How Important are LOCDs in the Project Manual

Archive of Older Topics Archive - Specifications Discussions #2
1

Due the frustration of getting up-to-date lists of the contract drawings from all of the various consultants (including the Architect), getting later than last minute changes, and just plain laziness, Im no longer including a LOCD in the Project Manual for smaller, private projects.

The drawings do not include a Table of Contents of the Project Manual, why is a list of drawings necessary in the PM? The official list of the drawings is incorporated into the Agreement which take precedence over any other list so why add the confusion? Also, shouldnt the say it once philosophy support the omitting the LOCDs from the project manuals?

A couple clients have asked about the absence of the LOCD (during reveiw stages) and after my explanation have never insisted on its inclusion. They admitted that they were used to seeing in the PM so therefor missed seeing it.

I cannot think of any legal reason that the absence of a LOCD in the PM could create and contractors could care less. Im interested in finding out what others from this group have experienced about the importance of LOCDs in project manuals.

Ron

2

The only times that LOCD’s have appeared in my project manuals, they have been for government (usually state, not federal) projects where the government agency has insisted on it. Have never had it on a private project–what for? Just one more potential place for a conflict with the drawings, without adding any benefit.

In those cases where we have had a LOCD, I have simply told the architect that they need to furnish that information and obtain it from their clients themselves, and then they need to include it in the hard copy of the project manual along with sections from their other consultants. In other words, it would be the architect’s sole responsibility, not the spec consultant’s.

3

My experience is the same as Dave’s (only do it when required, usually for govt clients). When we try to get a list ahead of time (so it can go on the Drawings as well as the PM), it is almost always incorrect (we do have some of the same issues inhouse). Usually we do at least 1 addendum where the primary issue (or one of them at lease) is reconciling that list with what has actually been issued.

4

Same frustrations here with LOCDs; we only include them when state folks require. It’s just busywork.

5

Same here. I haven’t included drawing lists in project manuals for years, except when someone specifically requires it (typically a state or local entity owner), and for all the same reasons.

6

Ron,

Ditto to all of the above. Say it once in the most logical location which at the end of the day is the Agreement.

Wayne

7

Ditto to the above.

The biggest problem I have had was to get the design team to be consistent in the Drawing titles.

In the past, I have received a “list of drawings” from which to copy into the Project Manual. In over 99% of the cases, the list did not agree with the schedule of drawings on the cover sheet, and neither one agreed with the actual title that appeared on the drawing itself. The only way I felt comfortable with, to ensure the LOCD in the PM was accurate, would be to take the whole set of drawings back to my desk and transcribe the title, sheet for sheet, into the Word file. Talk about a pain!

8

I have a hard enough time getting an advance list of spec section numbers and titles from my consultants let alone a list of drawings!
We do mostly public work and generally do not include a list of drawings in the project manual.
The drawing list usually occurs on the title sheet or the next sheet.

9

Actually, wouldn’t it be more useful to include the project manual ToC on the same sheet as the “Index of Drawings”? That’s where the “RTFS” note (cross-threading here) logically belongs, and could really help!

10

I will state that getting the lists (correctly) even as an internal specifier, is not easy. Our own group is trained about not changing titles willy nilly, but consultants are something else.

The drawing lists they send over are ‘lies’ for want of a better word. Not only are the titles not likely what they say they are, but they may have not included drawings that they list, and they may have added drawings that they did not list.

Even for the list on the drawing cover sheet, we have our end trained to not finialize this sheet until they have laid an eyeball on the actual drawings when they are sent to us. Project managers also tell the consultants that they cannot change a drawing title without first telling us about the change.

All of that said, we DO issue a list of drawing in the project manual. I would say that about 80% of our owner/developers we work with require or request it. And if not directly them, then its their lenders wanting a document that can be used to describe the drawings and one that describes the project manual, including dates of issue, etc.

So, we do this on every project, required or not. It is likly we will get a request for such at some point anyway, and its nice not to have to kluge something together at the last minute when the Owner says he needs something sent to the lender’s lawyers “in the next 15 minutes”.

Also, the lenders/lawyers, they are very picky that the titles be exactly as they actually appear. So, we have a nice drill here in the office where we assure that it is as it should be.

