What are the best practices for Risk Mitigation when dealing with third-party vendor delays?

All answers to this question.

Vendor management requires proactive contingency planning. In my experience during a 2024 infrastructure rollout, we maintained a "Shadow Vendor" list for all critical path items. While it costs a bit more upfront to qualify a second source, it saves thousands in delay costs. You should also check your contract for "Liquidated Damages" clauses. Often, just mentioning the financial penalty for late delivery can miraculously speed up a vendor's timeline. Also, re-evaluate your schedule to see if you can perform "Fast Tracking" on other non-dependent tasks.

   Answered 2024-01-10 by Jennifer Clark

Are you using a RAID log to track these dependencies, and did you account for this specific delay in your initial contingency reserve? It is helpful to know if this was a "known unknown" or a total surprise.

   Answered 2024-01-18 by David Anderson

• David, a RAID log is essential for visibility, but often it’s the communication of the log that fails. I find that sharing the RAID log during every status meeting ensures that the sponsor is aware of the potential bottleneck before it becomes a crisis. If it was a known unknown, the management reserve should be the last resort after trying to crash the schedule with existing resources or re-sequencing the work packages.

     Commented 2024-01-19 by Christopher Lee

You should immediately perform a "Crashing" analysis. If the cost of adding resources to other tasks is less than the penalty of the delay, it's a viable path to stay on schedule.

   Answered 2024-01-27 by Patricia Wright

• Crashing is effective, but as Patricia noted, you must be careful about the law of diminishing returns. Sometimes throwing more people at a problem just creates more communication overhead.

     Commented 2024-01-30 by Michael Stevens