The Toughest Part of a Job Is the Last 10%

Most people assume the hardest part of a project is getting it started, or maybe surviving the fabrication and build. After decades managing industrial projects, I'd argue for something less obvious: it's the last 10%.

That's where we are right now with a large project JDI Contracts has taken on with our sister company, BR Systems, a crystallizer/evaporator system built around a 40-foot pressure vessel and a 55,000-pound process skid, with eight different firms contributing everything from ASME vessel fabrication to structural steel to controls and instrumentation. The heavy lifting is literally done. Equipment's in. Systems are coming together. What's left is checkout, commissioning, documentation, testing, punch lists, all the unglamorous work of getting a unit actually ready to put on a truck.  That doesn’t even count the work that will happen in the field once the skids and tank are picked and set.

It's tempting to treat this stage like a victory lap. I've learned not to. We had a weld out request show up during hydro testing on this project, after the pressure test was already closed out by the ASME inspector, which meant the easy fixes were off the table. Nobody threw up their hands. The team worked with the owner’s inspector to establish a compliant solution and kept moving. That's the kind of moment that decides whether a project ships on time or slips yet another week, or more.

We talk about having zero quit at JDI. It's not a slogan we put on a shirt and forget about. It means staying on a problem until it's actually completely solved instead of handing it to someone else, or settling for “good enough” because the deadline is close. On this project, that showed up as engineers traveling to the fabrication shop for inspections that went beyond what the contract required, procurement teams working through tariff-driven material shortages without losing the schedule, and a project team that kept revision control from spiraling through overlapping approval cycles.

None of that happens without the right people on the other end of the phone. We've had an outstanding client on this one, plus contractors, engineers, and field teams who stayed with us even when the schedule got tight and missing items kept getting delayed. That's usually when you learn who you're actually working with. Not during the easy stretch, but during the one where something goes sideways, and everyone has to decide whether to fix it together or start pointing fingers.

I'm proud of what this team has done on this project, and grateful for a client who understood that a good finish takes the same discipline as a good start.

Because nobody remembers a project for how fast it got to 90 percent. They remember how it finished.