Shop Drawing Review 6

[dianium500]

Anyone have an opinion as to whether or not we need to review non-signed and sealed shop drawings? For example, the rebar shops don't require sign and seal, and in my opinion are used to make the contractor's life easier. It seems to me the contractors are trying to put their job back onto the engineer's and architects.

Thanks in advanced.

 

[jayrod12]

You must review reinforcing shop drawings, otherwise you are in for a world of pain when it comes to construction reviews. The rebar installers aren't looking at the structural drawings, they're looking at the shop drawings.

The reason rebar shops aren't signed and sealed, is the design of the members is your responsibility. You must ensure that the rebar shops match your structural drawings.

 

[MrHershey]

Absolutely, 100% should be reviewed. No exceptions. Perhaps even more than signed and sealed drawings since those are in theory looked at by an engineer. There are mistakes in shop drawings all the time and a lot of times they'll even have questions for you that need clarifying.

Beyond catching other people's mistakes, shop drawings are also your absolute last chance to catch anything that may be wrong in your drawings or make any tweaks. And it's a good time to do it, usually it's months or even years after the original design was done so you have fresh eyes and can spot things that you may have missed before.

 

[TLHS]

You should review them. Not so much for errors and omissions on the part of the contractor or vendor (but catch those too), but rather for ensuring that you properly communicated your intent and it was interpreted correctly.

 

[dik]

You can stipulate in the contract documents that the contractor has to review them and sign off that he has reviewed them, and, that they can be returned if he hasn't reviewed them. I always do that. There's a copy of my project notes for shop drawing review in the thread:

thread507-439740

Dik

 

[EDub24]

100% they should be reviewed. Usually drawings have some standard details for splices, corner detailing and additional rebar around penetrations that aren't shown on the actual plans/sections of the structures. It's your job to make sure everything is where you want it to be. In addition, the plans/sections of a structure don't always show every single aspect (corner, odd detail etc) of the structdure so the rebar shop drawings are critical in making sure everything is laid out the way you want it to be. As someone mentioned they aren't signed/sealed because you did the design and they are providing this for installation and record keeping.

 

[dianium500]

Thanks, I have been reviewing them. How in depth are you getting? I have been checking the basics, like turn down details, lapsplice, rebar grade, placement, etc. But are you guys reviewing them dimension-ally?

 

[JedClampett]

Our company used to have a policy of not reviewing reinforcing shop drawings. The reasons explained to me:

[li]Too much labor that we can't get paid for.[/li]
[li]Our inspectors are instructed to review the field placed reinforcing vs. the design drawings.[/li]
But that was twenty years ago. I started reviewing them no matter what our specifications said, based on some of the excellent points above. And our policy has changed.
As far as level of review, I don't check every stick. We have people who can and do. But I check hooks, laps, generally the number of bars (you ever notice that they always provide one more than you think they should for slab bars), grade and overall dimensions.
What amazes me is how good these detailers are. The details they catch and the questions they ask show great comprehension. Every once in a while I even compliment the detailer on my response.

 

[EDub24]

I typically don't go too far into detail with the review unless I start seeing errors. I will take a quick look at the bar bend schedule vs the callouts to make sure they're using the right types of bends but will always add a note direction the Contractor to verify all dimensions.

 

[MrHershey]

Dimensions I'll try to verify general grid dimensions, elevations, sizes and placements of openings, lap splices, bar extensions that I've called out specifically in drawings, etc.

Varies by job too. On a recent job where grids were seemingly in flux the whole project and also really poorly tied down, I spent a lot of time reviewing and coordinating grid dimensions to try and help reduce headaches and fixes in the field. On high seismic jobs I'll pay a lot more attention to a lot of things like splice locations or even extra rebar that might get thrown in that I normally wouldn't care about. Had a project several years back where the detailers were missing really easy stuff and changing seemingly random (and previously correct) items from submission to submission and refused to cloud, so spent a lot more time digging into everything, including dimensions.

 

[dianium500]

Jed, I have started billing for rebar shops and really all shops. I have a section in my proposals that breakdown the project management part of these reviews. Trusses, precast, rebar shops, concrete submittals, cmu submittals...etc.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Jed, I have started billing for rebar shops and really all shops.

A (strong) word of caution with this based on personal experience. I have seen engineering firms abuse this to increase their profit on a job at the expense of the contractor. Rejecting submittals repeatedly in order to rack up hours on the shop reviews. Having watched a contractor get burned by this practice I will caution anyone submitting shops to watch out for the practice of billing for shop review in the future.

In short, this provides an easy avenue to be dirty. You create a conflict of interest where you make more money by arbitrarily rejecting submittals. If you're not using this to be dirty (which I assume/hope you are not) then just be aware that you need to be very clear on what triggers billing for shop reviews, what the costs will be, and why something was rejected. If you're rejecting something just because you don't like it, but it meets your drawings/specifications, then expect the contractor to try to go over your head to the authority having jurisdiction to get their work approved.

If you do bill for shop reviews expect to immediately be put in a negative light by the contractor at the first sign of trouble. They will become your adversary if you give them even the hint that you're rejecting reviews to increase billable hours and this may turn an owner against you as well depending on their relationship with the contractor(s).

