Six days.

When a problem has to cross a boundary to get decided, it waits about six days. Six days does not sound like a crisis. That is why nobody manages it, and why it costs so much.

A problem appears on a site at seven on a Tuesday morning. Two trades want the same workfront. The site manager reads it in ten seconds and carries it into the briefing. Fourteen people, coffee going cold. The problem is mentioned, noted, and the meeting ends. Wednesday, two supervisors know about it and neither can resolve it. Thursday, the section review raises an action to find out who owns it. Friday, an email goes up a level and is forwarded. The following Monday the programme director hears it and makes the call.

Tuesday to Monday. Six days.

I first counted this running a secure print facility, and I have counted it on manufacturing sites and construction programmes since. Issues a team can settle itself clear the same day. The ones that need another level to sign off, or more than one discipline, sit. The gap runs from three days to fourteen and lands around six more often than anything else. A 2013 industry study of 1.1 million construction queries found much the same: an average of 6.4 days to a first reply, and a fifth to a third of questions never answered at all.

Nobody in that chain did anything wrong. The supervisor mentioned it. The section manager escalated through the right channel. The project manager passed it on. The system worked exactly as designed. The design was the problem.

The damage is in what happens during the wait. A problem on a complex programme is rarely expensive on its own. It becomes expensive through what it sets off: work carries on around it, a workaround gets built on an assumption, the cheap fix that was available on Tuesday is gone by Thursday. By the time the decision arrives it is being made on a shrunken version of the problem, with fewer and worse options left.

The word decide comes from the Latin for cutting away. A decision is defined by the paths you give up. When the call sits unmade, the cutting does not stop. It changes hands. Time makes the choice for you, one option at a time.

Scope and procurement each have an owner, a budget and a whole discipline behind them. This gap has none.

How long does a problem wait on your programme before someone with the authority decides?