Dee Davis (00:00)
the submittals are too big, they take too long to review, they're incorrect, they're incomplete, they're too vague, and require the designer to go do a whole bunch of research or extrapolation to try to understand what the sub is trying to communicate. You gotta remember the designers don't have a crystal ball.
They don't know what you meant any more than we know what they meant when they went to design the building. Complaints I hear from GCs are there's too many submittals. They take way too long. There's too many rejections. We want everything to come back approved or approved with comments.
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm your host, Dee Davis, and I am so excited today to nerd out with you about submittals. I want to help you learn how to get your submittals approved fast the first time. I've got all the secrets for you, so stay tuned.
Submittals, as we know, are a very necessary part of construction, and it's kind
Of one of the more dreaded and laborious tasks that start as soon as a contract is awarded and way too often drags on through the majority of the project. It's like that stone you're dragging behind you for the whole project, and you just can't wait to be done. This really isn't how it's supposed to work. In fact, most contracts boldly state.
That all submittals shall be submitted in the first 30 or 60 days of contract award. And we all look at that and chuckle because we know that it rarely, if ever, happens. Let's first talk about why we need to do a submittal. I've heard so many people say this is stupid. You tell us in the specs what we're supposed to do. Why don't you just let us do that and spare us all the submittals? Well
After all, the specs do tell us what is acceptable. So, why do we have to do it and do all this product data? There's several reasons. The submittal goes from the installing contractor to the GC, then on to the engineer of record, and sometimes even to the owner for approval. So, why does the EOR or the engineer of record want to see all this product data and samples and all these other things they ask for?
There's a few reasons. Contractors don't often read the spec and so often submit on items that are not even listed in the specification. And this is really an opportunity for them to catch mistakes. That's number one. Number two is there are options listed in the specification. Not all the options might be really super applicable to what you're doing. The EOR wants to know exactly.
Which choice you are making for products and materials. There are very often options provided that may only be applicable in certain applications, and the EOR is looking for a clear communication from the installer that they understand what is to be used where.
The spec often tells you what's acceptable, and a submittal is often the contractor's confirmation or kind of a promise. This is what I'm gonna do. If you've ever read an EOR stamp, you might notice the words on it say something like approval of the submittal does not relieve the contractor's obligation to install in accordance with the contract documents, or something really official sounding like that. What that really means for you, contractor,
Is you can have an approved submittal in your hand, go install it, and you're still on the hook if it's wrong. That's what that means. So you need to pay close attention and make sure that it's right. It's important to note that a submittal cannot, and I'm going to say this again a submittal cannot change scope, act as a field directive, or initiate a change order. This is legal.
Contract documents are your plans and your specifications. Submittals are not contract documents. So it is really important because I do see designers sometimes make this mistake. Well, they'll direct a design change in a submittal. That is not appropriate. And contractors, you need to make sure that you're not asking for that. And you need to make sure that engineers are not directing that. That needs to go through a whole different
RFI and change order process. Technically, a submittal approval also does not constitute an approval of a deviation from the spec or an approval of a substitution unless it specifically follows the substitution procedure permitted in the specifications. So if you're the installing contractor, you can't just go, well, I really want to use this product instead and submit it and say, well, it got approved, therefore.
The substitution is approved. That is not an appropriate way to do it, and you will lose that battle in court if it ever comes to that. This is something you need to be very careful about as an installing contractor because you can be held accountable if you do not handle the submittal and substitution process properly. I've seen owners enforce it, and you don't want to be accountable for it if it ever gets to court or even to mediation.
Okay, so now we know why we need to submit. So how do we speed up this process? The biggest complaints I hear from contractors are that the turnaround time for submittals is way too long. On average, in the industry, it's over 20 days, and I've seen projects whose averages go way over 30. The next complaint I hear is submittals take forever to come back only to be rejected, and now I'm scrambling.
To keep my work from being delayed. The biggest complaints I get from designers: the submittals are too big, they take too long to review, they're incorrect, they're incomplete, they're too vague, and require the designer to go do a whole bunch of research or extrapolation to try to understand what the sub is trying to communicate. Subs are not following procedures, is the fourth complaint. You gotta remember the designers don't have a crystal ball.
They don't know what you meant any more than we know what they meant when they went to design the building. Complaints I hear from GCs are there's too many submittals. They take way too long. There's too many rejections. We want everything to come back approved or approved with comments. The owners want to know why this process is just taking so bloody long, and why do we still end up with unapproved materials installed out in the field?
So everybody's got their own interest and their own challenges, but there is absolutely one thing that everyone agrees on. It takes too long. So today we are going to talk about how to make this faster. When I was an installing contractor, I actually love putting together submittals. I geeked out on this. It helped me get intimately familiar with the scope of the project and get a better understanding of how it all went together in the field.
After all, we submit on every nut, bolt, sealant, adhesive, and every type of widget that we purchase and install for a project. So there's really no better way to get acquainted with the scope than to sit down with the plans and the specs and create submittals. So here's some of the few things that you can do to help get your submittals to sail through and get approved the very first time. Here is a list of do's
Do make them specific to a specific spec section and even a specific paragraph in that spec section. Do mark them up. Tell them what is applicable and what is not applicable. And tell them where you intend to use this product. If there is potentially more than one possibility. If it could potentially be used only indoors, then tell me that you're only going to use that indoors.
Or if it's indoor outdoor, then tell me that. If it's something like a gasket, tell me what system you plan on putting these gaskets in, because there could be a lot of different gaskets that might not be appropriate for all systems. If it's caulking, where in the world are you putting this caulking? You're leaving me to guess as the reviewer, and that would be either the owner or the engineer of record, and you gotta remember they have no idea.
