Ron is right. I have been very clear to differentiate between construction documents and contract documents.
Meeting minutes and submittals are not construction documents. Although when a portion of the design is delegated to the contractor the resulting drawings and specifications would be submitted to the building official for review, and when approved would be a construction document.
Thus if you wish to require the contractor to paint the building certain colors and you did not want to get building department approval you would need to issue a document as a contract document but not a construction doeument.
This confusion supports the observation that many design professionals lack a familiarity with the Chapter 1 provisions of the IBC. Note that these provisions are essentially the same for each of the ICC model codes.
On a somewhat separate topic there are a number of code provisions that are in conflict with provisions commonly included in the owner contractor agreement.
Anon:
I don’t disagree, but, as I mentioned above, the use of construction documents here is based on the narrowly defined term in the IBC and not CSI’s broad term.
Yes, any document produced in support of the design and construction of a building would technically be a construction document by CSI definition. However, if the document wasn’t submitted to the building department for permitting, then it isn’t a construction document by IBC definition.
The “meeting minutes and submittals” mentioned by Mark are construction documents according to CSI and many of us in the construction industry, but, in the eyes of the building department, they are not.
Calculations and supporting data submitted to the building department is apparently considered to be construction documents by some jurisdictions but this creates problems. These documents are not made available to the Contractor or inspectors and are not a part of the Contract Documents. The problem is that the code requires compliance with the approved construction documents. In this case I assume that only the drawings and specifications approved by the jurisdiction are the construction documents.