A Date You Can Hold Them To: Scheduling a Window Job Without the Guesswork

Most window quotes are perfectly happy to talk about money and strangely shy about time. You'll get a beautifully itemised price for frames, glass, cills and vents, then a single line near the bottom that says something like “lead time approximately 6–8 weeks”. That's it. No start date, no finish date, no clue what happens if week eight turns into week twelve.

If you've already booked a plasterer, taken a week off work or ordered a sofa that needs to come through the front door, that line is doing a lot of heavy lifting. So let's unpack what it actually means — and how to get something firmer before you hand over a deposit.

“Six to eight weeks” is a factory estimate wearing a delivery costume

When a salesperson says six to eight weeks, they usually mean the time from a confirmed order to the frames coming off the production line. That's a manufacturing window. It is not the same as “we will be at your house on the 14th”.

Between the factory and your front wall sit a handful of steps that nobody puts on the quote:

• The survey. Someone has to measure properly, confirm the openings, check access and spot the awkward bits the first visit missed.
• Order confirmation. The survey has to be signed off, the specification locked, and the job released to production.
• Manufacture. Glass and frames are often made in different places and have to meet up.
• Delivery and fitting. A crew, a van and a dry enough day.

Any one of those can move. Two of them moving at once is how a six-week job becomes a nine-week job with no warning.

The survey is the real starting gun

The clock doesn't start when you sign. It starts when the survey is done and the order is confirmed in writing. Ask which date that is, because it's the only date everything else hangs from.

A decent installer will tell you plainly: “Survey on the 3rd, order confirmed on the 5th, manufacture 5–7 weeks from confirmation, fitting week commencing the 20th of next month.” That's a schedule. It has landmarks. You can check progress against it without ringing anyone.

If the answer is “the survey team will be in touch”, you don't have a timeline yet. You have a hope.

Weather is a legitimate delay — up to a point

Fitters can work in drizzle. They can't sensibly work in driving rain on an exposed elevation, in high wind with large panes going up a ladder, or in temperatures cold enough to affect sealants and foams. Winter jobs genuinely do slip, and a company that pretends otherwise is either lucky or new.

That said, “weather” is also the easiest excuse in the trade. A useful distinction: weather delays should shift your date by days, not by a month. If a firm is blaming rain for a four-week overrun, ask which days were lost and what they did with the others.

One practical move — if your job is booked for November, January or February, ask what the fallback date is. A company that has thought about it will have one.

Payment stages shouldn't run ahead of the work

This is where scheduling and money get tangled, and it's worth being blunt. A deposit is normal. Paying the bulk of the balance before the windows exist is not a schedule problem, it's a risk problem.

A sensible structure looks roughly like this: a modest deposit at order, the balance on completion, and nothing in between unless there's a genuine, agreed milestone — for example a large deposit for a bespoke colour or a non-standard shape that can't be resold. If the payment schedule asks you to hand over most of the money at “manufacture”, ask what happens to that money if the fit date slides by two months. The answer should be in the contract, not in the air.

What to get in writing before the deposit goes down

You don't need a legal essay. You need four or five lines that a reasonable person could hold someone to:

1. A target start date — even if it's described as an estimate, get the date.
2. A completion date for the installation itself, not just the start.
3. The trigger date — the survey or order-confirmation date the lead time runs from.
4. A delay clause — what happens if they run over. A revised date in writing, and a clear route to cancel and get your deposit back if the overrun is substantial and their fault.
5. Who tells you, and when — a named contact and a promise to inform you at the point a slip becomes likely, not the day before fitting.

That last one matters more than it sounds. Most frustration in a window job isn't the delay itself; it's finding out on the Friday that Monday isn't happening.

Keeping it on track without becoming a nuisance

Chasing daily is exhausting and, frankly, doesn't speed anything up. Instead, peg your follow-ups to the landmarks in the schedule:

• Day after survey: confirm the order date and the lead time in an email.
• Midpoint of the manufacturing window: one short check-in asking whether the date still holds.
• Two weeks before fitting: confirm the crew, the arrival time and whether scaffolding or access equipment is booked.
• Day before: a quick confirmation that they're coming.

Four contacts across two months. That's not nagging, that's project management — and any installer worth using will treat it as normal.

The honest summary

A window quote without a date isn't being dishonest; it's just incomplete. Manufacturing estimates get dressed up as delivery promises because most customers don't push, and because a vague timeline is easier to keep than a specific one.

So push, gently. Ask when the clock starts, get a target date and a completion date, and make sure the delay clause is written down rather than spoken across a kitchen table. Then plan your decorating around it — and leave a fortnight of slack. In this trade, slack isn't pessimism. It's the only thing that reliably turns up on time.