The structural engineer said Friday. It is the following Wednesday. You have the client asking when the tender goes out, and the honest answer is that it depends on a beam schedule you have asked for twice.
Every project has a list like this. The services engineer's drainage layout. The window supplier's U-value certificate. The kitchen company's setting-out drawing. The client's own choice of ironmongery, which has been pending since the summer. Nobody writes the list down, so it lives in your head and surfaces at 11 at night.
The system keeps the list. When you send a request by email, you copy one address or add one word to the subject, and the request is logged: what, from whom, promised when, for which project. If there is no promised date it assumes ten working days.
The day after the date passes, a short reminder goes from your own Gmail or Outlook, in your name and your usual tone. 'Morning Tom, just checking on the beam schedule for Elm Road, we are holding the tender for it. Any date you can give me?' If there is still nothing after four working days, another one, a touch firmer, and the item is flagged to you so you can pick up the phone. When the file arrives, the system sees it and closes the item.
Each Monday morning you get one list: everything you are waiting on, by project, how overdue, how many chasers sent. Usually it is shorter than you feared.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts. What are you waiting on right now that nobody has chased since last week?