Modules / OFCI
The schedule driver most sites treat as a footnoteOwner-Furnished, Contractor-Installed.
On a data hall, OFCI is not a procurement category. It is the programme. Switchgear, UPS, PDUs, busways, chillers — procured by the client, handed to the contractor to receive, install, commission and integrate. The IST date is built around the free-issue dates of these items. When they slip, the IST slips. When the IST slips, handover slips. Loadbearer puts OFCI at the centre of the commissioning record — not in a spreadsheet one person owns, not in an email chain across three vendors, not in a Friday update that arrives after the damage is done.
What OFCI is · and why it is the schedule
The nature of the problem
Owner-Furnished, Contractor-Installed equipment sits in an uncomfortable gap: the client owns it, procures it and carries the commercial relationship with the vendor — but the contractor receives it, stores it, installs it, pre-commissions it, and presents it for witness. The contractor cannot commission what has not arrived. The client cannot accept what has not been commissioned.
On a hall the size of Cranebank — 3 halls, 3 storeys, 6 pods, 54 pods total — OFCI scope runs to hundreds of items and tens of millions of pounds of client-owned plant. A single late chiller or a misconfigured UPS does not just affect one commissioning event. It gates an entire L4 sequence for a hall.
Most sites manage this with a spreadsheet that one person owns, an email chain that crosses three time zones, and a weekly call where nobody is sure which revision of the tracker is current. The result is an IST slippage that surprises everyone — despite being visible for weeks.
What Loadbearer does differently
Every OFCI item has a structured record in Loadbearer from the moment it is entered into the programme. That record tracks the item through every stage — procurement, manufacture, FAT witness, shipping, receipt, condition check, installation, SAT witness, commissioning, and client acceptance — with a named owner and a timestamped action at every transition.
The record is visible simultaneously to Shankar (who installs it), Halloran (whose programme depends on it), Krupa (who owns it), and Coughlan (whose commercial position is affected if it is late). Four views of the same record. No reconstruction. No Friday email.
The OFCI-driven critical path — which late item actually moves handover — is surfaced automatically. Not which item is merely late. Which item moves the date that matters.
The data shape · how an OFCI item is structured
Every item, every stage, every transition — one structured record.
An OFCI item in Loadbearer is not a row in a spreadsheet. It is a structured object that carries its own history from procurement to acceptance. Every field is either a date with an owner, a result with a witness, or a condition with a signature. Nothing is free-text. Nothing is ambiguous.
Identity
Vendor, manufacturer, model number, serial number, specification reference, contract tag number, hall and pod assignment. Linked to the equipment schedule and to the commissioning L-level that requires it. The item cannot be confused with another item — not by a typo, not by a revision.
Procurement stage
Programme free-issue date (contract baseline), latest forecast free-issue date, days of movement since last update, and the IST gate impact of any movement beyond 7 days. When the chiller's free-issue date moves, the IST gate sees it the same day — not the following Friday.
FAT — Factory Acceptance Test
FAT date, FAT location, FAT witness (named: Donnelly, or the client's nominated witness), FAT result, FAT certificate reference, FAT snags raised and closed. The FAT certificate is attached to the record at source — not emailed separately and lost in an inbox.
Shipping and receipt
Shipping date, carrier, expected arrival date, actual arrival date, delivery note reference, and receiving operative named. Condition on receipt: any visible damage, any missing components, any deviation from the FAT configuration — photographed, described, signed by the receiving operative. Custody transfer timestamped at gate.
Installation
Installation start date, installing subcontractor, installation completion date, and the named competent person who signs off the installation is complete and ready for pre-commissioning. Linked to the relevant RAMS and permit-to-work. No pre-commissioning begins without an installation sign-off on the record.
SAT — Site Acceptance Test
SAT date, SAT witness (named: Donnelly, or the client's nominated witness), SAT result, FAT-to-SAT tolerance variance, SAT snags raised with close-out dates. If the SAT result drifts more than the contract tolerance from the FAT result, the system surfaces it before the witness signs — not after the IST fails.
Commissioning
Commissioning date, commissioning engineer named (Schneider, Vertiv, Trane, or Eaton field specialist), commissioning result, commissioning snags raised and closed, L-level achieved. The commissioning engineer's attendance is confirmed in the diary 14 days ahead — not on the morning of the test.
