I like the “Really, that was the End of Section - Not kidding!”
Lynn wins the Internet for today!
“No one ever said anything. Not once.”
Maybe not directly to you, but I am sure there were some subcontractors muttering under their breath.
Haha. With amount of complaining I’ve had to put up with on-site over the years I doubt they would have held back about that.
Never met a complainer who was shy about complaining.
Thanks, Dan. I think
As a deliverable quality standard, I’ll produce project manual volumes to be both print-ready (even though they are digital/PDF) and view-ready - i.e sections are properly bookmarked for navigation. Print-ready for the reasons stated by others. I’ll add “This page intentionally…” if required by owner/agency (govt. typ), but have never had an issue either way on a private project. All are automated using settings.
If a section is added/deleted to the PDF volume, the bookmark needs to be added/deleted “manually”. I find having to navigate PDF drawing sets without bookmarks, with scrambled, or dysfunctional bookmarks; and having to set my own bookmarks as I scroll to be a pain. I try to encourage drawing producers to print to PDF using a view-ready quality standard (but typically using guilt-trip-complainer tactics, which oddly don’t work so well…).
By default I issue a PDF package or binder (terminology varies depending on the version of Acrobat or Bluebeam). The list of files in the package serves as bookmarking, and the printer will automatically start each Section or document on the front of the paper, without the need for filler pages.
I automated “blank” page insertion for odd page count spec sections quite a while back, and developed keystrokes that allow me to quickly find where they are needed and insert them where consultants did not do so. To me it just looks a LOT better in the event that someone prints a hardcopy manual. I don’t know if they get printed very often, but I suspect that sometimes they still do.
As far as helping people to chop up the project manual, that is considered inadvisable or even impermissible by many architects and specifiers, due to the lack of context and loss of coordination that may tend to happen by doing so. I checked CSI Practice Guides and A201 and I don’t see where it is stated to not chop up the manual. I have seen it in specifications a few times, but can’t seem to put my finger on where. I did not know that Procore and similar software is actually requiring the project manual to be split up!
There are others that need hard printed copies of the Project Manual outside of contracting/estimating circles; such as banks, lending institutions, bonding companies, etc.
Although I have never seen a prohibition against “chopping up” the Contract Documents (Drawings as well as specifications), the idea propably stems from the requirement to issue complete Bidding Documents back when we did hard copy (20 years ago). The idea was that the Owner and the Architect wanted Bidders to have all of the information that was required to develop a bid for the Work. This was an effort to guard against piecemeal information which might give some a reason to exclude something from a bid. This was reinforced through requirements for a deposit for each set of Bidding Documents. This deposit would be refunded for each complete set of Bidding Documents returned in good condition. Those sets in good condition would be issued to the successful Bidder for use as Contract Documents.
Most Bidders on larger projects immediately disassembled the hard copy sets to give to subbidders amd material suppliers so the system was imperfect at best. Remember this was at a time when many Owners would require that a Contractor “self perform” most of the Work so that there were not as many subcontractors as there are today.
Between 2000 and 2010, we moved away from relying entirely on hard copy (remember when diazo prints ceased to be available almost overnight in the mid 2000s?). Numerous companies that supporting bidders and subbidders began to offer documents on line so that one did not have to even download a file to print. A flooring contractor might do a takeoff for resilient base without ever seeing a set of Bidding Documents.
Increasingly, hard copy Contracting Documents are becoming an anachronism except in certain specialized cases, usually having to do with legal issues.
The final page of a spec section with the phrase THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK always seemed ridiculous, and superfluous, to me. So I only do it under duress. Setting up the pages of a Project Manual so that the first page of a spec section always occurs as a right-hand page is a nice refinement, but hardly worth the time it takes to do it, not to mention the wasted paper and the snickers the phrase usually inspires.
And then there’s the fact that someone along the way will add something somewhere to throw the whole thing off anyway.
Even in the “old days” when we sent work out, the printers would slip sheet before printing with ACTUAL BLANK PIECES OF PAPER that didn’t say anything on them.
AIA A701 Instructions to Bidders is where the Bidders are directed to use complete sets of bidding documents in preparing bids: " 3.1.4 Bidders shall use complete Bidding Documents in preparing Bids. Neither the Owner nor Architect assumes responsibility for errors or misinterpretations resulting from the use of incomplete Bidding Documents."