This means that the list of drawings is the last document I get before I send the package off to print. It comes to me in a generic format that all I need to do is ‘copy paste’ into word and it adopts the format of the block of text. The project managers/architects are putting it in directly to their CAD files. When it is in, they extract it out and email it to me and I take about 15 minutes and finalize it.

All very quick, however, as I said above, it does not happen until we lay eyeballs on the drawings from the consultants. Often this has meant that the project manual goes to print overnight on the day the drawings are issued - so it is lagging 1 day behind.

And every time - yes, 100% of the time - no matter how trustworthy, no matter how long we have been working with them, every consultant’s lists that they have sent in advance has been different from the drawings as they actually are issued.

And since it is never nice to have addendum 1 be the reissue of the drawing cover sheet and the project manual list of drawings, once a project manager is burned, it never happens again. We wait.

Yes, cases do arise where the owner absolutely needs to have the project manaul on a certain date. In that case he is told in advance that the list of drawings will not be included and what is on the cover sheet will most likely be incorrect. Then we follow up with the list of drawings as addendum number 1.

In doing this, we have a utility for the document. As I implied above, it lists the drawing number, title, and its date of issue (or revision). It does not track every revision date, just lists the current date.

What we do when we issue an addendum or amendment where we issue drawings is the project architect takes the list and hilights those drawings beind revised. I then change the date to state “Revised xxx” showing the new date. In the short index of the addendum, rather than list the individual drawings, it states that drawings listed as ‘revised xxx’ in the list of drawings are revised and reissued herewith. Similar for new drawings.

So the Contractor, us, our CA staff and the owner and everyone else, gets a new list of drawings each time - and it shows the current date for every drawing in the set.

And yes - sometimes we get calls from consultants that state, “hey, I thought I issued drawing zzz in that addendum, what happened to it”. Which means, he did not carry it on his list and did not print it himself either. And the obvious corallary, "why is drawing zzz revised, we did not change anything (when actually, they really did - or they did but did not intend to issue it with the current addendum).

I can see the logic for the independent consultant - its of no value to you. I would never include it. Furnished as a separate document perhaps, but not officially in. Let the architect create it. He may not need it, and it is nothing but heartache and delays to your publishing deadline.

But for Architects, often it is necessary, depending on your client - and you can turn it to good use internally.

William

11

Like William, I’m an internal specifer and DO include a List of Drawings in the Project Manual. I echo each and every post regarding the tediousness of the task. There have been many times when I have printed/proofed the list, inserted it into the final draft of the manual, and sent it to the printer at the “drop dead” time.

We assist several clients with preparation of the Agreement and General Conditions, and therefore must provide a drawing list as well as a list of specifications. In the Agreement this is achieved simply by referencing the documents containing both lists, rather than importing the lists themselves. On other projects, I’ve noticed that the drawing and specifications lists are usually copied and stapled to the Agreement form. Owners frequently find it easier to copy the project manual list rather than the drawing cover sheet.

I perform a review of each and every sheet, plus the drawing cover sheet, and have become fairly adept at it. Additionally, like William, I’ve trained our staff to be attentive to this. In the case of consultants, I’ve frequently changed the information on the drawing cover sheet and manual to agree with the name on the individual title block if final plots/plot files have already been received.

William, I would be interested in getting your utility that handles formatting.

12

When I have had to includes the Drawings list for very large projects, I have enlisted the assistance of the repro company responsibile for printing the documents. They do check the Drawings and Specs against available lists and will call if there isn’t a match. Getting them to help out up front helps us get those listings right and cuts down on the phone calls at 8:00pm that begin with “This is *****'s calling about your project. We can’t find Sheet ***.”

13

Steven,

It is not technically a utility.

The master document is a Word file, I have th disciplies set up and a ‘sample’ line all formatted for number, title and date with the tabs set that simply reads..

xxx yyy zzz

The project architects either use Excel to set up their drawings or type it directly into AutoCAD and then export an excel file - anyway, its an excel spread sheet that they pass to me.

I get this via email, I open it, save it as a text file, and then reopen it with a text editor. Not word.

This text editor I have set up with some particular search and replace commands as macros that let me change their ‘all caps’ entries to ‘title’ caps format, upper and lower case with just the first letter of each word in upper case, and also presets to go through and decapitalize all conjunctions and prepositions. Conform to my style book I use.

That done, I then hilight each discipline and then paste it as a replacement into the word formatted line entry - it adopts the font and tab spacings for the paragraph.