Really, what your scope is. So you need to communicate very clearly what is going on, what you're going to be installing out in the field. Do make the submittals smaller. Don't submit a hundred pages or a whole product catalog. That is the fastest way to get a submittal rejected, is to submit an entire product catalog. In fact, I will tell you if I'm your reviewer and you submit a whole product catalog.
I'm going to go through the first four or five pages and I'm going to hit the reject button. I'm not even looking at that whole thing. That's crazy. If it's equipment related, do put tag numbers on there. Tell me exactly which fan this is, which air handler this is, which chiller this is, which widget it is, which light fixture type is it. Don't leave me guessing.
Do indicate system names, system numbers, codes. If it's insulation type 4, put insulation type 4 right on there. Just tell me, talk to me like I'm stupid, because this is how you make it go faster. Do make sure that it's legible. my goodness, I can't tell you how many illegible submittals I've seen in my career. It's not as bad so much with everything being digital anymore, but still every once in a while.
I'll see something that is a copy of a copy of a scanned copy and I can't even make it out anymore. Automatic rejection.
Do use X's or slashes to mark out things that are not applicable on the page and use arrows or boxes or highlights to indicate things that are applicable. I get it. Sometimes when you're looking at a bunch of product data, maybe you've got a sheet that shows a bunch of different kinds of bolts. Well maybe you're not going to use every kind of bolt, but I don't know which ones you are going to use. So please tell me by Xing out or slashing out the things you're not going to use or boxing or circling the things that you are.
Do submit on things that are missed in the specification. This is something I was taught very young in my career, and I can't tell you how many times this has saved my bacon. So let's just say you're reviewing the plans and the specs, and you notice that you maybe don't have a spec for this little widget that is shown in the plans. Well, you can ask for a specification. Sometimes you'll get it, sometimes you won't.
If it's something that's relatively small and you're pretty good at figuring out, okay, I think it's going to be this thing, or that this would be appropriate for that application. Mark it as unspecified where you're going to put it and submit it. They're going to love you forever. That really saves the designer a lot of time. Because they're human too, they miss stuff sometimes. Do remember that they cannot read your mind. So
Scopes can be divided up all different kinds of ways. The engineer of record has no idea who you are or what your scope is. They can only guess. So make it very clear and easy for them. Here's a few do nots. Do not put the whole product catalog or make them guess as to which thing you mean when you're submitting.
Do not mix up product types, specs, or divisions. Don't lump a whole bunch of things together in one submittal. It might be easier for you, but that thing will absolutely crawl through the system if you do that. Do not make the submittal more than 30 pages if you can help it. Here's the conversations I have with designers. my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed. I have 30 submittals in my queue to be reviewed.
If they know that a good portion of those submittals are big, those are gonna sit longer in their queue. They have 10 days or so to approve a submittal, to review it and approve it, which we know that it often takes longer than that. Guess what? They're gonna wait till day nine or 10 to even open it. If it's a small submittal, it's very clear, it's very well marked up, that thing is gonna sail And if you are the person that makes sure that your submittals are small,
well marked up, very clear, they're gonna open your submittals first. And those things are gonna sail right through the system. They're not gonna wait till day 10 to start looking at it. They're gonna look at a submittal and they're gonna go, that's a hundred page submittal. I don't even want to look at it. I'm gonna wait till day twenty eight to look at that submittal. You don't wanna be that person.
Do not wait and turn in all your submittals at once. I can't tell you how many contractors I've heard that use this tact. I'm not going to turn them in as I finish them. I'm going to wait until I have them all and then I'm going to turn them in and flood the system. That's another really great way to make sure that your submittals go to the bottom of the list. Don't do that.
Turn them in as you finish them, small little bite-sized pieces, so that the designers can pick your stuff off and start getting it returned to you quickly. If you flood the system, not only are you going to have a very unhappy general contractor who now has to review 30 submittals all at once, but you're going to be clogging up the system and your stuff is going to get stuck at the bottom of the queue, and you're going to be waiting 30, 60, 90 days to get your submittals back.
Do not wait until the last minute. I know I shouldn't have to say this to you, but honestly, I can't tell you how many times somebody's turned in a submittal and the very next day in a meeting comes in and says, my gosh, I need that submittal back tomorrow. Don't do that to anyone.
I'm gonna propose something wild.
When I worked for a process contractor, we had a technique of putting our submittals together that was the most effective technique I have ever seen in the industry. And I've seen very few people do this, but I teach this all the time now.
We put our submittals together by paragraph. So division thirteen.
Paragraph two, whatever is listed in there, that's one submittal. We did that for all kinds of reasons, but one of the ways that it benefited us was that since the engineer of record knew that they were only going to be looking at one thing at a time, even if there were 30 of our submittals in the queue, they knew they could pick them off very quickly. And so our stuff rose to the top.
I had submittals that would get approved in a day. That's how fast the turnaround time was going because they knew everything coming from me was in bite-sized pieces. They could say, I've got 10 minutes. Let me get a couple of submittals done. One or two submittals done in between these two meetings. They'd open it up, they'd look at it, yep, it's all very clear, it's marked up, approved, done.
It sounds like a wild proposal. And when I talk to general contractors about this, they're like, no, we don't want to do that because then we're going to have 3,000 submittals in the system. Yeah, but you're going to have 3,000 approved submittals in your system. That's what you're going to have. if you get something rejected, let's say there is a problem, you're only having one little tiny thing that needs to be fixed. That can be
Turned around very, very quickly, get back into the system and get approved. If you have a 100-page submittal that gets rejected, you have to start all over again. So take that proposal for what it's worth. I think it's going to save you time in the long run. It's going to be easier to track the things that you do have to revise and resubmit. And your stuff is going to go from a 30, 40, 50-day average.
Down to 10 days or less. I hope you get back to me and let me know how that works for you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