Witness and acceptance
Witness date, witness name (Donnelly, CxA), witness result, any derogations, accepted date, accepted by (Krupa, or her named delegate). The acceptance signature is in the record at the moment of acceptance — not reconstructed three weeks later for the handover binder. The chain is unbroken from FAT to acceptance.
Four views · one record
What each role sees — and what they can do about it.
OFCI is not a commissioning problem. It is a programme problem, a commercial problem, and a client-relationship problem simultaneously. Loadbearer surfaces the same record to the four people who each have a different stake in it — without requiring any of them to ask, to email, or to call.
Shankar · CxM · Marauder Construction
Shankar sees the equipment readiness chain for every OFCI item assigned to his commissioning programme — FAT status, delivery date and condition, installation completion, SAT result, vendor attendance confirmation. He sees what is ready for witness today without making a phone call. He sees what is not ready and why — OFCI not received, vendor not confirmed, installation not signed off — before the witness slot is locked.
Free-issue dates against programme in green, amber, red. Vendor attendance on the diary, named. Custody at every transition. The OFCI-driven critical path surfaced, not buried.
Halloran · PM · Marauder Construction
Halloran sees OFCI items on the critical path — not all OFCI items, only the ones that affect a gate or a float buffer. Free-issue dates against the programme, amber when movement exceeds 7 days, red when it hits the IST gate. Recovery options pre-costed. Early warning drafted automatically when OFCI movement crystallises as a programme event.
"OFCI status is the bit Halloran couldn't see before. Now he sees it before the client does."
Krupa · CIO · Phoenix Digital
Krupa sees her own kit, in real time, in her own portal. She does not need to ask Shankar what the status of the Schneider switchgear is. She does not need to wait for a Friday update to know whether the Trane chillers have arrived. She sees the same readiness chain Shankar sees — her equipment, her hall, her gate — the moment it changes.
Client acceptance of each OFCI item is a gate in the portal: she sees the prerequisite chain, she sees the evidence, she accepts. No meeting required. No binder required.
Coughlan · Commercial / QS · Marauder Construction
Coughlan sees OFCI delay translated into commercial impact the moment it crystallises. A free-issue date that slips 17 days is not just a programme event — it is a potential compensation event under the contract's OFCI provisions. Coughlan sees the delay, the clause, the evidence pack, and the recommended commercial position simultaneously. Extension of time, loss-and-expense, vendor performance bond activation — each one drafted with the clause cited, ready for Coughlan to review and issue.
Vendor performance bonds tied to OFCI delivery milestones. Condition reports at receipt — admissible if the dispute escalates.
The five OFCI failure modes
Five ways OFCI breaks a commissioning programme. Five things Loadbearer does about them.
These are not theoretical risks. They are the patterns that appear in post-mortems on data hall projects, named differently each time but structurally identical. Loadbearer addresses each one at source.
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FM-1
Late landing. The OFCI item arrives later than the free-issue date in the programme. On a data hall, free-issue dates are not milestones to be managed — they are hard gates for commissioning sequences. A chiller that arrives 17 days late does not create a 17-day delay; it creates a delay equal to the commissioning sequence that was waiting for it, which may be 6 weeks.
Free-issue dates with more than 7 days of movement auto-flag the dependent commissioning gate and surface an EW draft with the clause cited. The programme impact is calculated from the readiness chain — not estimated. Halloran sees it. Coughlan sees it. Shankar sees it. None of them has to call a meeting to find out.
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FM-2
Wrong configuration. The OFCI item arrives on time but not to the specification required by the commissioning sequence. Switchgear with the wrong busbar rating. UPS configured for 50Hz in a 60Hz zone. A PDU missing the remote monitoring card. The item is physically present; the commissioning cannot proceed. The schedule impact is identical to a late delivery but arrives without warning.
FAT witness records the specification against which the item was tested. The record is attached at source. When the item arrives, the delivery condition check references the FAT configuration. Any deviation is captured on receipt — before installation begins — with a photograph, a description, and a named owner. The item is not installed until the deviation is resolved or a derogation is signed by Krupa's delegate.
