Practice Management Member Conversations

I am curious how firms are logging/tracking submittals. In these days of quickly developing technology solutions, does someone use sometjhing more sophisticated than excel spreadsheets? ProCore?NewForma? Something else. I would love to hear what others are doing. 

As a sole practitioner, I cannot afford specialty programs that large firms can amortize over larger and greater numbers of projects. Therefore, I maintain an Excel spreadsheet that logs the submittal by Section #, date received, date required to be returned, dated transmitted to consultants, date required to be returned from consultants, date actually returned from consultants, date returned to the contractor, action taken, any important notes, and # of days to process.

This works quite well and is a part of a comprehensive CA Phase spreadsheet that, on different tabs, I also use to track ASIs, RFIs, COs, etc.

Mark,

Thank you for mentioning the unique situations of solo practitioners. As a fellow solo practitioner architect, I use Excel sufficiently for CA as you described.  I can't think of how a specialty program would bring sufficiently more to justify the cost of another app subscription.

For me, the key is organization, not a fancy program where it's not necessary. On the other hand, when I searched for apps or software to aid in CA, namely punch list preparation, the costs were exorbitant relative to the number of times I would use it in a given year. (I may do 1 -3 punch lists a year).

Again, thanks for making our voice heard.

Lee,

You are 100% correct and thank you for your comments. Small- or micro-firms make up a large portion of the total number of firms. Further, there is a large number of architects who prefer to operate as a sole practitioner or with a small staff, not to mention emerging practices. These firms pay disproportionately for resources as they cannot amortize those costs over larger staffs. For example, code books cost the same whether they sit in the library of a 10 or 20 person firm or of a sole practitioner.

Similarly, sole practitioners and micro-firms generally cannot afford high monthly subscription prices for "productivity" tools that require a substantial volume of work to amortize the cost. Personally, I believe the software firms are missing out on a large market by not making their subscription costs scalable to a firm's volume, or offer such programs in a manner that limits functionality based on project size or firm volume. Hopefully, some of these software companies monitor these blogs and take note.

I refer to my approach as old school. While maybe not always the most efficient, pencils still draw, meeting notes can be taken by hand, and spreadsheets can still function to manage CA and other management processes.

In furtherance of my previous response, I strongly recommend that the Architect maintain its own log and copies of all submittals (and all other project documentation) independent of the Contractor's online project management system. Should a dispute arise, particularly if it results in a default or termination, access to the Contractor's online systems may be rendered unavailable to the Architect and Owner. Further, as the online project management system is managed by the Contractor, documentation is subject to inappropriate alterations if the Contractor is unscrupulous.

For most of our projects, the GC or CM is required to use an online document management software like Procore. We list other options in our specs, but for the past 4 or 5 years, pretty much everyone uses Procore in our region. Procore is really good at streamlining document distribution and/or retrieval, tracking & routing submittals and RFIs and, for many projects, managing punchlist items. However, we don't rely on it for the "official" record of submittals or RFIs - only as a means of storing and distributing information. The official logs are maintained by our office using...you guessed it...Excel. The Excel tool we use is a bit more sophisticated than a simple spreadsheet; it does calculate things that the Procore log doesn't and uses pivot tables to maintain Open Items logs and Revise & Resubmit logs that we often reference at meetings. Also, GCs/CMs tend to put in their own due dates in Procore that don't align with the requirements of the General Conditions. So, we make it a point to get in the minutes that, while the GC/CM may plug in due dates on Procore, we are only held to the requirements of the Contract. Of course, we do our best to prioritize hot items, but the Procore dates are not "official". 

We then reconcile our internal log against the Procore logs every month or two weeks (project dependent) to make sure nothing is slipping through the cracks. 

For really small projects (< $500K) we may just rely on email distribution and our own Excel logs. 

Besides just the submittals, we also maintain our own internal "Master CA Log" which tracks and correlates all other CA documents, like RFIs, ASIs, PRs, CORs, and Contract CO's. This log is again Excel based and has numerous columns and tables to filter and sort the data. It's very handy to see, for example, how an RFI gave rise to a ASI or PR, which then resulted in a COR from the GC/CM, and eventually which Contract CO it was incorporated into, and how the cumulative COs impact construction cost / contingencies. This Master CA log is also used to track CO origin (Owner, 3rd Party, Design Team, Unforeseen) and, in the case of Design Team, assign it to specific Team members (Architect, Civil, Structural, MEP, etc.)

We haven't found a pre-made software package that tracks the documents and data the way we would like, so we just continue to refine our own tools.