The Delay No One Budgets For: Decision Latency in Construction

Most conversations about project risk focus on what everyone can see. Schedules. Labor. Supply chains. Weather. Those are the usual suspects. But there is another kind of delay that rarely appears on a Gantt chart and almost never shows up in a risk register, even though everyone feels it:

The Time it Takes to Get a Solid Answer to a Simple Question:

• “Can we proceed with this option?”

• “Is this still within budget?”

• “Which version of the scope are we using?”

• “What did we decide in that meeting?”

The gap between the question and a reliable answer is what we’ll call decision latency.

It’s the quiet pause that stretches days, sometimes weeks, across the life of a project. And it affects owners, architects, engineers, contractors, cooperatives, and facility teams in different but connected ways.

Where Decision Latency Shows Up

You can see it in almost every phase of work.

1. Early Planning

An owner asks for a concept budget so they can advance a capital request. The design team needs time to validate assumptions. Contractors are asked to “sanity check” a range. Emails start. Attachments circulate. People look for old projects that “feel similar.” Meanwhile, the real question is simple:

“Is this project financially realistic, or do we need to rethink the scope?”

Until that answer lands, nobody can commit. Schedules hold still. Funding waits.

2. Design Development

Drawings evolve. Systems shift. One small design decision affects structure, MEP, finishes, and operations.

Each adjustment comes with a cost question that never fully stands alone:

• If we upgrade this system, what happens to lifecycle cost?

• If we reduce area here, do we hurt functionality somewhere else?

• If we phase the work, how does that affect the budget and the users in the building?

Most teams know how to answer these questions. The problem is how long it takes to pull the right information together.

3. Construction and JOC Work

In JOC, SABER, and IDIQ programs, the tempo is different but the pattern is the same. A site walk reveals an unexpected condition. A facility manager flags a recurring failure that wasn’t in the original scope.
The question becomes:

“Do we keep going as planned, or adjust now and avoid a repeat problem later?”

Everyone waits on a decision that lives at the intersection of cost, risk, and long-term use of the building.

Why This Hits Everyone on the Team

Decision latency doesn’t belong to one role. It touches all of them.

• Owners feel it as stalled approvals and uncertainty when reporting to leadership or boards.

• Architects and engineers feel it when design freezes slip and revisions stack up.

• Contractors feel it when crews are held in limbo, half-deployed and waiting.

• Facility managers feel it when they know what needs to happen but can’t get a final “yes.”

• Cooperatives and consultants feel it when programs slow, not from lack of intent, but from lack of aligned information.

Nobody sets out to delay decisions. It happens in the spaces where information gets scattered or context doesn’t travel with the question.

What’s Really Hiding Inside Decision Latency

When you look closely, that “waiting time” is rarely empty. It’s full of hidden work:

• People re-explaining project history to new participants

• Teams hunting through past emails and folders to find the latest version of something

• Multiple groups building their own versions of the same answer

• Meetings held just to “get everyone on the same page” again

None of this shows up as a line item, but the impact is harsh:

• Design windows compress

• Field teams rush

• Owners feel like decisions were made under pressure instead of with preparation

• Relationships absorb unnecessary strain

Ways the Industry Can Respond

There is no single fix, and not every team has the same resources. But there are practical shifts any organization can make, whether they manage one capital project at a time or hundreds of JOC task orders a year.

1. Carry the Story With the Numbers

Cost opinions without context cause more questions than they answer. When budgets, estimates, or models travel, they need to bring their story with them:

• What assumptions shaped this number?

• What is in, and just as important, what is out?

• Which version of the scope does this reflect?

When that information moves together, fewer people need to start from scratch.

2. Invite Operations Earlier

Facility teams often know where the building will push back.

When they are involved at the start:

• Fewer “surprises” emerge mid-project

• Fewer changes need emergency decisions

• The team spends less time explaining why something needs to be done and more time planning how to do it well

Their insight trims a lot of low-value debate later.

3. Make Decisions Easy to Find Again

It sounds simple, but many projects do not have a reliable memory.

A running log of decisions, with dates and reasons, saves enormous time.
Not as a legal defense, but as a working tool for the team:

• “We chose Option B because of budget and maintenance constraints.”

• “We replaced instead of repaired due to failure history.”

Six months later, when questions resurface, people are not rebuilding the past from fragments.

4. Respect the Question Behind the Question

Sometimes “Can you send that?” really means:

• “I need to stand in front of leadership and answer for this.”

• “I am accountable for this line on someone else’s report.”

When owners, architects, and contractors recognize what is really being asked, they tend to respond differently.
The conversation moves from chasing documents to solving the concern underneath.

What This Means for AEC and JOC Programs

In traditional design-bid-build work, decision latency can stretch entire timelines. In JOC, SABER, and IDIQ, the effects compress into shorter windows and show up in different ways:

• Slow task approvals

• Repeated review cycles

• Back-and-forth about scope that was never fully captured

Programs that keep a tighter handle on information and decisions don’t just move faster. They create a sense of steadiness that everyone feels:

• Owners trust the process more

• Contractors can plan their teams with confidence

• Architects and engineers spend less time revisiting past forks in the road

The Real Takeaway

Most people in this industry are not asking for perfection. They are asking for decisions they can rely on, made in time to do the work well. If there is one quiet place where the AEC world can gain ground this year, it is in shrinking the distance between:

“We need to decide”
and
“Here is the decision and the story behind it.”

Schedules will still be tight. Budgets will still be watched. Conditions on site will still surprise teams. But when the time between the question and the answer gets smaller, everything else gets easier to carry.

Teams move from questions to decisions to actions. No one wants to wait for answers, lose context, or rebuild decisions. eConverge keeps that motion in action and aligned by connecting information, people, and outcomes in one platform.

Contact us to see how we help teams like yours protect their momentum, leading to faster, more successful projects that finish with all the details documented for confidence and historical review: www.econverge.com/contact