Practice Management Member Conversations

We have been using electronic submittal review for about two years and use it almost exclusively, presently on a 3 phase $32 million addition and renovation K-12 project. We do not use a submittal exchange service but rather do everything ourselves. The benefits far outweigh any negatives and there has been very little resistance to it from the contractors, and in fact we got started doing electronic submissions due to a request by a contractor on a previous school project. We require the contractor to submit the documents to our office electronically in pdf, we then either forward to a consultant or print out, review, mark up, scan back in as a pdf and then send back to contractor. This eliminates many days of deliveries, the cost of mailings along with multiple mark-ups. Some of the biggest issues is more of tracking the multiple emails and which ones to save so that you are not overloading your server with multiple copies of submittals. The other issue is size of some files that may not be able to be sent thru email, in this case we use our ftp site. We have found no liability issues with this process.
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Paul Bedford AIA
Member
Keystone Associates Architects Engineers Surveyors
Binghamton NY
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We too have been using electronic submittals for the last several years.  It is a great way of cutting down on paper, saving time and it also helps keeps things organized and easy to find.  The ideal world would be all submittal participants (consultants, contractors, etc.) handle the submittals electronically but we have had some projects we everyone is not on board with the concept.  We use Newforma to help manage not only the submittal process (Shops, RFI, etc.) but also emails and other project information.  It has a very specific process that needs to be followed with submittals but I believe that the process also brings some rigger to the team.   

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Carl Hole AIA
Principal
RNL
Denver CO
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