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Author Message Russell W. Wood, CSI, CCS Senior Member Username: woodr5678 Post Number: 109 Registered: 11-2003 Posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 - 04:07 pm:    Rather than issuing hard copies of all our specs we're considering just issuing Div-0 as hard copies and referencing the rest of our documents at our website. What are your thoughts pro and con? Christopher E. Grimm, CSI, CCS, LEED®-AP, MAI, RLA Senior Member Username: tsugaguy Post Number: 124 Registered: 06-2005 Posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 - 05:34 pm:    I think it really depends a lot on the sophistication of the audience, but seems like there has to be some increased potential for problems. Maybe you need an advanced ftp type of site like Newforma that keeps record of who downloads each file and when. Lynn Javoroski CSI CCS LEED™ AP SCIP Affiliate Senior Member Username: lynn_javoroski Post Number: 732 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 - 07:51 pm:    You would need to restrict access per project as well as record who downloads what. You would be wise to use a service, local or otherwise, that has a track record for successful project management of this type. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 727 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 - 08:09 pm:    we issue most of our projects via an FTP site for the project and the general contractor is then in charge of distributing them just as he would for any other project. the FTP site has log in protocols and you can see when things are both uploaded and downloaded, and who did it. we regularly issue multiple packages (we're up to 15 packages on one large job) in this way for projects across the country. another way of doing this is to upload them to the FTP site of a printing company (much like you would give the print shop your hard copy masters) and then they print on demand when asked. I haven't seen any problems with this.. and in many ways, its easier for our end rather than compiling the book and sending it out. We post pdfs and keep a master set electronically in our file so we have a record of what was issued and when. Ruppert Rangel, AIA CCS Senior Member Username: rangel Post Number: 16 Registered: 08-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 - 09:57 pm:    We have had good luck. We convert all specs and drawings to pdf and post on a file sharing service (Less than $30 month). You control users with pass words, what they are able to retrieve, and can access an audit trail of useage. When we post an addendum, designated users are automatically notified of the posting. We have also been able to reduced printing costs significantly. Previously, we hosted an ftp site in-house on our server, but the file share method is much easier to manage and since it is off-site, also more secure. Mark Gilligan SE, CSI Senior Member Username: mark_gilligan Post Number: 41 Registered: 10-2007 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 01:37 am:    From the point of view of the sub consultants this practice has several consequences. It shifts the costs of printing to us. Doing it in house has to be more expensive that it it was sone at the printers. When the specs come in already printed and bound I spend less time than if I have to arrange printing them. With electronic submissions, in order to cut costs, we tend to print out only those parts we think we will need. This probably results in less coordinating of our work with the other sections. I doubt that we are alone in doing this. We still need to make hard copy of some sections. This is because it is not always convienient to refer to the monitor. In addition it has been found that it is often easier to read things from a hard copy than on the monitor. Several times I have found that PDF files will print differently on different devices. I have seen our drawings printed out at the printer where the texturing hid text that was perfectly readable when printed in house. The contractor did not know of the missing information untill I pointed it out to him. Bottom line, over time our fees will have to refelect the inefficiencies of dealing with electronic submissions. I am not a luddite but I believe that we need to use technology appropriately. Don Harris CSI, CCS, CCCA, AIA Senior Member Username: don_harris Post Number: 176 Registered: 03-2003 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 08:26 am:    PDF is great, but the printed word is not yet in a coma. We typically ask our consultants to post pdf files to our ftp site. We integrate them into the Project Manual??? and repost the final product. We love this. Saves time, paper and aggravation. We do print hard copies for our consultants and for our in-house reviews and CA. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 729 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 01:09 pm:    Mark- I"ve seen the print-cost shift occur in both directions. We have contractors who want to submit all shop drawings and RFIs electronically, rather than printing hard copy, marking it up and sending it to us. That means from our (architect's ) office, we print out a the shop drawing, then mark it up in hard copy; scan it and send it back to the contractor. it shifts printing costs to us in that case. essentially, the owner pays for all printing -- either the contractor includes it in their bid, or we bill it as a reimbursable expense to the owner. the time involved at the administrative side can shift from our office to your office, but it still gets factored into the fee (either our fee or the contractor fee). we are often in a schedule push because the contractor has recommended that for reasons of cost, the owner issues multiple packages -- on one recent project, the contractor was insisting on 47 packages in order to "get the best bids". (we did not go along with this, but we did issue in about 15 packages). if we complied with the request for multiple bid packages, we would essentially do nothing but print out and sent things to the printer. when we post electronically, we can track exactly when the contractor actually uses the multiple packages and determine if they really do need 47 packages... or not.