A construction programme should allow roughly 15 to 30 weeks between placing a China procurement order and the first day of installation, and 4 to 8 weeks of that window should be deliberate buffer rather than working time. The base chain is pre-production (2-4 weeks), factory production (30-70 days depending on category), inspection and export handling (7-10 days), ocean transit (14-45 days by lane), destination port and customs (5-10 days) and delivery to site. On top of that base, add 15-20% schedule contingency, a hard 4-6 week exclusion wherever the order overlaps Chinese New Year, an allowance for peak-season blank sailings, and plan for the container to land 2-3 weeks before installation is due to start. FBM Sourcing operates as a sourcing agent and sourcing partner, not a trading company.
Lead time and buffer are two different questions
Our earlier guide on which FF&E items have the longest lead times answers “what do I order first”. This article answers a different question that main contractors and project managers ask when they build the master programme: how much slack does the schedule need around each China order so that the site is never waiting on a container.
Lead time is a property of the product. Buffer is a property of the programme. A casegoods package that genuinely takes 50 days to make can still arrive four weeks late if the programme assumed the factory started on the PO date, ignored a two-round drawing approval, or missed the fact that the sailing crossed Chinese New Year. The buffer model below breaks the journey into six stages so each one can carry its own allowance.
- Stage 1 – Pre-production: shop-drawing approval, finish samples, deposit clearance – 2 to 4 weeks.
- Stage 2 – Production: 30 to 70 days depending on category (seating fastest, joinery slowest).
- Stage 3 – Inspection, export packing, inland haulage, port cut-off: 7 to 10 days.
- Stage 4 – Ocean transit: 14 to 45 days port-to-port depending on lane.
- Stage 5 – Destination port and customs: 5 to 10 days.
- Stage 6 – Delivery, devanning and installation coordination: 1 to 2 weeks, with the container landing 2 to 3 weeks before install start.
Added end to end, the working chain alone is 11 to 25 weeks. The remainder of the window is buffer, and it should be shown as buffer on the programme, not hidden inside optimistic activity durations.
The six-stage China procurement timeline
Stage 1: Pre-production, 2-4 weeks
Nothing is cut, cast or extruded until drawings are approved and the deposit has cleared. For custom casegoods and joinery, the shop-drawing approval cycle normally runs two to three rounds of 5-7 working days each, and finish samples (laminate, veneer stain, fabric, stone) travel in parallel. A 30% deposit is the common trigger for the factory to book raw material and a production slot, so the pre-production clock only stops when the deposit lands, not when the PO is signed.
Standard-specification items – hotel mattresses to a fixed size, stock ceramic tiles, catalogue sanitary ware – can move through this stage in as little as one week. Custom items rarely do.
Stage 2: Production, 30-70 days by category
Production durations below are counted from approved drawings plus cleared deposit, and they assume a single project-scale order rather than a trial run.
- Casegoods (headboards, nightstands, desks, wardrobes, vanities): 45-60 days.
- Seating (lounge chairs, dining chairs, sofas, banquettes): 30-45 days.
- Tiles and sanitary ware (kiln-fired, batch production): 20-35 days.
- Aluminium windows and curtain-wall units: 40-60 days, and only after site measurement and glass approvals.
- Custom joinery (reception desks, wall panelling, fitted wardrobes, kitchen runs): 50-70 days.
Windows and joinery deserve a note. Both depend on site dimensions, so their production clock cannot start until the structure is far enough advanced to measure. On a high-rise apartment project this puts them on the critical path more often than casegoods, even though casegoods take a similar number of days.
Stage 3: Inspection, export packing, haulage and cut-off, 7-10 days
Once production is complete, FBM Sourcing’s own team carries out a full pre-shipment inspection on the factory floor and delivers photo and video records before anything is loaded. Export packing follows – ISPM 15 heat-treated crates or pallets, corner protection, film wrap – then inland haulage from the Guangdong factory clusters to Shenzhen or Nansha, customs declaration and container gate-in.
Container yards typically close 48-72 hours before the vessel’s departure. On lanes with one sailing per week, missing that cut-off by half a day costs the programme a full seven days, which is why this stage carries its own one-week allowance in the table further down.
