Smoother Construction Projects

A project with many eyes on the scope is better than just one. Most issues are brought up by laborers because they are the ones on the job site working closely with the drawings and existing conditions. Whether those issues are valid concerns or not we should stop and give them the platform to describe or show us what their concern is.

The worst scenarios are prevented when we take early action. Don't let your years of experience shut people down! Feeling more empowered than the remaining crew has been the root of many costly problems in construction, because when we decide "who" we want to listen to, we've decided that an issue isn't valid unless it comes from a certain source and we then have failed. Most construction issues are first presented by the laborers. Pay attention to what they have to say.

RFI's are a trickle up task that if discussed with coordinating trades we find out even more about the effects of the direction of the final decision. It's when we refuse to ask coordinating trades "how does this issue or the potential outcome affect your work?" that creates a domino effect of halting schedules and rising costs.

A proactive approach is to share the RFI with the coordinating trade and understand the potential issues before submitting the RFI. As an example is where a drywaller had reached a point in his schedule where he had completed recessed areas for wood baseboard. I provided the unapproved mill-work submittal for review of coordinating work expectations. The mill-work shop drawings were late coming due to a delay in signing the mill-work subcontract. The drywaller noticed that the wood baseboard height was not the same height as shown on the drywall drawings and I remembered that the approved carpet thickness was 60% thicker than specified. Making the architect aware of these two discrepancies would change the height of the baseboard before it is manufactured which saved the schedule and wrong-sized products delivered to the job site.

If you have CAD drawings, layer your MEPF together to see where they meet up. If steel or framing will be in those same areas layer that in too. Look at those drawing collectively with your trade project managers and superintendents as early as possible before installing in those areas. Never forget to walk the site and examine the existing areas. Break up the focus group into complete phases. RFIs are greatly multiplied in the absence of good coordinated examination of the site conditions with these experts. Do a layout on the floor for each trade if necessary to see the points where the utilities or framing coincide. Managing the issues and devising a plan prior to the start of work makes for a smoother project.

Impatience and feeling overwhelmed by the workload are predecessors to making a poor and costly decision. The recipe to errors early in a project is to allow a subcontractor's submittal to be forwarded to an architect without thorough review especially when there are design changes and existing conditions that affect the product characteristics or quantity. Many reviewers have too much faith in the accuracy of the submittal based on the convictions of the providing contractor. This has caused many door frames, overhead doors, steel, and windows to arrive to a site in the wrong size or quantity and caused many schedule delays. Other issues that affect submittal reviews is design change information hoarding that isn't conveyed to the reviewer in a timely manner. Few people are included in redesign conversations before the decision is executed. Not halting work in those specific areas could set your schedule back and an architect or owner might not allow a completion date to be extended even though changes were the issue. If the completion date is not going to change then halting work in that specific area is probably the better decision so that new work is not demolished.

Think about the hard costs of reviewing a submittal that is inaccurate according to changes in the design. Most submittals are 10 to 50 pages long, some are as much as 300 pages. The time to review and process a submittal then turn it over for a second or third tier reviewer can cost as much as $200 just in review time. Multiply that by all of the submittals received by the end of the project which could be 300+ submittals both approved or rejected. Taking the submittal process more seriously and treating it with thorough reviews before it reaches the second or third tier reviewer will mean that training a subcontractor to provide submittals the way that it is required by the contract will be necessary.

What contractors don't do is train subcontractors or provide them a software platform to generate good submittals. Hosting a required training meeting for subcontractors and their submittal processing person is a novel idea. Letting them know how you review submittals helps them look for the same information from their products information. Whether that information is wire type, amps, thicknesses, code approvals, or any other specification the subcontractor should be aware of what you are looking for. Many arguments from subcontractors about submittals are spurred because they believe that all issues can be remedied with just a sales pitch. No further paperwork needed, so they think. Some subcontractors will go as far as making up stories and calling other project associates or the engineer of record just to get their alternate product approved without further paperwork, but it doesn't work. I personally have consulted subcontractors on the requirement of the Substitution Form countless times, and soon discovered that they delay in filling it out correctly or at all, and they called other associates to complain about it making the incident look as if I was holding up the review of their product. It's frustrating to say the least. Holding a required course for the submittals processors at that subcontractor level would reduce these occurrences and save the project schedule because the contractor would be capable of ordering their product in time.

