person who will be accountable for the investment’s returns, often the owner or a senior manager, with support from finance and whoever handles approvals.
How do we shorten approvals we do not control? Start them earlier, prepare complete applications and ask the approving body what typically causes delays. Early conversations are often the most effective step.
Questions to ask
- For our last three investments, how long was it from decision to start, and who owned that time?
- Do our business cases assume time to handover or time to revenue?
- Who is accountable for start-up readiness, and when do they start?
- How much of our front-end time is waiting rather than work?
- When we ask suppliers to go faster, what do they gain?
- Which current investment is waiting on something the project team cannot influence?
Bringing it together
A business pays for the whole interval from decision to first revenue, whether or not it measures it. Project schedules usually measure only the middle. Record four marks for each significant investment, give the front end and start-up named owners, separate waiting from working, run steps in parallel, prepare for start-up from the beginning of the project and make speed worthwhile for the parties asked to deliver it. Moving where the clock starts does not make anything faster on its own, but it makes the longest intervals visible to the people who can shorten them.
Source: KEVOS notes, drawing on Kul Uppal, writing on project cycle time in Cost Engineering (2002), and Nick Lavingia, writing on front-end loading in Cost Engineering (2003). Examples and figures in this article are illustrations.
