Curious, quick straw poll…who receives all the consultant’s specifications and compiles one final Project Manual and who only does their architectural specifications and has the Architect compile the final Project Manual? For those that do compile, do you break that service out as a separate line item service fee?
I try to stay out of the final coordination, but do get dragged in from time to time. I find that if I have to look at consultants’ sections (even a fleeting glance), I become violently ill. I don’t break it out.
I’m in-house working for the A/E firm; I compile the project manuals, including sections from consultants, which are usually late. (editorial comment I couldn’t resist)
No additional fee; I assume the PA has built that into the project fees.
We are usually the lead, so it makes sense that the responsibility is ours.
I try to avoid it whenever possible too. I often remind the Architect that her other consultants work for her, not me. I cannot coerce the other consultants into sending documents either on time or in the correct format. When the end of the business day rolls around, I usually end up sending what I have to the Architect, who can chase consultants into the wee hours.
When we do it, we don’t charge an additional fee. Maybe we should.
I compile. I feel that I am the person on the team who can do this most efficiently.
I take this time into account and roll it into my fee proposal (I don’t break it out separately.)
As the architectural PM, I would pick Liz’s response every time. I hire a spec writer to NOT make my life harder. Failure to work with the rest of the spec is not a Win!
Robin, Nathan is correct. I compile everything on every job. I learned not to trust the other consultants a long time ago. There are many reasons:
-I need to see their sections to complete the Table of Contents.
-They sometime have the wrong date (since they resend the same section as the previous issue).
-They use a different file naming system that sorts their files before the architectural files.
-They use hard page breaks, add a paragraph, and push one sentence to a new page which is almost totally blank.
And so on–the list is too long to mention them all. These problems have to be fixed and bundled into two volumes most of the time. (e.g., DSA plan check has a limit on the thickness of the printed project manual.)
They are engineers that are very good with their trade, but they are not specifiers, and it’s like herding cats. You need someone to make sure the project manual is going to be printed our properly, since there is no one else on the project team knowledgeable enough to do that.
I require all consultants to send me their individual spec sections early enough so that I can see what they have given me.
I can do the compiling myself and be confident it is ready to go out. In a perfect world they give me their Word originals because I have no problem with fixing small glitches if the project then goes out without those stupid errors.
Stupid errors are the usual suspects:
Missing something that should be there.
Getting something that shouldn’t be there.
Wrong date or other header footer fail.
Section titles and names that don’t match the TOC they sent me in time to format the master TOC.
Fantastic file name conventions that won’t sort.
This doesn’t even include ugly formatting, I have learned to be happy with a “similar font” at the same size that I gave them as a template.
When project delivery is handled by everyone uploading to an FTP site or similar cloud independently you are just asking for extra addenda to fix stupid things.
My favorite of all time mass failure was a mechanical engineer who somehow managed to get two of his projects (one of them mine) completely crossed. I knew we had a problem when his spec for our B occupancy 10,000 SF tenant improvement included 30 odd sections, including “Air Handling Units” and “Cooling Towers”, references to emergency generators were a tip-off too. The trouble was that he ignored my warnings and insisted it was okay. At least he ignored my warnings until he had to answer to the Owner for the other project, a green field 500,000 SF hospital, asked why he had submitted a short form set of 8 or 10 mechanical sections.
Ditto to what David and Steven say…except I try to avoid receiving editable (Word) files…for the same reason that I don’t give A/E my Word files (opportunity to change/revise without author’s knowledge…or otherwise accuse(d) of doing so). However, receiving just PDFs is not always conducive to compiling project manual (for the reasons that both David and Steven cite); I sometimes have to make the changes, in order to best expedite the process; I’ve had consultants that give the initial and if not correct, have said they no longer have time to fix and make right, so I end up doing…as a courtesy to my A/E client. I account for the time to “handle” consultant’s sections in my overall fee proposal; I don’t break out separately…unless A/E’s client requires that detailed a breakdown (haven’t yet encountered though).
The main reason that I don’t want to compile is that when I do find something, the consultant is unresponsive. They don’t particularly care what the architect thinks, and they care even less what the specifier says. I guess they sometimes care more about what the Owner says. One of my recent projects was seeking LEED certification, but you wouldn’t have known it from looking at the civil or structural sections. Then there were the four concrete paving sections with the same name (different section number) with three of them specifying the same thing.
Let the architect take care of it, if they don’t care, I can’t do anything about it.
For consultants who are known for issuing bad specs I have sometimes given them some options.
Either send me Word originals at the time and date they are due, or send me PDF’s the day before so there is time to make corrections, or, if you send me PDF’s at the time and date they are due, have someone stay in their office who can make corrections until midnight of the due date.
As an in-house, I typically handle file compilation.
About 2 weeks before due date, typically around 3 days before date of issue, I send out a reminder regarding headers, footers, font, and format. I remind everyone that there is a uniform file naming system that must be used for all spec files, no exceptions (typically just Section Name - Section Number.PDF) with an example attached. This allows me to compile all of the PDF files using Bluebeam software. I also attach a copy of the current Table of Contents for the project in Word with instructions for each consultant to update the file using Track Changes.
