Shop Drawing Reviews

[Aesur]

Is it common practice that the contractor "rubber stamps" the shop drawings before being sent to the architect/engineer? In my area every shop drawing that comes through has been stamped by the contractor stating the documents are in general conformance with the contract documents, however not a single question/comment has been attempted to be answered, many of which are field verification of dimensions. What do you all typically see?

 

[r13]

With question unanswered, counter with your stamp "Correct and Resubmit", or outright "Not Approved". I bet you will get calls immediately after sending.

 

[phamENG]

Glad to know I'm not alone. The best are when the drawings don't have any questions but are completely wrong - and the contractor's "QC Coordinator" stamped them as A-OKAY. Got to the point where I had to threaten a few contractor PMs with back charges if they didn't do the QC checks on their subs that they were claiming to do. Didn't always stick, but it got their attention more often than not.

 

[jayrod12]

We are generally pretty reasonable. The first time a set comes through that is as you describe we still provide our review. But when we send it back, we flag to them that it is their responsibility to review and markup the shop drawings before we see them and that further submissions that haven't been thoroughly reviewed by the contractor will be rejected.

Then we follow through on the threat, following submissions that appear to be rubber stamped, we just reject without review. We usually only have to reject it once before they smarten up and do their job.

 

[Rabbit12]

Yes! This drives me nuts. The contractor doesn't put any effort whatsoever into review of show drawings before they throw them over the fence to us.

 

[Agent666]

I usually insist on a quick review as soon as they come in via email. If it looks like it went through the contractors hands without any checking, I just return it almost right away via email with a few helpful hints on what they might be missing, etc. This helps them get obvious stuff correct and a reminder that we might only be checking a random sample and it's their responsibility to check and coordinate and raise any pertinent querys as part of the submission.

Just drawing rubbish in the hope I'll fully markup the full corrections seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

My expectation is, the drawings might do a few back and forth trips between the shop detailer and contractors before I'm even sent them to review. And that review is on substantially complete documentation.

This sending it back without checking gets harder to justify if you've been sitting on them for 2 weeks without taking a look. So it's key in my experience to check them ASAP to identify 'show-stopper' items that mean they probably have not done the required level of checking and coordination.

 

[EZBuilding]

I have had one project in which shop drawings were reviewed by contractors for conformance to the documents. The exception that proves the rule so to say.

 

[r13]

Personally I hate to see shop drawings go back and forth unless changes made by the engineer during the course. Provide actable comments on the drawings, refrain from ask questions that might confuse the detailers. I agree with Agent666, return the drawings with clear comments/instructions ASAP.

 

[KootK]

I see no contractor reviews that I would consider "conformance with contract documents". And, frankly, I don't feel that such a review is a realistic expectation of a contractor. Contractors are big picture guys and gals that focus on costs, safety, schedule, logistics etc. That's their role. What I see from contractors that I feel are excellent is something more like this:

1) pushing the design team to coordinate among themselves as appropriate.

2) making the final call on decisions where that is necessary to keep thing moving.

3) providing input on the stuff that tends to cause them real problems during construction like:

a) ensuring that the structure can support the equipment etc required to construct the building.

b) providing guidance on sequencing and temporary access requirements.

c) making sure requirements for structure penetration get coordinated with the subs.

 

[Rabbit12]

I don't think anyone is advocating for the contractor to review shop drawings to a "conformance with contract documents" level, but they should at least be reviewing them. I've seen lots of shop drawings that were obviously not even reviewed by the contractor, just thrown over the fence for our review. I suspect the contractor is depending on us to do some of his work.

 

[JLNJ]

The good contractors will actually look at them and maybe add a few marks if something is obviously off.

When the shops are terrible, the very BEST contractors will actually preemptively require resubmittal without wasting the engineer's time.

These are few and far between. Almost all the time it is "stamp and forward to the EOR".

 

[Aesur]

Wow, lots of responses, didn't notice till just now as I'm not getting the email notifications today.

It sounds like the we are mostly all seeing the same thing, which is good to know, but also not very encouraging for the industry. We typically do our best to review and return within 2 days, however allow up to 5 days; however some of these shop drawings can take an entire day to review, typically steel shop drawings for larger buildings, and it would be nice if the contractor would take a first pass at these to answer questions rather than just rubber stamping. We seem to find ourselves reviewing almost everything on the shop drawings as of late because no one else seems to be reviewing them and the quality of shop drawings appears to be in steady decline. More often than not, in the past few years it feels like the EOR is more and more acting like the contractors QC.

One that really gets me is wood trusses; 95% of the wood truss shop drawings/calcs ignore the 300# additional load at any point on the top chord for future mechanical that is commonly noted on all structural drawings in my area. Additionally they rarely align trusses at drags as noted on the structural drawings. I suspect the reason the drags are typically missed is that the manufacturers rarely see the plans, instead the contractor/sub just tell them what they need, however the concentrated load is so common place in my area that it should in my opinion rarely be missed.

I'm not sure how you guys CA fees are setup, but around here, CA is typically a fixed fee and is very little, usually doesn't actually cover the cost spent at "bill" rates. I'm still trying to figure out how to address that as it's currently the cost of doing business in this location where the number of one man shops drive the prices way too low.

 

[Enhineyero]

I've seen this trend and it is becoming a norm that shop drawings are being submitted to consultants without being reviewed by the builder (not even the detailer's supervisor). Frankly, it cost a lot to review shop drawings that has not been through any QA/QC.

As a response, I added a note into my drawings (in bold) that submission of shop drawings for review shall include a signed letter from the builder stating that they have checked it for completeness/correctness with the latest documents and that our office reserves the right to reject shop drawing submissions not complying with this note.

I know its a bit strong but at the end of the day our fees don't really cover babysitting the builder.