Client€5B Global Mining and Aggregates Equipment Manufacturer
SprintA 10 week sprint
Fieldwork17 internal interviews · 4 regions · 30+ proposals analysed · 8 project types
Aftermarket and Service Business
Sixteen days in one country, thirty seven in another
The same field service job, on the same equipment, was quoted at sixteen days in one country and thirty seven in another. Margin erosion, scope disputes and schedule overruns all traced back to one cause: the knowledge that made the strongest regions work had never been written down. It lived in individual heads.
37 vs 16
Days quoted for the same job in two countries
30+
Commercial proposals read and compared line by line
17
Internal interviews across four regions and five functions
8
Project types codified into one playbook
A note on sourcing. Every figure here comes from a SprintlyWorks client engagement. Clients are described, never named. Where a figure is identified, modelled or indicative rather than banked, the line says so.
01
Everything varied except the machine
The equipment is the same everywhere. What differs is how each region scopes the job, prices it, staffs it and sequences it. Nobody had put those four things side by side.
So they were put side by side. Seventeen internal interviews across four regions, covering field service, sales, proposal, planning and health and safety. More than thirty commercial proposals read and compared. Eight project types documented under six fixed headings each: execution phases, crew composition, standard tooling, sales and proposal approach, key commercial terms, and watch outs.
This was deliberately not customer research. The variation was internal and the answer had to be too.
02
The variance, measured
On one project type, the same scope was quoted at 16 days in one country, 37 in a second and 14 in a third. That is not a work content difference. It is a planning discipline, mobilisation structure and commercial safeguard difference.
Crew size varied by roughly a factor of three for the same job. One country listed four named roles plus an unquantified technician crew. Another listed eleven. A third listed twenty five named positions on the day shift alone.
Phase structure varied too. One region broke the job into four phases with distinct daily hours including a final retorque on the same mobilisation. Another ran two phases and excluded retorque entirely, pushing it to a separate future trip that, in practice, either does not happen or becomes an awkward second sale.
The same scope
One job type, three countries
Taken from actual commercial proposals for nominally the same scope. Countries labelled rather than named. These are quoted terms, not audited outcomes.
| Country A | Country B | Country C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total duration | 16 days | 37 days | 14 days |
| Payment terms | 25% on order, 75% on completion | 10 / 70 / 20 milestones | 30% on signing, 70% on completion |
| Lead time | Subject to personnel availability | 12 weeks from order | 60 days minimum from order |
| Warranty | Governed by master agreement | 6 months | 90 days |
| Mobilisations in price | 2 included | 1 plus separate retorque trip | 1, retorque inside the block |
How to read this → Read the lead time row. One region commits to nothing, which means it can promise anything, which is where the schedule overruns come from.
SprintlyWorks analysis
03
Where the risk was sitting
The commercial architecture differed more than the technical work. On one project type, one region quoted a single lump sum fixed price, absorbing any overrun itself, with no line item visibility. Another quoted a hybrid, a fixed engineering fee plus time and materials for all field work, so the client carries the overrun and every line is visible.
Scope boundaries moved with the region as well. In one, the customer supplied all parts pre assembled and the manufacturer only installed. In another, the manufacturer owned liner installation, gear replacement and the fabrication of removal fixtures. Even industrial gases were supplied by one party in one country and the other party in the next.
Two of the four regions stated a margin and contingency practice. One stated none at all. That is not an accounting gap, it is a region quoting without knowing what it is protecting.
04
The unglamorous causes of overrun
Two findings recurred across project types and neither is complicated. An undersized crane is the single most common cause of schedule overrun, named independently on more than one project type. And standard tooling exists in two of the four regions and not the other two, which is the most common reason work does not start on day one.
The tooling standard in the playbook therefore does something small and specific: it defines which tools the manufacturer brings and which the client provides, and requires that split to be verified fifteen business days before execution. Missing documents mean no execution start.
On safety the diagnosis was equally plain. Failures are rarely caused by unknown risks. They come from controls that were planned and never verified before the shift began. A lift set up correctly at eight in the morning is non compliant by two in the afternoon if the certified operator is swapped without paperwork.
05
What the playbook actually standardises
Duration benchmarks and minimum mobilisation lead times for all eight project types, from two to three days at the small end to twenty to thirty at the large. A recommended crew composition splitting fixed roles from variable ones, with a thirty minute handover overlap built into the shift pattern. A standard commercial position, including payment split, a finance charge on overdue amounts, a price validity window, a purchaser delay clause billed at time and materials, and a minimum cancellation charge.
One rule on ownership that matters more than the rest: supervisory roles on site must be filled by the manufacturer own employees. Junior roles can be supplemented with temporary or subcontracted labour, under supervision, with a dataset built to track how that augmented workforce actually performs.
And a boundary, written into the playbook itself. It defines the planning standard. Field execution remains the judgement of the team on site, and it does not replace the technical documentation or a site specific risk assessment.
06
What this is, and what it is not yet
The deliverable is the playbook. There is no measured result behind it: no reduction in proposal cycle time, no margin improvement, no overrun avoided. The next steps written into the work say so directly, because defining the measures and quantifying the payback are both still to be done.
That is the honest position for a knowledge product on the day it is handed over. Its value is testable and has not yet been tested.
What can be said is what the work found. On the same equipment, in the same organisation, the same job was being sold three different ways with three different risk positions and three different crews, and nobody had a document that said which one was right.
Download the full case study
Have a similar requirement?
Contact us today to learn more about on-demand workforce and accelerate development on your most pivotal projects!
Quick Reads for Big Impact
Accelerating Success for Enterprises in 20+ Geographies
Launch Your Sprint with
Define your project, connect with top-tier consultants, and start making progress fast.