Submittal: the approval trail that decides what you can order this week

Work order total

$863.16

Labour

$510

Parts, marked up

$288

Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Jobcardo publishes no tax rate, no wage figure and no trade standard: the rate, the markup and the tax on the parts line are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.

A submittal is the contractor showing, before anything is bought or built, exactly what will be supplied: shop drawings, product data, samples and mix designs, sent for the designer to review against the specification. It is not a request for information and it is not a change. The reason submittals matter commercially is that the approval is the gate on procurement: material ordered before the submittal is returned is material that may have to go back, and a submittal sitting unreviewed for three weeks is three weeks of a lead time nobody has spent.

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Register every submittal with the date it was sent

A submittal register carries the item, the specification section, the date sent, the date due back, the reviewer, the returned status and the revision number. Without the two dates the register is a list, and the only question anybody ever asks about submittals is which ones are late and by how long.

Track the status, not just the paperwork

Approved, approved as noted, revise and resubmit, rejected. Each status means something different for procurement: two of them let you order, two do not. A register that records only sent and returned hides the distinction that decides whether the job can buy material this week.

Keep it against the RFIs and drawings: what an RFI submittal really is

A submittal answers what will be supplied; an RFI asks what was meant. An rfi submittal is a confusion of the two and usually means a question raised on a submittal review. Held on one job record with the drawing revisions, the sequence of who asked what and what was approved reads in order.

Submittals: common questions

What is the difference between a submittal and an RFI? A submittal proposes: here is the product, the shop drawing or the sample we intend to use, please confirm it meets the specification. An RFI asks: the drawings and the specification disagree, or this detail cannot be built as drawn, what do you want. One is approval of a proposal, the other is a request for a decision.

Which submittals are worth chasing first? The ones on the longest procurement lead times, regardless of value. A cheap item with a fourteen week lead time will stop a job that an expensive item on the shelf never will. Ranking the register by lead time rather than by cost is the single most useful thing you can do with it.

Who owns the submittal register? The contractor prepares and tracks it and the designer reviews. In practice whoever keeps the register with the dates on it controls the conversation about delay, which is why it belongs on your own job record rather than only in the designer's inbox.

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