Why Your Duct Bank Project Is Behind Schedule

Walk any jobsite where the underground work is still cast-in-place, and you’ll see the same thing: open trenches, half-finished pours, and crews waiting on something — inspections, weather, or concrete. It’s not poor management. It’s the process itself.

Cast-in-place duct banks were designed for a different era — when labor was plentiful and schedules had cushion. Today’s projects don’t have either.

Here’s where the time goes, and how DBO’s precast system puts it back on your side.

1. Weather Delays That Stack Up Fast

What happens: You schedule the pour for Wednesday. It rains Tuesday night. The trench fills, the grade softens, the concrete truck gets bumped. Now you’re re-grading on Thursday, re-inspecting on Friday, and pouring Monday — if the forecast holds. Every storm costs more than one day. Crews lose rhythm. Concrete suppliers reshuffle. Inspectors reschedule. On paper, you’ve lost two days. In reality, you’ve lost a week.

How precast eliminates it: DBO’s duct banks are poured, cured, and load-tested indoors. The concrete never sees weather until it’s in your trench. When the site is ready, we deliver finished sections that set in under five minutes per 10-foot module. Backfill the same day — rain or shine. Weather doesn’t control the job anymore. You do.

2. Labor Bottlenecks and Crew Fatigue

What happens: Underground duct banks are labor magnets. Ten to twelve trades end up in the same trench — electricians, laborers, operators, inspectors. Each step depends on the next, and no one can get ahead. When manpower is tight (and it always is), progress crawls. A lost day from one trade ripples through all of them. Crews double up to catch up, and the schedule burns cash instead of time.

How precast eliminates it: DBO’s system cuts the trench crew in half. Sections arrive ready to set. Instead of electricians gluing conduit and tying steel, one operator and a few hands can place entire runs. The rest of your team moves forward on terminations, testing, and gear install — where their hours actually add value. Fewer people in the trench, fewer dependencies, fewer slowdowns.

3. Inspection and Rework Loops

What happens: Inspectors find a conduit off alignment, or the rebar chair spacing doesn’t match the print. Everything stops while the issue is corrected. Pour window missed. New inspection scheduled. Another 24–48 hours gone. Even when the pour finally happens, there’s always a chance of overpour or honeycombing. Fixes mean chipping, patching, and another round of review.

How precast eliminates it: Every DBO section is inspected before it ever hits the truck — conduit spacing, cover, reinforcement, and strength all verified in-plant. Stamped engineering calcs and QC reports are delivered within one week of design approval. By the time the inspector sees it on site, the duct bank has already passed the checks that typically cause rework. You’re not waiting for approval — you’re setting product that’s already approved.

4. Curing Time and Idle Trenches

What happens: Concrete in the field doesn’t cure on your schedule. Even with accelerators, most projects require 3–7 days before backfill. Multiply that by every run on the job, and you’ve tied up equipment, manpower, and open trenches for weeks. Open trenches also mean open risk: cave-ins, erosion, pedestrian hazards, equipment access limitations.

How precast eliminates it: DBO duct banks arrive fully cured and ready to backfill the same day. Crews dig, set, align, and close the trench within a single shift. Equipment rolls again, laydown areas reopen, and the schedule resets forward — not back.

5. Coordination Delays Between Trades

What happens: Cast-in-place is linear: civil digs, electrical sets, QA inspects, then concrete pours. If one step slips, every trade behind it waits. Field teams can’t overlap because the trench is the bottleneck.

How precast eliminates it: Precast runs in parallel. While civil work is trenching and bedding, DBO is casting in the yard. When the trench opens, product arrives ready. Civil sets and backfills, electrical ties in, QA inspects — all within a compressed window. Parallel production turns a stop-start workflow into a continuous one.

6. Material and Concrete Scheduling

What happens: Concrete availability can dictate your pace. A missed truck window or batch plant issue can stall a day’s pour. Add in temperature limits and you’re scheduling around suppliers instead of your own plan.

How precast eliminates it: DBO manages all concrete in-house under controlled conditions. Each pour is temperature-controlled, strength-tested, and released on schedule. Concrete logistics never touch your critical path.

Average Lost Time

The numbers hold across jobs. On data-center campuses, DBO crews have averaged 150 linear feet per day with same-day closeout. Traditional duct banks on the same sites averaged 25–30 feet under perfect conditions — and zero when it rained.

The Schedule Becomes Predictable

The biggest difference isn’t just speed — it’s control. Precast duct banks remove the hidden variables that make underground work unpredictable. Rain doesn’t matter. Inspectors don’t stall you. Concrete doesn’t decide your day. Every 10-foot section drops in place in minutes. Every run closes the same day. Stamped calcs and test data arrive before the first trench is even cut. That’s what happens when underground work becomes a manufactured process instead of a field gamble.

The DBO Way Forward

We built our system around the same problems every GC and PM fights — not to sell concrete, but to take schedule risk off the table. We measure every install, track every hour, and design every module to fit your sequencing, not the other way around. Because the truth is simple: if your duct bank work still depends on weather, concrete, and inspection timing — it’s not the field slowing you down. It’s the method. And we fixed it.