Ask questions early! Too many contract negotiators fail to ask what was omitted from the contractor bid before they award a contract. Contractors are allowed to propose alternative products during the submittal stage, but it doesn't mean that alternatives will be automatically approved for the project. When a subcontractor provides a price based on alternative products, but doesn't mention that anywhere on their proposal, it could mean that the contractor might bail on starting the project or be in-debt for specified items. In one example an elevator contractor bid a project where their product did not have the same aluminum thickness as specified and was ultimately held financially responsible for the added cost of the specified material. HVAC, electrical and millwork trades are notorious for pushing products that are of a lesser quality than the item specified. Do ask direct questions about the brand, style numbers, sizes and quantities before approving a bid proposal from a subcontractor.

Project Managers sometimes ask subcontractors to include areas of work that the contractor is not an expert in. Sometimes this isn't a big problem, and more often it is. I've seen tile installers be asked to perform electrical work, framers to perform structural steel work, drywallers to perform concrete footing work, it gets pretty crazy fast when these workers begin the task. Why do PMs do this? Some do it because it's cheaper, some do it because they don't want to write another contract for a separate contractor. The worst scenario is that something fails after it is installed or the workers get injured in the process of performing the work. If you've ever remodeled a property and noticed items that were absolutely not within code, well that is sometimes the sort of outcome you get when you don't have the correct contractor for the task. Cheaper makes the PM look good until things go sideways.

Construction is an industry chock full of influencers and decision makers that sometimes have more authority than we do at any level. When you know something is wrong - speak up and if needed get the authorization in writing. I once identified a tile as wall tile and unsuitable for it's design location, the elevator floor and elevator lobby. A wall tile is much thinner than a floor tile and it is not designed for impact especially an impact from luggage bags being bashed against them. I required the architect to send me communication to install them after I warned him of the issue. Guess what? The tiles were installed per industry standard and looked amazing, until a few hours later when they began to crush under impact of luggage. The legal standpoint is that the contractors were not liable for the replacement costs.

When remodeling don't slack on finding original plans and shop drawings. The building department and most building owners have a copy of the original drawings. Every project that I've performed where demolition was a large part of the project, I've always sought out the original drawings. Many associated people have told me that such drawings are not available and yet I located them. The original drawings will tell you information about the structural components, MEPF locations which will prove useful. In a recent project I observed four fellow project planning members talk extensively for two-weeks about the size and shape of an underground column cap. Common sense said that those discussions were a waste of time as was the calculated cost of those professionals holding the discussion. Somewhere there were original drawings. When I popped the question of "has anyone looked at the original drawings?", nobody had bothered to investigate whether there were any and advised me not to seek them out. I looked in the most common place, the engineering room. There were enough drawings to fill a 10'x10' room. Long story short, I found the civil, utility and structural drawings dating back to when the structure was built and each subsequent remodel. The column caps were clearly defined in the drawings as were the steel in the columns.

Be detailed! Construction projects can begin as confusing if you are working on a large project. Specifiers can write ambiguous specifications leaving the project team scratching their heads trying to figure out what exactly is the "product" he is talking about. Scour the plans and specifications for the 2 to 6 letter/number product identifiers and list out what the product is. Look up pictures on the internet to see what it should look like. As subcontractors are hired add their name to the list. Whatever is left blank means that you potentially have an item that wasn't picked up by the subcontractor or the estimator. When processing submittals copy the product identifier number and the specification number onto the top right corner of all the pages so that at the end of the project the pages can be organized in a O&M manual easily.

Long-lead items can kill your schedule! One chronic issue with PMs is late product orders which is linked to late contract signing and late submittals. When you review bids ask the contractor how long does it take to receive the item to the job site after the approved submittal or shop drawings are returned to you? This answer will vary because it depends on the manufacturing work load at the time of order placement. Make a special list of all long lead items and make those contractors a priority to ensure that all negotiations and contracts are settled early. Assign a team member to manage all long-lead items including the submittals, shop drawings, and submission to the second tier reviewers, along with order placement and tracking logs. Shop drawings are often long-lead items too. This person will ensure that no subcontractor is sitting on his schedule in hopes to leverage schedule performance time for lesser quality goods. The key is being proactive by asking the subcontractor at the time of the bid submission. Do not record the "short date" only use the longest scenario. This will ensure that the project will be paying for first choice goods and that the project schedule and the anticipated cost will remain intact. Late goods means high fees to accelerate the manufacturers production schedule and higher costs for shipping overnight or rush delivery. On-time and on-budget shouldn't be at a higher cost.

In one scenario a PM had a supplier bump up the cost of the product by $30,000 to hide the cost of air freight the product from Italy because he ordered the product two months late. In another scenario a PM didn't investigate which codes applied to his project which affected being passed on code inspections and he therefore didn't know what questions to ask his bidders when they provided their proposals to see if the item was included or excluded. We don't want to be in a legal battle over "who pays".

