Scenario: You are a consulting engineer working under contract to an owner on a new solid waste transfer station project.  You completed the design several weeks ago and the constructor (a local contractor) was selected through  a competitive bid process.  The constructor is now transmitting shop drawings and other submittals to the engineer for review, as required by the construction documents.

Assignment: The constructor has submitted a shop drawing for the fencing portion of the project for your approval before fabrication.  Your job is to compare the shop drawing submittal to the fencing specification and provide comments to the owner regarding any deficiencies in the submittal. 

– Review the Contractor’s fence submittal (especially Page 3 of the pdf), which shows a diagram of a proposed fence panel. Compare the diagram to the specification section 02820 (focus on Part 2, Products).

– Write a minimum of 3 comments noting discrepancies between the contractor’s submittal and the specification.  Add comments with your opinion on where deviations should be allowed and where they should not, based on common sense.

– Your submittal review should be transmitted in a technical memorandum format with three sections (1.0 Introduction, 2.0 Review Comments, 3.0 Conclusion).  You should provide an introductory statement providing context (project name, submittal name & number, technical specification that applies), and that you are reviewing for conformance with the construction contract documents.  In Section 2.0, you should identify any discrepancies (items in the submittal that do not conform with the specification) you find.  Describe the location on the submittal where the discrepancy is (e.g., Submittal Drawing 81G on page xx) and reference the specification section and paragraph that it conflicts with (e.g., Specification 02820, paragraph 2.02.A.3).  You should provide a copy of the submittal as an appendix to your technical memo.  You should also discuss whether this discrepancy negatively affects the project or the value that the owner would receive if accepted.  You should provide markups in red directly on the submittal.  You should cloud and annotate the areas that you find that conflict with the specification.  In Section 3.0 of your technical memo you should then state if the submittal should be rejected or accepted with clarifying notes, and give the reason why.  Comments on clarifying notes: sometimes a discrepancy is so minor that it can be cleared up with a note that tells the contractor to change something so it will conform with the specification.  This saves the time of having the contractor resubmit.  However, you would not do this for a major issue.