You could probably just use a new word document that you open up and paste in the excel spread sheet into it, then do a copy and paste on the paragraph format (copy format, hilight target text in the drawing list and paste format). I just happen to find it easier to work with my text editor I have.

William

14

Maybe its just plain laziness but I havent ever included a list of drawings in a Project Manual. Ive never even been asked to do so by a client (at least so far). Being an in-house specifier with a Architecture-only firm, I deal with never fewer than three outside consultants and more often than not, seven or eight of em. Im thinking (IMHO) the pitfalls of including such a list far outweigh any perceived benefit.

If theres a conflict in the LOCD and the actual CDs, Im guessing it gets revised by Addendum?
When a new drawing is added by Addendum, the LOCD must also be revised by Addendum?
IF you track current issue of each document in your LOCD, then that must also be revised for each Addendum?
Where do yall place the LOCD in the Project Manual? Is it a Contract Document itself, or is included under the Procurement Requirements Subgroup?

I have more than enough frustration trying to get accurate spec section lists from consultants on time without having to deal with even more, later than last minute, incorrect, stuff.

15

Doug,

If you don’t need it in your practice, don’t use it.

The list needs to be correct, if it is not, an addendum has to change it. But it needs to be correct because it is most often used as the legal description of the documents.

When a new drawing is issued, yes, it needs to be added, and if an existing drawing is revised, the date needs to be changed. But we use this list of drawings document as the vehicle for formally issuing new and revised drawings - so it has its benefits there. The drawings, like the spec sections, we don’t just send them out with updates in them - both drawing revisions and spec revisions are issued formally by the Addendum. For both drawings and spec sections, we list the individual documents as revised under the following categories, its new, its revised and reissued, its deleted, its revised by note, and the additional category drawings revised by sketch.

I know some firms don’t list or document a list of what drawings are revised - they just put the date on it and what addendum its part of and send them out. We don’t do that. Even if we don’t have a list of drawings document, such as for a small project, we still list in the addendum document the drawings that are revised. So, when we have a larger project, rather than this separate relisting, there is just a one liner that states, see the list of drawings for those dated xx/xx/xx

The list of drawings is included in the ‘introductory information’ section right behind the table of contents just like MF95 recommends, and is listed as document number 00015.

William

16

I’ve never included the list of drawings in my specs, though I’ve seen it done. To do so seems like a conflict of the notion of saying things once and in the right place. Our list of drawings always appears as a table of contents on the cover sheet of the drawings (or the next page after the cover sheet.) If the client demands inclusion of a LOCD, wouldn’t it be acceptable to just refer to the Table of Contents in the Drawings? That way, responsibility for the drawing lists remains with the project architect and the drafting team. All I have to do is make sure the drawings have a table of contents and encourage the project architect to keep it accurate before printing the drawings.

17

Richard,

Typically, the list of drawings on the cover page does not carry the date of the drawing. Where the Owner is often wanting a list, it is for a legal description of the documents. They, and their lawyers, are looking for something on standard papaer - and they want somethng with the current date of each drawing

So, no, reference to the list of drawings on the cover sheet is not what they want.

Additionally, we have owner’s that prevail upon us to include on the cover page a comprehensive list of all the drawings - these include drawings that are not part of our package/responsibility. In our area here in DC for instance, the civil is producing a totally separate package - he is not consultant to us, none of his documents are in our work at all. There may be other consultants in this category - some of our owners prefer to have a separate landscaper rather than part of the design team. However, during some of the initial printings, he wants to see a nice single bound set of everyone. And he wants an index of drawings that lists them all. So the cover sheet of the drawings ends up with all the drawings on it, even though its not our work.

The list of drawings in the specification lists only the work of our package.

William

18

The Project Manual is unique in that it organizes or references all the documents necessary to construct the project. As such it needs to reference the existance of the drawings. The project can’t be constructed without both the specifications and drawings. The Project Manual concept simply reinforces the complementry nature of the construction documents.

19

Steven,

If that is the case, should the drawings contain a list of the specification sections as well as other documents in the project manual?

20

David,
The Project Manual is the ONE place where all the various construction documents and forms are collected or at least referenced, therefore, no. Even the Agreement which incorporates all the documents into a legal contract is typically not fully executed until after publication of the Project Manual.