Installation projects fail in predictable places. The pallets of modules arrive a day after the scaffold. The crew turns up to fit chargers and the ground works for the bases are not finished. The battery enclosure is on site but the commissioning engineer from the manufacturer is booked for the following month. None of these are technical failures. They are coordination failures between three moving parts: what is being delivered, who is on site, and what has to happen in what order.
This article sets out how installation contractors, particularly on commercial solar, battery storage and EV charging projects, can run delivery around those three parts, and how Integrio brings them into one place.
Three things to control
Products. Everything that will be installed: modules, inverters, mounting, batteries, chargers, cable, distribution equipment. Each has a supplier, a lead time, a delivery date and a destination on site.
People. Your own crews, specialist engineers and subcontractors, each with availability, skills and travel time between jobs.
Tasks. The sequence of work, with dependencies. You cannot energise until testing is done; you cannot test until the installation is complete; you cannot install until the product and the crew are both there.
Most contractors manage these in three different places: a purchasing spreadsheet, a shared calendar and a whiteboard or task list. The failures above happen in the gaps between them.
Deliveries: getting product to site at the right time
On renewables and EV projects, product volume is high and lead times vary. A single canopy project might include hundreds of modules, several inverters, a battery system and a dozen or more chargers, arriving from different suppliers.
Integrio's delivery schedules let you manage deliveries from supplier to site. You can track incoming and outgoing items, flag incomplete orders and check items in on arrival by scanning their QR codes. Because products belong to the project, the delivery schedule is tied to the same list of items the crew will install and test.
Practical rules for delivery control:
- Schedule deliveries against tasks, not just dates. Modules should land after the roof access and mounting are ready, not before.
- Check in on arrival, not at install. A short delivery found on arrival is a phone call to the supplier; the same shortage found on install day is a lost day for the crew.
- Record where it went. Laydown areas on large commercial sites move. Knowing which container or bay holds the inverters saves time.
- Capture serials early where you can. Recording serials at goods-in and confirming them at installation catches swaps and substitutions. See per-product data points.
A free equipment delivery checklist covers the basic checks.
Crews: the right people on the right day
Scheduling installers is a constraint problem: skills, availability, travel and the state of the site. Integrio's resource management brings the calendar, a live map, travel time and contractor access together.
Calendar. Integrio syncs both ways with Office 365 and Google Calendar, so bookings made in Integrio appear in engineers' calendars and vice versa.
Live map. GPS positions of active team members on one map, useful when a job overruns and you need to know who can cover.
Travel time. Journey times between jobs calculated using real-time traffic data, so schedules reflect the actual drive between a depot and a rural battery site.
Contractor access. Subcontractors can be given project-specific permissions to see the jobs they are booked on and complete their forms.
Tie bookings to tasks where you can. If a charger install task depends on ground works being signed off, the crew booking should move when the ground works do.
Tasks: turning a method statement into a workflow
Every contractor has a method, even if it lives in someone's head. Integrio's workflows turn it into a repeatable sequence for each project type.
Define the sequence once. A commercial rooftop solar project might run: pre-install survey, design sign-off, grid application submitted by the designer, scaffold, mounting, modules, DC wiring, inverters, AC connection, testing and commissioning, snagging, handover. An EV project might run: survey, DNO notification or application where needed, ground works, containment, charger mounting, supply connection, configuration, commissioning, handover.
Use trigger tasks for dependencies. Trigger tasks start follow-on work automatically when a previous stage completes, and can launch several tasks at once so parallel work proceeds.
Attach instructions. Task instructions can hold checklists, procedures, safety requirements and quality standards, so the person doing the task has the method in front of them.
Attach forms. Forms can be linked to tasks, so completing the commissioning task means completing its commissioning form.
See it on a board. Kanban boards show every active task across projects, filterable by project, department or stage, which makes bottlenecks visible.
Integrio does not replace your design software or make grid applications for you. Those steps sit in the workflow as tasks so their status is visible, and the documents they produce can be attached to the project.
Keeping the three in step
The value is in linking them. A few examples of what that looks like on a real job:
- A supplier moves an inverter delivery back a week. The inverter install task shows its dependency, and the crew booking for that day can be moved before anyone travels.
- A crew checks in the chargers and one is damaged. It is flagged on the delivery, a replacement is ordered and the commissioning task for that bay stays open while the others close.
- The commissioning engineer completes the battery test form. The next task, customer demonstration, is triggered automatically and appears on the account manager's board.
Closing the project
Delivery is not finished when the last product is fitted. Snags need to be closed, testing records completed and the customer needs to accept the work.
- Snagging. Snags are captured with photos, assigned to the responsible person and tracked to resolution. See snagging.
- Sign-off. Multi-stakeholder sign-off workflows track who has approved and what remains. See project sign-off.
- Handover. A completion package including certificates, test reports, snag lists, photos, warranties and manuals. See project handover.
After handover, installed products remain visible by customer and site, with helpdesk tickets and maintenance visits recorded against them.
Starting small
You do not need to model everything on day one. A sensible order is:
- Build the workflow for your most common project type, with five to ten stages.
- Add your most frequently installed products to the product library, with delivery schedules for the next few projects.
- Connect calendars and book crews against the workflow's tasks.
- After two or three projects, add trigger tasks where you found yourself manually telling someone to start.
For a wider view of running construction-stage work, see our guide to construction project management.