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FM-3
Vendor attendance failure. The commissioning sequence requires the manufacturer's commissioning engineer to be present for the witness — this is standard for critical systems (Schneider for switchgear, Vertiv for UPS, Trane for chillers, Eaton for busway). The slot is booked; the engineer does not appear. The witness cannot proceed. The slot is lost. The next available slot may be 10 to 21 days away.
Vendor attendance is confirmed by a named engineer against a named slot in the diary — not by a company email to a distribution list. Non-confirmation at 48 hours auto-escalates to the vendor's commercial lead with the contractual attendance obligation cited. The engineer is named on the record; if they are replaced, the replacement is named. The company cannot substitute an engineer without the CxM's acceptance.
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FM-4
Dependency ripple. A single OFCI item gates multiple commissioning sequences across multiple pods. When it is late, the ripple is not linear — it propagates across all sequences that share the dependency. On Cranebank, one late chiller delivery gates cooling commissioning at L3 across 18 pods in Hall 3 simultaneously. The schedule impact is not one item delayed; it is 18 witness slots displaced.
Every OFCI item's dependency map is built into the commissioning record at the point of programme entry — not at the point of failure. The item knows which L-levels it gates, which pods it serves, and which witness slots it enables. When the item's status changes, every dependent gate sees it automatically. The ripple is visible before it propagates.
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FM-5
Custody fuzziness. The OFCI item moves through multiple handpoints — factory to shipping agent, shipping agent to site gate, site gate to lay-down area, lay-down area to installation position. At each handpoint, the question "who is responsible for this item and in what condition did they receive it?" becomes contested. If an item is damaged between the FAT and the SAT, the dispute about who is responsible can run for months — and the commissioning programme waits for the outcome.
Every custody transition is a timestamped record: who handed it over, who received it, in what condition (photographed), against what reference (FAT certificate, delivery note, installation sign-off). The chain is continuous from factory to acceptance. If there is a damage dispute, the record shows exactly when and where the item's condition changed — and who signed for it at that moment.
What stops happening
- The OFCI tracker spreadsheet one person owns — last updated Tuesday, emailed on Friday, already wrong by Monday.
- The "where's the busway?" call that happens every Friday at 16:30 and is answered differently every week.
- The vendor attendance email chain that runs across Schneider's UK office, Vertiv's EMEA team, and Trane's field services at the same time, about the same slot.
- The "did we accept that delivery?" four-day argument when the condition report is missing and both parties have a different memory of the handover.
- The custody transfer that nobody documented — the contractor says it was damaged at delivery; the client says it left the factory intact. The FAT certificate is in an email from eight months ago.
- The IST slippage that surprises everyone six weeks before handover — because one OFCI item was quietly running 17 days late for three months, and the weekly tracker showed it as amber but nobody escalated amber.
- The commissioning binder assembled by hand at handover, with the OFCI section missing three FAT certificates and two delivery notes that are in someone's inbox.
The signed loop · OFCI edition
Humans accept OFCI receipts. Humans witness OFCI tests. Humans sign OFCI commercial events.
Loadbearer surfaces the picture, structures the record, and drafts the notices. Every OFCI custody transfer is accepted by a named operative with a signature — not processed automatically by a system. Every OFCI test result is witnessed by Donnelly and signed by him, not generated by an algorithm. Every OFCI-driven commercial event — compensation event, extension of time, loss-and-expense claim — is reviewed by Coughlan and issued by him, not auto-sent by a trigger.
The system cannot accept a delivery. The system cannot witness a commissioning result. The system cannot issue a compensation event notice. It can draft all three, surface the evidence, cite the clause, and place the draft in front of the right person — but the person decides. Principle 4. Principle 7. Always.
This is not a limitation of the system. It is the point of the system. The record is defensible in a dispute because a competent human being reviewed it, judged it, and signed it at every gate. "The system that signs nothing for you" is not a strapline. It is how the record stays clean.
Adjacent
OFCI touches every role on the commissioning triangle — and the programme above it.
The OFCI record connects Shankar's commissioning sequence, Halloran's programme float, Krupa's acceptance view, and Coughlan's commercial position. It is the one module every role has a stake in — and the one most sites manage with a spreadsheet and a phone call.