A week later I contact everyone with the same set of instructions with a request for a short acknowledgement that they understand what is expected. (maybe I should add voting buttons)
Two days before due date I send it out once more with some added notes to those who I have not heard from at all. I also follow up with phone calls to see if there is any way I can help them get their work done. I typically only get voice mail.
The day before due date I usually get several emails asking for header, footer, font and format examples. I resend my previous emails (I keep them as a thread) with an urgent request for their list of Sections.
I usually receive about half the files I’m expecting on due date. More phone calls and emails.
Two days after due date I usually get about 80 -90 percent of the files including revisions to the files I’ve already received. The files almost never wholly match the list of Sections or marked up Tables of Contents that I received. At this point I will have already gotten the PM involved. I make a point of calling each of the errant consultants on their cell phones around 10 PM to ask them if I can get their work to me by midnight.
The day that we were to have issued the documents, I typically receive all but a few of the remainder. The filenames, fonts, formatting, etc. are typically wrong so I have to rename the files. I include the content as is.
I will not touch Word files from consultants as I don’t want to edit them. If they’re wrong, I send them back with a note telling them what they need to correct, presuming there is still time.
Wonderful, Ken. Thanks for the rueful laugh.
I do just about the same things with just about the same results, except I won’t make the 10 pm phone calls.
I also refuse Word documents, not wanting to be accused of making changes. (And I don’t tell anyone how easy it is to make changes to a PDF document.) I, too, return the PDF with a request to correct errors.
As an independent, I compile whenever possible, it just makes things go smoother for many reasons like those mentioned above. Whether I compile and what I compile depends on the way to project is planned, which depends on the client’s and project’s needs and other team members’ capabilities. I have not established a separate fee for the compiling but I would price a bit less for a project that had none.
I’d rather make a few comments about consultant specs than to tinker with them. My experience is about every time you change anything and send them a heads up copy in tracked changes and ask that they update their files, the next issuance of their specs still has their original version. I learned to keep in the received specs file the version that I marked up right beside theirs (###### YYMMDDa_cg - SECTION TITLE.[doc][rtf][pdf][etc]) so I could immediately tell when this happened. But I don’t think the client wants to pay me what it would cost to become babysitter. So I’ve taken to just asking for PDFs from everyone. Except when the agreement includes importing them into e-SPECS, or when it is in SpecsIntact I will gladly take native .sec files to drag in and do release processing, then it does a great job of making a combined PDF and the required reports. Both these systems fully automate the headers and footers and do well with the TOC. In a few cases I have used simple DOS commands and Excel to batch rename their files &/or add to the TOC e.g. if they are not being imported into e-SPECS.
I communicate with the Architect clearly about their timeline and how it shapes my timeline and that of the other team members, then I ask the Architect to convey the resulting consultant timeline to the consultants. It works better than if I try to do it, since I’m never writing checks out to pay the consultants. If they are late I point it out quickly but that is all. I do not want to become the one to hassle them. I let the PA or PM know what is happening. If things are held up, it is clear why. I’m never late on a project (often info is received much later than the agreed timeline and I still turn it around in less additional time than my contract would allow because I know my client is in a pinch. That does not constitute me being late, it is actually early according to my contract, though a few hours later than they had wished for). At the latest they have it in the wee hours instead of the end of business day but who else besides me is looking at it at 2 am, unless they are on the west coast). Sometimes the reason I am not late is because there is someone else even later. I’d rather spend my time getting my work done than beating up others on the team. If designers struggle to give quality information, I help and make suggestions where I can but it is their decision; if their consultants documents are messed up, maybe these are reasons they need a good specifier to somehow pull it together. Once there is a utopian community of architects, engineers, other consultants, and contractors, I would love to join them.
When I was working as a consultant, it varied by client. I had one client that handled publishing everything and others, I handled all of it.
I’m in-house now and I compile everything myself.
I overlooked part of the question… Yes I charged for compiling, but it was built in to my fee.
As for consultants specs, it depends on who it is. Consultants that I have a long relationship with, I will make tweaks if I see something important. Those that I don’t, get comments and a request to fix it copied to the PM/PA. I have redone headers/footers In Word docs when there wasn’t time to make the other party fix it.
I’m curious how many of you take the time to compile your PDFs with bookmarks for each section, and grouped into Divisions? This requires strict PDF-file-naming conventions, which some consultants, in my experience, can’t get right, even after giving them specific “written” instructions!
Regarding the bookmarks, there is a HUGE value to this, so I do it on every project. I typically have an external consultant doing my specs, but I go through the process of manually renaming the files as needed, so my spec writer can compile everything more easily.
I am in-house so we do compile everything. I can see why it is much more difficult for independents to perform this function.
As for bookmarks we have been including this in the portfolio for a couple of years now and it appears to be appreciated by the contrators. Again I believe being in-house makes this easier.
We also are a smaller firm so we work with the same small group of consultants all the time. Having to work with multiple consultants would complicate our lives considerably. Because we have such a small list of consultants edits are not a huge issue. Even if we need to edit their spec we can typically predict what we will have to change before we even get the documents.
Bookmarks: Yes. Each Section gets its own bookmark.
List by Divisions: Only in the Table of Contents. I don’t see any benefit in creating multi-level bookmarks to demarcate Divisions.
The reason I’m so insistent on proper filenaming is precisely because I want every Section in correct numerical order. The Divisions pretty much take care of themselves.