Call the building department and ask questions before you begin construction! Don't be afraid of the building department. The items the code inspectors are going to look for later are the same items they are going to tell you now. There are no secrets. They have a form with line item questions that they follow. If you believe the inspector is wrong have the discussion based on reasoning prior to construction and come to an agreement. I've talked with inspectors and gotten them to provide me alternative ways to perform a task at a lesser cost with the same design integrity. I've heard construction planners tell me that talking with an inspector will only get code items added to the project. If there is a code that affects your project, the code inspector is going to ask you to perform the work anyway regardless if you ask now or wait till he inspects. Asking an Owner to pay for the code correction at the beginning of the project is easier than finishing an area and telling the Owner "you didn't know about the code".

Never be THAT guy! One pet peeve of mine is colored markers used to highlight letters or numbers. We all know that Yellow is the only color that will allow it to be copied without completely masking the text. An alternative is use a colored DOT next to the text. There were many documents ruined by colorful markers because it blacks out the text under it. These "colorful" people know it before they use the markers, I often feel like trashing every blue, pink or orange marker I find in an office and banning the purchase of them. Fine line markers for underlining text is a better choice, but how many people can make a perfect underline without touching the text?

Keeping organized on large projects means phasing your drawings. Figure out which drawings pertain to the phase you are working on and lump them together alone. Some drawings are a thousand pages and specifications are 3,000 pages. This means that trimming out the pages you are not working on could mean that you could be a lot faster in learning the project scope. Break up the remaining drawings into phases and create teams to review the drawings and compare it to site conditions. Having a team focus for two or three weeks on MEPF conflicts, figuring out routing and what items are going into the walls puts everyone on better footing than those you wait. Never leave out tradesmen in these focus groups. Bring sidewalk chalk to every site walk to work out ideas.

Yellow paper taped at areas of work. I have typed up forms for RFI reminders and posted them at the area it pertained to. The yellow forms dangling throughout the project contain the subcontractor's RFI number, the General Contractor's RFI number, the subject matter and the question pending an answer. This reminds everyone especially the architect that an area of work has been halted pending a decision. This novel approach stands out and there isn't a better way to make a site decision than to examine the conditions.

If there is a planned hole or a new hole label it! I write or post a paper with a thumbtack or tape depending on the surface with whose hole it is and their direct phone number. I label drywall walls the location of in-wall items. Drywallers want to hurry up and get their work done and sometimes an in-wall electrical panel, or the size of an in-wall bathroom item isn't on their plan or anywhere else. I take the subcontractor and mark up the exact height, width and location of the in-wall item(s) and record that on the interior of the one-sided drywall, or tape a document at that location. This should be done at the beginning of the framing stage. If there is a design change I go through the areas considered and hang a "Pending redesign" document briefly describing the change.

Talking about making writing notes, a couple years ago I noticed a desk that was freshly painted yellow with a sign taped to it "DO NOT WRITE ON DESK". As funny as it was to automatically know why the desk was painted and the purpose of the note, historically jotting down notes on new drywall isn't amusing to arriving painters. My notes on drywall are areas that will be cut out or it is on the interior of one-sided drywall. Painters state that pens, especially markers cannot be covered completely. Writing so hard that there is an indent following your lines cannot be covered or disguised well either. So use paper instead and a thumbtack if you must post a note. Tape for notes tears drywall and have to be mud and sanded to hide so use tape only on floors.

Assemble an atheistic team that pays attention to walls, openings, maintaining ceiling heights and clearances, mill-work, and locations of fixtures. Do mock-up markings on the floor or walls. Discover conflicts early.

Lastly, if your company offers structured training provide it at the beginning of hiring a new employee. If company rules changed provide an updated training for the entire team within the first week of the contract award. Training when offered too late welcomes failure of the individual or conflicts with the team. Offer the training in-person, or in a workbook, or online. Make it always accessible if one sort of training is not available. Ensure that there is a test at the end of each chapter. That is how you ensure that the entire team is going to play by the same rules. When you have your first of the month meetings ensure that job descriptions are printed and posted so that everyone is aware of "who" has been hired to do "what". When a person applies for a job he or she has agreed to perform all of the items listed in the job description within a set period of time. Employees feel undermined by staff that seeks out services to be performed or decisions to be decided by someone that isn't assigned to the task. Blurred lines create office conflict. Make certain that the timelines are made reasonable considering the selection of software to be utilized for the tasks versus the time the task actually takes. ProCore will perform a task in 5-minutes using one software, versus the old fashioned way using Microsoft Office programs Excel, Work, MS Project which would take over an hour to deliver the same report or document. Being chronically unreasonable about timelines has been the cause of many great employees to join more advanced companies that invest in good software. Make all report deadlines consistent.