Stage 4: Ocean transit, 14-45 days by lane
Approximate port-to-port sailing days from South China main ports:
- China to US West Coast (Los Angeles / Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma): 14-20 days.
- China to US East Coast (New York, Savannah, Houston via Panama): 30-38 days.
- China to Australia East Coast (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane): 14-22 days.
- China to UK and North-West Europe (Felixstowe, Southampton, Rotterdam): 30-40 days.
- China to Jebel Ali (Dubai) and Gulf ports: 18-24 days.
- China to the Caribbean (Kingston, Bridgetown, Nassau, usually via transhipment): 30-45 days.
These are port-to-port figures. Transhipment lanes – most Caribbean and many Gulf and Australian services – add 5-10 days of connection time when the feeder does not line up with the mother vessel, and that connection risk is the main reason the Caribbean range is so wide.
Stage 5: Destination port and customs, 5-10 days
Discharge, terminal handling, customs release and pickup normally take 5-10 days. Free time on the terminal is usually 4-7 days before storage charges start; if the customs broker needs a physical exam, that alone can add 3-5 days. Our guide on demurrage and detention charges covers why containers should not land at a port before someone is ready to clear them.
Stage 6: Delivery to site and installation coordination, 1-2 weeks
The last mile is inland trucking to site or to a staging warehouse, devanning, room-by-room sorting and handover to the installation crew. A single 40HQ container holds roughly 68 CBM gross and takes a crew of four about half a day to devan and stage, so a 100-room hotel package arriving in several containers needs a week or more of unloading capacity in the programme, not a single afternoon.
Sourcing this for a commercial project?
FBM Sourcing works with project owners, developers, main contractors and FF&E contractors on hotel, apartment, school, office and other commercial building projects. Send us your BOQ, drawings or product list — our team will review it and get back to you.
How much earlier should FF&E be ordered than the room-ready date?
For a US West Coast destination, casegoods should be ordered about 22-26 weeks before the room-ready date; for the UK or US East Coast the same package needs 26-30 weeks; and if any part of that window overlaps Chinese New Year, add another 4-6 weeks. The arithmetic is simply the six stages worked backwards from installation, plus the buffer rules in the next section.
Take a 120-room hotel in Arizona receiving containers through Los Angeles / Long Beach. Set installation start as week 0 and count backwards:
- Containers on the ground at site: week -3 (the 2-3 week landing buffer).
- Port release and trucking to site, 5-10 days: vessel arrival by week -4.5.
- Sailing 14-20 days: vessel departure by week -7.
- Inspection, packing, haulage, cut-off, 7-10 days: production complete by week -8.5.
- Casegoods production 45-60 days: production start by week -17.
- Pre-production 2-4 weeks: PO and deposit by week -20.
- 15-20% contingency on the 17-week working chain: another 3 weeks – PO by week -23.
Move the same hotel to Manchester, England, with containers through Felixstowe, and the 30-40 day sailing pushes the PO to roughly week -26 or -27. If that PO date lands in the second half of December, the production run will hit the Chinese New Year shutdown and the honest answer becomes week -31 to -33.
The practical consequence for a programme manager is that FF&E for a hotel is normally ordered while the building is still a structural frame, and windows and joinery are ordered the moment site measurement is possible. That feels early on paper. It is not early once the six stages are laid end to end.
The four buffer rules for the master programme
Rule 1: Add 15-20% contingency to the working chain
Every stage above has a plausible reason to slip by a few days: a third drawing round, a resampled fabric, a factory power restriction in a hot summer week, a rolled booking. Individually they are small; collectively they compound. A 15-20% contingency on an 18-week working chain is 3-4 weeks, which is exactly the amount projects that run “a month late” tend to be missing.
Rule 2: Apply a hard 4-6 week Chinese New Year exclusion
The official holiday is about a week, but the productive gap in a furniture or building-materials factory is 4-6 weeks: workers leave 1-2 weeks early, return 1-2 weeks late, and a share of the line does not return at all, so the first fortnight back runs below capacity. Trucking, port and carrier capacity are squeezed in the two weeks before the holiday as everyone tries to ship. Our full guide to the Chinese New Year factory shutdown explains how to time deposits so that production is either complete before the holiday or scheduled to start clean afterwards. Never straddle it and never let a programme assume a factory “works through”.
