How do you organize your calculation submittals? 2

[StructEngineer90]

I'm working on a new federal building project requiring calculations to be submitted for review. It's a fairly comprehensive project with many components to it aside from just the building elements. I'm struggling with how to compile, organize, and decide what needs to be included in the package.

For a project such as this, how would you structure the table of contents? And because I used a number of design aid tools and softwares ranging from Excel and Mathcad to RAM and Hilti Profis and several others in between, what kind of printouts should be included? Some of the reports generated can turn out to be several hundred pages long.

 

[DrZoidberWoop]

Address it at the kickoff meeting by bringing a sample submission and get their input? Every EOR, client, company, and local regulation agency has different document control. Now is the time to proactively avoid making long-term mistakes, related to contractual agreements, and decide exactly who will be required to review each drawing set.

Also, we routinely submit connection design calc packages with 400+ pages to the EOR for approval. So don't worry about that.

 

[atrizzy]

I'd typically propose subdividing the package into individual aspects. Say, gravity design and lateral design. Then, according to the type of building, pick a suitable way of subdividing those two aspects. For gravity design of a concrete building you may have a set of floor plate designs, column takeoffs, footing designs and miscellaneous elements. For a wood framed building it might make more sense to include a key plan of each floor and note typical beam/joist/header designs, and so on.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

I typically use a PDF editing tool to combine all the output together. I add a company border / header / footer. Therefore, I use the same PDF tool to scale down PDF software output from Excel, or an analysis program or such. I also use this program to number the pages.

Sometimes, for large projects, the page numbering is broken into sections or chapters. Chapter 1 pages are labeled 1-1, 1-2, et cetera. This allows me to set aside chapters (or have a different engineer work on them) without affecting the page numbering for the rest of the calculations.

I started using Blue-Beam for this, and it works pretty well. Though it is a pretty buggy program. My guess is there are plenty of other PDF programs that will do similar things, but I didn't want to have to learn a different system.

 

[dauwerda]

Imagine 20 years after it is built you are hired to make major modifications. What information would you want to be able to reconstruct/understand in the existing design?

 

[EireChch]

Josh Plum - the only thing that I took from your post was that you have spelled etc. in its entirety. You may be the first person I have ever seen to do that

 

[SEHQ]

What do you mean by "many components to it aside from just the building elements"? Can it be lumped into a "Miscellaneous" category?

If so, this is how I would typically structure the TOC for a calc package:

---
I. Project Design Basis
[ol 1]
[li]Project Description[/li]
[li]Design Criteria[/li]
[/ol]

II. Gravity Design
[ol 1]
[li]RAM Structural System Output (e.g. load maps, beam numbers, beam design criteria, beam design/deflection/reaction summary, column numbers, load/design summary)[/li]
[li]Gravity Connections (i.e. miscellaneous calcs related to connections)[/li]
[/ol]

III. Lateral Analysis & Design
[ol 1]
[li]Lateral Analysis (basically everything related to lateral; e.g., mass calculations, design criteria and response coefficient, base shear, redundancy factor, drift/irregularity/diaphragm/drag/chord checks)[/li]
[li]LFRS Design[/li]
[/ol]

IV. Foundation Design

V. Miscellaneous
---

Something along that line. Hope it helps!

Oh and I personally wouldn't print out hundreds of output pages, just the summary. If the plan checker has specific questions, he/she will ask and then you can address/provide accordingly.

Andy
StructuralEngineerHQ.com