By Bill Brown · Every Caribbean construction schedule is a shipping schedule first. The sponsors who lose money in the islands are rarely surprised by the cost of concrete. They are surprised by when it arrives.
The sequence a mainland sponsor does not see
On a mainland site, a superintendent who is short on rebar calls a supplier and has it by Thursday. On an out-island, that same rebar was ordered months earlier, consolidated at a port in Florida or Panama, loaded on a scheduled vessel or a chartered barge, cleared through customs on arrival, moved by truck or lighter to the site, and stored somewhere dry and secure until it was needed. Every one of those steps has a lead time, a cost, and a way to fail. None of them appear on a mainland schedule.
The result is that an island project is planned backwards from the vessel calendar. The critical path is not the structure. It is the procurement log, and the procurement log has to be built before the contractor is selected, not after.
Where the schedule is actually lost
- Long-lead items ordered against an unfinished design. Windows, doors, mechanical equipment, kitchen packages, and overwater structural systems can carry lead times of several months before shipping. If the design is not frozen when they must be released, the owner pays for a change or waits for a vessel.
- Customs and duty treatment assumed rather than confirmed. Most Caribbean jurisdictions offer concessions on construction materials for approved hospitality projects. The concession has to be applied for, granted, and referenced correctly on every shipment. A container that arrives before the paperwork sits at the port at the owner's expense.
- Consolidation left to the contractor. A general contractor who is new to the islands will ship the way he ships at home: many small orders, many vendors, no consolidation. Freight cost goes up and predictability goes down. The owner's team should own the consolidation strategy or make it an explicit contract requirement.
- Labor housing treated as an afterthought. Skilled trades often have to be brought in and housed. Housing, transport, and food are schedule items and budget items. If they are not in the plan, the trades are not on site.
- No dry, secure laydown. Materials that survived the voyage are lost to weather and theft on site. Laydown and storage are designed, not improvised.
An island project is planned backwards from the vessel calendar. Freeze the design early enough to release long-lead items, confirm the duty treatment before the first container ships, and own the consolidation strategy rather than leaving it to a contractor who has never done it.
What an owner can do about it
Start the procurement log in predevelopment, before the contractor is on board, and treat it as a live owner document through delivery. Confirm the concession and the customs broker before the first order is placed. Decide who consolidates and where. Put the vessel schedule on the master schedule as a fixed constraint, and plan the structure around it rather than the other way round. Build labor housing and laydown into the budget as line items. And put someone at the table who has actually done this, because a mainland resume, however strong, does not know which of these steps fails first.
That is a large part of why Aventra's Caribbean practice begins with predevelopment advisory. The expensive decisions on an island are made before the first barge arrives.
Bill Brown is the founder and CEO of Aventra Development and a Florida-licensed General Contractor. He was previously CEO of DCK Worldwide, where he directed hospitality, residential, and mixed-use programs across the Caribbean and Latin America. More about Bill or connect on LinkedIn.