All said, obviously you need to have some sort of stop gap to prevent those jobs we all have had where the contractor kept submitting poor submittals and the time spent in reviewing them was extremely painful to your bottom line. I just wanted to point out the opposing views to billing for submittal review.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/

 

[JedClampett]

Luckily, we're busy enough that there's no reason to churn submittals. We barely have enough time to do them once.
Also, what we do is have in our front ends a clause where if we have to review a submittal more than three times, the contractor has to pay our costs. Now this might seem like it's even more tempting to reject submittals. But everyone knows that trying to get the contractor to pay anything is a struggle and to pay an engineer is practically forbidden. It's more there for show. It really gets the contractor's attention.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Also, what we do is have in our front ends a clause where if we have to review a submittal more than three times, the contractor has to pay our costs.

Unfortunately this was the exact clause used in the worst situation I was party to. The EOR rejected submittals for one minor issue or another until they hit that magic 4th review, and all of a sudden they had a team of engineers with very high billable hourly rates performing an exhaustive review. Reviewing submittals down to the tiniest minutia. Contractor fought it for over a year after the project was completed if I recall but in the end decided to stem the bleeding and forked over pretty much their entire profit for the job.

I'm sure I've only seen extreme outliers of the usage of this clause but, as you can likely tell, it was such a poor experience that if I saw that wording again working with/for a contractor I'd make the EORs life hell ensuring we don't reach that 4th submittal if I suspected anything like it was happening again.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/

 

[JLNJ]

I often see shop drawing review assigned to jr engineers or non-engineers. I am not fond of this practice, but I see how it can happen on a big job in a big design house.

Review of shop drawings gives you one last chance make sure the contractor understands the scope. A "watch for this" note on the shop drawings can save many headaches and calls from the field during the install.

Drawing review also gives us one last chance to catch our own mistakes. We did a project where a beam was called out on the plans as both a W14x34 and a W14x43. Big difference between those two and it had to be the W14x43. The shop submittal is the opportunity to make sure it's right.

 

[BridgeSmith]

"I often see shop drawing review assigned to jr engineers or non-engineers. I am not fond of this practice..."

Your discomfort with this is well placed. Having shops reviewed by anyone not fully versed on the design can lead to disaster. Granted, it was a change order, and not shop drawings, that were reviewed by a jr engineer on the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City. That jr engineer's lack of understanding of the design and the implications of the change cost 114 people their lives. Not all projects have those kind of implications, but if the consequences of failure are high, all the details matter.

 

[dianium500]

To clarify, I actually have a set number of hours that I assign on each of the submittal portions. If I review 4 times, then I review 4 times, it doesn't change the cost nor cause any improprieties on my part, as I can certainly see your point. The clients know my cost upfront. I also have a cost breakdown of construction documents vs. project management. The submittals fall under project management. If I do the drawings and they never get built, they don't get charged for project management. There is absolutely nothing shady about how I do it; I firmly believe in transparency. Racking up hours and sending the clients a bill is unethical. I believe we should get paid for services, and we need to be profitable. Otherwise, what is the point?

 

[WoodDesignCat]

I work for a company that prefabricates structural wall panels (all the walls in building, shear walls, load-bearing walls, non-load-bearing walls). I think that the EOR should be reviewing our shop drawings to ensure that our panels will match their design intent, but on a few jobs the engineer has not required the review of our drawings and the contractor has been the sole entity "reviewing" our shop drawings and signing off on them.

Is it really up to the engineer on whether or not they require engineering review, or should we, the manufacturer, be requiring an engineer's signoff? Everything that I've read basically says it's up to the engineer and contractor, and if the engineer doesn't require their own review, the contractor can take full liability and sign off themselves if they choose to. It doesn't seem like it should work this way to me. If this is really how it works can we even require sign-off from the engineer and architect?

I should clarify that we just pre-cut panel splices, window, door, electrical, and plumbing holes. All connections between panels and other framing are made onsite. We do not currently make different strength panels, the strength is determined by the onsite connections.

 

[bridgebuster]

That's an interesting perspective but why wouldn't we bill for submittal review? Sure, we all occasionally do things for free for clients but I'm not going to provide on-going construction support at no charge. Fortunately the clients I deal with don't expect it either.


I've never come across anyone who does this, however, I've come across people who reject drawings for trivial reasons; mostly out of stupidity. Although on a current project I've been chastised several times for returning things "Approved as Noted". What it comes down to is the city's engineer doesn't want to verify that the contractor incorporated my comments.



I tend to disagree. When I was a junior engineer I worked in a small design house and we were the ones reviewing most shop drawings However, nothing was returned until the squad leader blessed it. In many cases, a junior engineer is good enough. I remember one old timer who said "all you need to do is match our specs and drawings to the shop drawing BUT MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TWO PENCILS; one yellow and one red; mark every word and number on the drawing..." and the chief engineer who said "...g@# d@%&!+, if I don't see a red mark on that drawing I'll know you didn't check it!"

I generally assign shop drawings to younger staff ; for the most part it's not rocket science. Historically, the fees on construction support contracts aren't very lucrative.

 

[cliff234]

As an EOR, I have reviewed reinforcing steel placing drawings for over 35 years. We don’t review the placing drawings as a favor to make the contractor’s job easier. We review placing drawings because that is standard industry practice. Are your contract documents flawless and easy to understand by contractors and detailers? Unless you answered “yes” to both, you should not even question the need to review the placing drawings. Also, in the jurisdictions where I work, industry standard of care dictates that the EOR review the placing drawings. As structural engineers, we like redundancy. Our review of the placing drawings provides a level of redundancy to reduce the chance of mistakes slipping through.

Regarding who reviews the show drawings, I was (half)-joking with another senior engineer last week, and I noted that while junior engineers usually review the shop drawings, it should be senior engineers who look at them! The shop drawing review is the last chance to catch mistakes (design mistakes, as well as detailing mistakes due to mis-interpretation of the drawings).