A standard shelter leaves the factory in 10–14 weeks and a bespoke one in 16–22 weeks, before ocean transit of 5–40 days depending on lane. Production accounts for only 40–60% of that calendar. Drawing approval, mill runs, coating batches and shipping sit outside it, so the delivery date must be built backwards from site handover.

A transport officer who orders in March for a June opening is not buying a shelter. They are buying a conversation about air freight, a temporary stop, and an advertising contract that starts without a screen.

The mistake is arithmetic, not intent. Buyers add a quoted production period to a shipping estimate and call the total a lead time. Suppliers quote the part of the calendar they control. Between those two figures sit the approval cycles, the mill runs, the galvanising queue, the vessel cut-off and the customs broker — and that gap is where opening dates are lost.

This is a schedule guide for the person who has to sign the delivery date. It separates the weeks a factory owns from the weeks you own, and turns both into tender language.

What must you fix before anyone can quote a lead time?

Eight inputs fix the number, and a supplier quoting without them is quoting an industry average. State the model and module length, the drawing approval route, quantity per tranche, finish, glazing, power and CMS specification, incoterm and destination port, and the site handover date. The last two decide more of the calendar than the first six.

【YEROO DATA NEEDED: standard and bespoke lead times by model — design, production, factory acceptance testing and packing — expressed in working days, and the effect of order band (10 / 100 / 500 units) on each】.

The handover date is the anchor. Work backwards: subtract installation and commissioning, subtract import clearance and inland haulage, subtract ocean transit, subtract packing, testing and production. What remains is the date the drawings must be approved — and it is almost always earlier than the buyer expected. An enquiry that says "required delivery: as soon as possible" cannot be answered with a date, only with a hope.

What actually happens inside the lead time?

Twelve stages sit between order and site, and the factory controls six of them. Design approval, material procurement, fabrication, galvanising, coating, glazing and testing belong to production. The rest belongs to your forwarder, your customs broker and your own site. A twelve-week promise that ignores the last four stages is a fabrication promise, not a delivery promise.

Durations below are indicative global ranges for the industry, not YEROO's committed schedule. Use them to interrogate a quotation, and require the bidder to replace every row with a dated commitment.

Three clocks run in parallel, and only one of them is a factory clock. The approval clock starts when drawings are issued and stops when they are signed. The shipping clock starts at booking, not at loading, and a 40 ft high-cube under ISO 668:2020 still has to be found, positioned and cleared before it can be stuffed. The production clock is the one quoted in the sales email, and it is the shortest of the three.

Indicative ocean transit ranges from South China: 5–10 days to South-East Asia, 16–22 days to Australia, 18–25 days to the Gulf, 25–32 days to the Mediterranean and 30–40 days to North Europe. Add two weeks of buffer for a first shipment on a new lane, because the first booking is always the one that rolls.

Why do lead times slip — and which slips are the buyer's own?

Most slippage is created before fabrication starts, and most of it is buyer-side. Late drawing approval, a foundation detail changed after the site survey, artwork supplied in the wrong format, a CMS specification written after the order — each one stops the clock and gives away the reserved production slot. Factories lose fewer weeks to machines than to unanswered emails.

Two calendar facts rarely appear in a quotation. The Spring Festival shutdown removes three to four weeks of effective output, because a migrant workforce returns in stages rather than on day one; and the National Day holiday in early October removes a further week. Add the July-to-September typhoon season in Guangdong, which disrupts port operations rather than factories, and a well-planned programme has three obvious windows to avoid. Ask any bidder for their shutdown dates; a bidder who cannot supply them has not planned your shipment.

How do you write the schedule into the contract?

Put a dated milestone annex in the contract, define the approval clock, price delay with liquidated damages and define extension-of-time events exhaustively. Tie payment to factory acceptance testing rather than to calendar dates. Then name the incoterm and the insurance clause, because risk transfer and schedule responsibility part company at the ship's rail.

CIF deserves its own warning. The default cover under Incoterms 2020 is Institute Cargo Clauses (C), which responds to major casualties and not to the handling damage that shelters actually suffer. A scratched coated panel or a cracked tempered pane usually falls outside it. If the contract says CIF and nothing else, the buyer has insured the ship rather than the product.

