From some of the email I get, smiley faces are already part of the genre, wouldn’t gold stars just rub off?
I seldom see the word “approved” on an architect’s stamp, when I point out AIA A201, I am told this is our office policy.
For what it is worth, virtually every lawyer I have worked with in the last 30 years has said that avoiding the term Approved is not going to help reduce or limit any AEs liability exposure. As they explain it, most courts have held that the alternate language often used (i.e., No Exception Taken or similar) is effectively the same a Approved.
That said, where I am working now uses the following:
A, Approved
B, Approved as Noted
C, Revise and Resubmit
D, Not Approved
E, No Action Required By Architect:
E1, Submittal not required by Contract Documents
E2, Project or closeout information
One thing that has not been raised in this thread is the fact that the Architect (specifier) is 100% in control over what is being asked of Contractor to be submitted! And all too often (guilty here) we specifiers simply toss in what we always do for submittal requirements, without any direction from Owner or the rest of the design team.
One obvious way to reduce the problems associated with what Architect’s do when the get submittals (or what their stamps say they will do) is to reduce the number of submittals required of the Contractor. Let the Contract Documents speak for themselves…
Just a thought.
Easier said than done Anon, its difficult when you are a specifier working with different architects, perhaps if I was an in house specifier. One item I have added to my submittal sections has been a big hit is to limit the amount of submittals issued each week. Here is what I have added:
“Contractor is limited to issuing no more that five (5) submittals per week, in order for Architect to process in the agreed upon initial review period. In the event that the contractor must submit more than five per week, than the review time to process the overage will increase by 50% (from 10 working days to 15 working days per submittal as further defined in item #3 below).” Item #3 talks about the typ 10 working days to review the submittal.
As a consultant to the prime design professional I do not have the authority to give an approval to the contractor. All I can do is to keep my client informed. Thus it would be inappropriate for my shop drawing stamp to indicate approval. Instead I indicate reviewed or “no exceptions taken”.
While some lawyers say it makes no difference in most cases I still prefer not to use the word approval for those instances where it makes a difference.
I also believe that reviewed or “no exceptions taken” is more appropriate for the nature of the reviews performed and are less likely to mislead the contractor and others.
If the submittals are not required by codes or contract then we can define the nature of the response to the submittal.
Mark,
Thank you for making this clear. It is easier to understand when you put it in those terms.
Mark,
Sometimes things are not so clear. As a case in point, our (architecture) firm recently was involved in the renovation and seismic upgrades for two dormitory buildings on a University of California campus. These were separate, sequential contracts.
For the first project, we the architects, were a consultant to the structural engineer, who led the project, and for the second project, we the architect were project lead and the (same) structural engineer was our consultant.
This switch was due to various reasons, but mainly that like many renovation projects there was scope creep through discovery and additional client requests that resulted in a larger portion of the project cost for what started as a seismic upgrade projects turned out be architectural.
So here, although I assume both the structural engineer and the architect continued using the same stamps for both projects, from a contract viewpoint we traded the captain’s chair responsibilities half way through.