Civil Specs

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Author Message Robin E. Treston Senior Member Username: robin Post Number: 14 Registered: 08-2004 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 09:51 am:    I'm curious how others (particularly independent's) handle Civil Specifications. Most of the other disciplines (IE: MPE, Landscape, Audio Visual etc) provide their own specs. More often than not, the Civil Engineers refuse to provide specs, saying that all their info is on the dwgs. I have provided basic sections - like earthwork, asphalt paving and concrete paving, but am wondering if I have just started a bad precedent. What do others do in regards to Civil? Anonymous   Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 09:58 am:    Our office does the same. We tell them (the Architect) that civil has to cover connections, piping, underground drainage, anything of that nature because we do not have a civil license and are not qualifed for those items, and usually the civil will provide us specs on those. Our office handles, like you do, the earthwork to cover structure and trenches, asphalt paving, portland cement concrete paving. We then give the drafts to the civil consultant for their review and approval and that typically works for us. You have not started a bad precedent, in my humble opinon, because then I would be in trouble as well. Lynn Javoroski Senior Member Username: lynn_javoroski Post Number: 184 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 10:05 am:    Most of the time, our office receives specs from the civil consultant. (there are times when this work is done in-house, so of course I get specs then) But usually I get civil specs, including earthwork and site work (utility trenching, sewer piping, the whole works) from the consultant. My part will include foundation drain tile, but it connects to the consultant's drainage system. And I even will get a request for an example of our format so they can match our footers. You guys need to write your contracts better. Ronald J. Ray, RA, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: rjray Post Number: 28 Registered: 04-2004 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 11:04 am:    As an independent specification writer, one of my former clients was a civil engineering firm. I must have written civil specifications for them on over 130 projects. That relationship ended when I went to a temporary part time position at an architectural firm. For my architectural clients, I insist on writing all the necessary civil specifications. My experience is that most civil engineers believe that simply calling out materials on their drawings is sufficient. Perhaps they are content not to have a specification section that requires submittals for them to review. My hunch is that they do not understand specifications or their purpose. It's alarming to me that architects allow civil engineers to provide incomplete construction documents in this manner. Ronald L. Geren, RA, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: specman Post Number: 104 Registered: 03-2003 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 11:20 am:    Robin: I've only had one civil engineer refuse to give civil specifications, and since you and I work in the same local area, I bet we're talking about the same firm. Although I'm a specifier for a firm, we've had NO luck in forcing them to provide specifications. Our solution: don't ever use them again. We've worked with them on two projects, and the latest is the last. For independents, I can see that the problem is even greater since you literally have no leverage with the civil consultant other than working through the architect and using them for pressure. But, as my experience has shown, sometimes that won't even work. For those that prepare the specifications for the civil to review: How receptive are they to that? Do they provide a seal for those sections after they review them? Dave Metzger Senior Member Username: davemetzger Post Number: 109 Registered: 07-2001 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 11:56 am:    As an independent consultant, more than half the time I will draft the earthwork section, and often the asphalt paving and concrete paving sections also. We never touch site utilities. We almost always write subsurface drainage. When we do draft these sections, we always send them to the civil (and structural, for earthwork) engineers for review. Never had a problem with getting their input--tho we do work through the architect. When we have not done the paving sections, it is because the civil engineer did them. Sealing sections is not an issue; we do not seal sections, that is the architect's (ie our client's) responsibility. William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS Senior Member Username: wpegues Post Number: 351 Registered: 10-2002 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 12:02 pm:    I suspect that this may be a regional type of situation. For 99% of our projects here in the Washington/Baltimore region - as well as those that we have done in Austin and Dallas Texas, we don't include any civil specifications - or documents of any other kind. They are not part of the coordinated project team. Typically their documents go out in final form early, way ahead of the architectural package, they put them on their own titleblocks, they revise them, delete them, modify them to no end where many times we don't even get a copy sent to us and have no idea of any modification. This is not for small projects, our typical