Rule 3: Allow for peak season and blank sailings
Two periods reliably stretch Stage 4. The August-October pre-holiday peak fills vessels and pushes bookings back a sailing; and around Golden Week (the first week of October) and Chinese New Year, carriers blank sailings, so a weekly service can become fortnightly for a few weeks. A rolled or blanked sailing on a weekly loop costs a flat 7 days. Add 1-2 weeks of transit allowance to any shipment planned to leave China in those windows, and book space 3-4 weeks ahead rather than the usual 2.
Rule 4: Land the container 2-3 weeks before installation start
Landing early buys the programme three things: time to resolve a customs exam, time to receive replacement pieces if the FBM Sourcing pre-shipment record and the on-site count disagree, and time to sort a 68-CBM container into rooms and floors before the installers arrive. If the site itself is behind, do not pull the container forward into port storage; instead ask the factory to hold finished stock and ship in staggered phases so each container lands 2-3 weeks before the floor that needs it. Holding at origin is almost always cheaper and safer than holding at destination.
Milestone buffer table for a China procurement schedule
The table below is a template that can be pasted into a programme narrative. Typical durations are working-chain figures; the buffer column is what should be shown as float against each milestone.
| Milestone | Typical duration | Buffer to add |
|---|---|---|
| PO, deposit, shop-drawing and sample approval | 2-4 weeks | +1 week for an extra approval round |
| Production – casegoods | 45-60 days | +15-20% |
| Production – seating | 30-45 days | +15-20% |
| Production – tiles and sanitary ware | 20-35 days | +1 week for kiln batching and consolidation |
| Production – aluminium windows | 40-60 days | +2 weeks for glass supply and site measurement |
| Production – custom joinery | 50-70 days | +2 weeks for site measurement and finish approval |
| Pre-shipment inspection, export packing, haulage, cut-off | 7-10 days | +1 week (one missed vessel) |
| Ocean transit (by lane) | 14-45 days | +1-2 weeks in peak season / blank-sailing windows |
| Destination port and customs | 5-10 days | +1 week for a physical exam |
| Delivery, devanning, staging | 5-10 days | Container to land 2-3 weeks before install start |
| Chinese New Year overlap | – | +4-6 weeks hard exclusion, no exceptions |
Applied to a typical hotel or apartment package, the table produces a total order-to-install window of 22-30 weeks for the Americas, Australia and the Gulf, and 26-33 weeks for Europe and the Caribbean, before any Chinese New Year exclusion.
Where the programme usually goes wrong
Three errors account for most late containers we see on commercial projects. First, the programme starts the production clock at the PO date instead of at approved drawings plus cleared deposit, silently deleting 2-4 weeks. Second, every product category is given the same lead time, so 60-day casegoods and 30-day seating are ordered on the same day and the seating sits in the factory for a month – or worse, casegoods are ordered on the seating date. Third, the sailing is planned as a door-to-door figure, so port clearance and last-mile trucking are missing entirely.
A building material sourcing agent that runs the whole chain from drawing approval to container gate-in can hand the programme manager a single dated schedule per category rather than a list of factory promises. FBM Sourcing manages the entire China procurement package for overseas construction projects. The six stages above are therefore tracked as one sequence, with the pre-shipment inspection record and the vessel booking tied to the same milestone. Bring us the programme early enough and the buffer becomes a planning decision rather than a rescue.
Related reading: how time zones and communication cadence work with a China sourcing agent.
Get a China Procurement Quote for Your Project
If you are building the master programme for a hotel, apartment block, school, hospital or office fit-out, send us the drawings or BOQ, approximate quantities, destination port and the target installation dates. As a China sourcing agent for building materials and FF&E, we will map the package by category against the six-stage timeline, flag any Chinese New Year or peak-season overlap, and set out a dated order sequence that fits your programme.
The earlier we see the programme, the more of the buffer stays as float rather than being consumed by the schedule. Reach us through the quote form or WhatsApp above.
When a date genuinely cannot move, the mode question is worth taking on its own terms: air freight versus sea freight on a project order.