【YEROO DATA NEEDED: standard payment terms and milestone structure, including the deposit percentage required to reserve a production slot and the documents released against each instalment】. 【YEROO DATA NEEDED: port of loading, sailing frequency and typical transit times to named destination ports, plus the policy on part-shipment and rollover】.

How do you score a supplier's schedule credibility?

Score the schedule, not the promise. A credible bidder produces bill-of-lading dates for previous projects against the dates originally promised, a capacity statement for your delivery month, named sub-suppliers for galvanising and glass, and a written approval turnaround. A bid without that evidence scores zero on the criterion that matters most.

Set the pass mark at 70 out of 100 and treat a zero on the delivery record as an automatic fail, whatever the total. Then test the numbers you are given against the factory verification checklist before award, and cross-check the volume assumptions against the capacity analysis for 10, 100 and 500 unit orders. A schedule that has not been stress-tested against production capacity is a sales estimate.

YEROO's own record is checkable rather than asserted: 25 years of manufacturing in Foshan, a 31,000 m² facility and delivery to 109 countries, including a 26 m BRT structure for Laos shipped as spliced modules because no container and no galvanising bath takes a member that length in one piece.

What does a missed lead time actually cost?

A missed shelter date is rarely a shelter problem. It is a stop with no shelter, an installation crew on standby, a media contract that starts without a screen, and a port bill for a container nobody collected. The corrective cost runs from a few hundred pounds of storage to a lost advertising quarter.

The cheapest correction is always the same: build the date backwards from handover, put the approval clock in writing, and refuse to let the production period stand in for the whole calendar. A buyer who knows that galvanising takes five to ten working days and that a vessel rolls in peak season can negotiate a realistic date — and a realistic date is the only one that survives contact with a site.

Common questions from buyers

How long does it really take from order to a shelter on site?Ten to fourteen weeks of production for a standard model, sixteen to twenty-two for a bespoke build, plus five to forty days of ocean transit depending on lane. Adding import clearance and inland delivery, plan on five to seven months from purchase order to a commissioned stop for a bespoke European project.

Does a custom shelter take much longer than a standard one?Yes, and not because fabrication is slower. A custom build adds an extra approval cycle, possibly a new extrusion die, a first article, and a full type-test of the delivered configuration. That is typically four to eight weeks before a single member is cut.

Can we pay more to shorten the lead time?Sometimes, within limits. Money buys queue priority, a second shift, and air freight for small components. It cannot compress a mill run, a galvanising bath, a furnace load or an ocean passage. Ask which stage the premium is buying; if the answer is "production", the saving is real.

Who is responsible when the vessel is delayed?Whoever holds the risk under the incoterm. FOB transfers risk at loading, so the delay belongs to the buyer. DAP and DDP keep it with the supplier until the named place. Choose the term by which party can actually influence the carrier, and state it in the contract rather than in the quotation.

Should the shelter be ordered before the foundations are built?Order in parallel, but release fabrication only after the foundation setting-out is approved. Foundations take four to six weeks including cure, and the installation sequence depends on the base plate positions matching the frame drawings. Parallel scheduling works; parallel guessing does not.

How much buffer should we add to a quoted lead time?Two weeks for a repeat order on a known lane, four weeks for a first order, a new supplier or a new port. Add the supplier's shutdown dates on top, then check the result against your opening date before you sign — not after.

A bus shelter lead time is three clocks, not one number. The factory clock runs ten to twenty-two weeks depending on how much of the design is new. The approval clock runs in your office and is the one most often allowed to overrun. The shipping clock belongs to a carrier who has never heard of your opening date.

Write all three into the contract. A dated milestone annex with calendar days, an approval window with a stop-the-clock rule, liquidated damages capped against the tranche, an exhaustive extension-of-time list, payment released against factory acceptance testing, and an incoterm whose insurance clause you have actually read. Then score bidders on B/L dates rather than promises, and treat shutdown dates as a pass-or-fail question.

YEROO supplies the schedule annex that goes with that contract: a dated production plan per stage, the compliance document set with verifiable certificate numbers, an itemised quotation split into unit, options, freight and spares, and a written statement of port, sailing frequency and transit time to your destination. Send your site list and required handover dates through the contact page and review the bus shelter range the plan is built against.