Shop Drawing Review -Reducing respons...

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Author Message Mark Gilligan SE, CSI Senior Member Username: markgilligan Post Number: 72 Registered: 05-2005 Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 01:01 am:    Structural shop drawings on a fair sized project can really add up. Structural steel shop drawings can easily exceed 800 sheets on a decent sized project. In addition many specifications require that 6 copies be marked up and returned by the Structural Engineer. This takes a lot of time and increases the likelihood that the markups will not be identical on all copies. This process can be significantly be improved by: ---Sending the structural engineer two copies, one to be used as his working copy and the other is marked up and returned to the Architect. ---The Architect has another copy of the shop drawings that he uses to do his review concurrently with the SE. ---The Architect copies his comments onto the set returned by the SE. ---The copy with all of the marks on it is sent to the blue-print shop to make all of the copies that the Contractor and others need. Ideally a copy is also returned to the SE and architect for their record copy, otherwise their markup copy serves that purpose. This was originally implemented at least 18 years ago when we marked up sepias that were used to make the copies. Today this works even better due to the fact that a number of blue-printers have the ability to make red and black copies for essentially the same price as black and white copies. This process has been very workable and can speed up the return of large submittal packages. The biggest problem has been in getting architects and specifier’s to specify this process in the Project manual. I can see no reason why this cannot also be used for many of the shop drawings from other trades. David R. Combs, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: davidcombs Post Number: 127 Registered: 08-2004 Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 09:34 am:    Mark, I am in agreement with endeavoring to reduce the number of copies, but sometimes we don't always have the choice. Two scenarios that seem to prevail with some of our clients: 1) One client we do repeat work with requires the contractor to submit 12 copies, IN ADDITION TO THOSE REQUIRED BY THE CONTRACTOR. Talk about overkill! We have been fortunate to have that number reduced on some projects, but even 8 is still a lot. 2) Another client does not reimburse us for ANY printing costs; it's all expected to be included in our fee. For that client's projects, we require 4 copies (5 if going to a consultant). With that arrangement, the consultant keeps one, we keep one, three go back to the contractor: One for the owner, one for the sub, and one for the contractor to send to the printers for making all the additional copies necessary. I feel it important to earmark a copy for the sub, so the project isn't delayed while the contractor's copies are at the printers. Julie Root Senior Member Username: julie_root Post Number: 53 Registered: 02-2004 Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 - 11:51 am:    While it is not mainstream into the construction process as of yet I am hopeful that we will see shop drawings submitted electronically. We are using pdfs and dwfs to mark up drawings for consultants and it is proving to be a great tool. I forsee that we can write the specs for contractors to submit an electronic file that can be circulated. Architects can review in one color, Engineers in another, constractors in another. The file then gets electronically filed back to the contractor. If he has sub-contractors that need to print them in the field then a local printer can print in color. I think it is Dell that makes these waterproof/ abuse resistant laptops. They were ordinally developed for the military. I saw a sub-contractor on site recently who had one of these with a 19" screen at the plan table. He also had a 11x17 color printer where he could print any little piece of the work to scale to hand to his field crew. I definately saw the future that is to be and I personally am pretty excited about it. Bill Morley Senior Member Username: billm Post Number: 6 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 03:20 pm:    If the Contractor needs 10 copies of one submittal, 6 copies of another, and somehow needs 15, or 16, or 20 copies of still another submittal, I think it matters not to the architect. It is my opinion that the architect should return two copies of each submittal to the Contractor - one set for the Project Record and the other copy for the Contractor's use (which means for them to use for copying and distributing as many as they need). Why should the architect provide a free printing service for the Contractor? Ruppert Rangel, AIA CCS Senior Member Username: rangel Post Number: 6 Registered: 08-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 04:45 pm:    If you are interested in reducing almost all of your submittal related printing, read the following white paper from Adobe. We are implementing this procedure, albeit slowly. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/GoodFulton_Farrell.pdf#search=%22adobe%20acrobat%20good%2Cfulton%2Cfarrell%22 Nathan Woods, CCCA Senior Member Username: nwoods Post Number: 122 Registered: 08-2005 Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 04:47 pm:    Bluebeam does this well, and the new version 4.71 allows you to print a window (portion) of a larger file, such as a CAD file, or you can window an copy and paste from one PDF into another, such as PDF RFI form. Very handy!