Deadlines
Dispatch, Arrival, and the Word “Delivery”
Delivery is a word that names a different moment for each party in a chain, and the difference between the first meaning and the last is routinely several weeks.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Us, stating the deadline
A Friday deadline means the end of our Friday
The client reading it, Dubai
There is no working Friday in their week at all
two parties · four days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu
The phrase that started this was 'by Friday'. It felt complete to the person who wrote it, which is the whole of the difficulty.
A cross-border schedule is easier to manage when availability is grounded in evidence; see this solution provides a practical reference for time, activity, and project reporting.
Teams can compare this approach with the established guidance available from CIPD.
One shipment, and the four legs between the five moments that were all called delivery
From the shop finishing the work to the carrier collecting it
3 / 2One of the three days was not a working day on their side: one of the three days was a Sunday. The shop considered the job delivered on day one
From collection to arrival at the port of discharge
18 / 12Six of the eighteen days were not working days on their side: two weekends and a Saturday the carrier does not work. Nothing anybody could influence, and the only leg anybody had planned
From arrival to customs release
9 / 4Five of the nine days were not working days on their side: a national holiday on the receiving side and a document query. Five of the nine days were not working days there
From release to the goods standing in our yard
4 / 3One of the four days was not a working day on their side: one weekend. The leg nobody had put in the plan at all
four waits · 34 calendar days · 21 of them working days on the other side
Five parties used one word and each named the moment their own responsibility ended, which is the only moment it reliably means. The four legs between those five moments are drawn here, and end to end they came to about five weeks. One team's own job.
Five parties to the same shipment used the word "delivery" and meant five different moments.
None of them was being careless. Each was naming the moment at which their own responsibility ended, which is the only moment that word reliably means.
The five moments
For anything physical the chain usually runs: made, collected, shipped, cleared, received. Each handover has a party on either side of it and each party's "delivered" is the moment they let go.
The fabricator's delivery is the day the work left the floor. The carrier's is the day it reached the port of discharge. The broker's is the day it cleared. The buyer's is the day it is standing where it is going to be used.
Between the first and the last of those, in the panel above, is about five weeks.
Why this is not only a shipping problem
The same structure appears wherever work passes through more than one pair of hands, including where nothing is physical.
- An agency's delivery is the day the file was sent; the client's is the day it was approved internally.
- A developer's delivery is the merge; the operator's is the release; the customer's is the day it works in production.
- A laboratory's delivery is the day the test finished; yours is the day the certificate arrives signed.
In each case the earlier party is honest and the later party is waiting, and the word they share conceals the interval between them.
The question that resolves it
Not "when will it be delivered" but "what will have happened, and where will it physically be, on the date you are giving me".
That is answerable, it is answered accurately, and it exposes the assumption without accusing anybody of anything. In practice people answer it readily because it is a question about their own work rather than about their reliability.
Writing it down
Where several parties are involved, the dates worth recording are the handovers, not the end.
| Milestone | Who owns it | What the date means |
|---|---|---|
| Ex works | The shop | The work is finished and can be collected |
| Collected | The carrier | It has physically left |
| Arrived | The carrier | At the port or depot, not at you |
| Released | The broker | Customs has finished with it |
| Received | You | It is where it will be used |
A plan with only the first and the last of these in it is a plan with a hole in the middle, and the hole is where almost all of the variance lives.
The incoterm does not settle it either
For international trade the three-letter terms do define where responsibility passes, and that is useful and is not the same question.
An incoterm tells you who bears the risk and the cost at each point. It does not tell you what the fabricator means when they say they will deliver on the 14th, and in ordinary correspondence they will still say it and still mean the day it leaves their floor.
Where the time actually goes
Two legs account for most of the surprise, and neither is the sea.
The leg from finished to collected is invisible because it looks like nothing is happening, and often nothing is: the goods are sitting on a floor waiting for a booking. The leg from arrival to release is longer than almost anybody expects and is the one most exposed to the receiving side's working week, because it involves a customs office, a broker and sometimes an inspector, each with their own calendar.
The part everybody plans for — the main carriage — is also the part that is published, scheduled and reasonably reliable.
What to promise onward
Whatever is promised to somebody downstream should be the last date in the chain, not the first, and it should carry the two legs nobody plans for.
A date passed on unchanged from the fabricator is a date about the fabricator's floor. Repeating it to a customer as the date they will have the goods converts an accurate statement into an inaccurate one without anybody having said anything untrue.
The question to ask about every date you are given
One sentence, and it can be asked of any date from any party without giving offence.
On that date, where will it physically be and whose hands will it be in?
Answers to that question are specific, and the specificity is the point. "It will be on our loading dock" and "it will be in your yard" are both clear and they are three weeks apart.
The question also catches the case where the date is not about the goods at all. A date that turns out to mean "the day we issue the invoice" or "the day the paperwork is submitted" is a real answer and a common one, and it tells you that the thing you care about has not been dated by anybody yet.