project is high rise commercial office buidlings, high rise residential, hotels and corporate headquarters. Very rarely, like 5 or so projects over 30 years and 3 architectural offices, we do a major project for an organization that has a coordinated facility management group. Only in those cases has civil ever been drawn into the design team as a true member providing documents coordinated with ours, revised and listed with ours. These are not just big projects, its the owner side that either wants or does not want a full single package. In the past 10 years we have had only 1 project of that nature, International Monetary Fund new headquarters that is still under construction. Its no different than if the Owner has a separate interior designer doing his public spaces residential units in a high rise residential project. Their work is typically not included in or project - it shows up as areas designated 'not in contract' and a reference is made to refer to the Owner's Interior Designer's documents. They don't show up on our list of drawings either. Sometimes, for civil, the Owner requests that when we issue our documents for a major printing that we bundle in the civil drawings for him - we do that. We have never printed civil specifications though, just the drawings. But its just an insert into the package for his convenience. *** A more problematic area is Earthwork (sheeting/shoring, compaction, backfilling, bearing subgrades, etc.). It used to be up until about 8 years ago or so that structural engineers would edit this with no problem (we still send it to them for their review as some do want input to it). But about that time they started declining to edit it. They would review it only for selected input. No none of them will edit it. They state that professionally, they are not soils engineers, or even if their firm is, that their contract does not include those services. When this first started to happen, we went back to the Owner to state that he needed to get someone for this area of work - we are not soils engineers either. Some projects were issued with no earthwork section - came later as an addendum after the Owner found (often his geotechnical consultant) someone. Now, it is the geotechnical consultant that edits this for the Owner. They do nothing else, they write the soils report. They are not even listed as part of the project design team. William Anne Whitacre, CCS CSI Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 165 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 01:16 pm:    when I consulted, I used to provide a separate price for civil specs and reminded my clients to clarify that in their contracts; generally in the Seattle area, the civils are now providing their own spec sections. Sometimes there is a coordination issue -- I've had landscape, civil and structural all want to do a concrete section, for example - but over the years, the project managers have made sure that someone is doing them. In the office I work with now, our consultants do their own civil specs. Generally that includes all earthwork except landscape work (we have in house landscape people); all site utilities. Sheet piling or other structural support is typically done by our structural consultants. Anonymous   Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 01:34 pm:    Little off topic, but does any one have experience similar to the civil folks and their specs, in regard to separate or in-house interiors folks? [i.e., less than minimal specs, on the drawings, and rely on using "reliable contractors" to excuse the use of Div. 1 and extensive specs]. Phil Kabza Senior Member Username: phil_kabza Post Number: 95 Registered: 12-2002 Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - 03:17 pm:    We use a range of civil consultants across our region, and their specification practice ranges from notes on drawings through boilerplate highway specifications to real, project-edited sections. As a significant portion of our claims and change order experience over the years has come from civil engineering design issues, we are becoming more assertive of our requirement that the CEs produce specifications that meet our standard of practice. We're having some increased success, but there are still those that I wish we would fire. I sometimes write custom draft sections for our repeat consultants, and often review and comment on their sections - when they come to us before the print house. Dean E. McCarty Junior Member Username: dean_e_mccarty Post Number: 6 Registered: 08-2002 Posted on Wednesday, March 02, 2005 - 09:52 am:    My practice with civil specifications, which is mostly successful, is to coordinate with my clients' civil and landscape consultants (it works this way with structural, too), explain to them who I am and what my function is (spec consultant to the architect), and whether or not they will use my master Division 2 sections. They redline the sections and fax the redlines back to me so I can make the final edits and review the sections at the same time. I would say that on 80% of my projects, the civil engineer uses my masters. The question then is do they do a good job of editing the section. Amazingly, yes, they do. For the most part. Like Anne, I do this work as an hourly additional service to my contract with the architect. The main reason for this is that I will get a checklist from my client with 30 Division 2 sections on it, of which only 10 will actually be used. I found it much more efficient contractually to move this direction by charging only for the work that I do.