What is 100% construction documents?

[flatlander]

Hello

Time and time again I get a set of plans to bid on that say 100 % construction documents. The complete set of original plans is about 110 pages. The first addendum is over 40 pages.
How is this 100% complete?
Heck the addendum is just fixing a bunch of mistakes not changes.

Please somebody tell me how this works. I've been doing this since I was a kid working for my father. He never had such garbage back in the day.

 

[ron]

That is the result when everything is commoditized.

Many times it is ..... faster and get just enough on the drawing to get a permit and bid.

Low bid and hurry up.

Engineers try to push back, just like tradesmen try to keep quality in the work, sometimes the bottom line wins.

 

[Strathead]

Hello

Time and time again I get a set of plans to bid on that say 100 % construction documents. The complete set of original plans is about 110 pages. The first addendum is over 40 pages.
How is this 100% complete?
Heck the addendum is just fixing a bunch of mistakes not changes.

Please somebody tell me how this works. I've been doing this since I was a kid working for my father. He never had such garbage back in the day.

Because they are just words. The point is that they are issued for construction as opposed to issued for budgeting or bidding. The phrase is almost always used when interim drawings have been issued prior, mostly to keep track of the drawings internally.

I must say that I have derided Engineers time and again for missing simple things on a drawing, and then I learned how to do CAD. I will never do that again. It is amazing how easy it is to make simple, fundamental mistakes.

 

[petersonra]

Hello

Time and time again I get a set of plans to bid on that say 100 % construction documents. The complete set of original plans is about 110 pages. The first addendum is over 40 pages.
How is this 100% complete?
Heck the addendum is just fixing a bunch of mistakes not changes.

Please somebody tell me how this works. I've been doing this since I was a kid working for my father. He never had such garbage back in the day.

I run into this kind of thing all the time. I just submitted about half of a set of drawings for a project I am working on.

Friday, our customer sent me nine emails with drawings of things that I have to interface with. I printed them out. About an inch and a quarter thick. Some of them were things I knew about, others not.

 

[cdslotz]

Hello

Time and time again I get a set of plans to bid on that say 100 % construction documents. The complete set of original plans is about 110 pages. The first addendum is over 40 pages.
How is this 100% complete?
Heck the addendum is just fixing a bunch of mistakes not changes.

Please somebody tell me how this works. I've been doing this since I was a kid working for my father. He never had such garbage back in the day.

We would constantly get drawings that were 30%...50%...70%, along with a detailed design criteria to provide preliminary budgeting. We would be one of 2 or 3 contractors to work these up.
The addendum usually reflect all of the feedback from contractors scope and budgetary overruns or savings. So technically, plans + addendum are 100%.
When the plans are "stamped permit set", they are ready for hard bid, and most of the addendum have been incorporated into the drawings.
So chances are that the 100% set you got has been worked on and budgeted by other contractors for some time. The GC's I did this for would usually only give the contractors that spent all that time helping with budgets, the opportunity to the hard bid table

 

[flatlander]

We would constantly get drawings that were 30%...50%...70%, along with a detailed design criteria to provide preliminary budgeting. We would be one of 2 or 3 contractors to work these up.
The addendum usually reflect all of the feedback from contractors scope and budgetary overruns or savings. So technically, plans + addendum are 100%.
When the plans are "stamped permit set", they are ready for hard bid, and most of the addendum have been incorporated into the drawings.
So chances are that the 100% set you got has been worked on and budgeted by other contractors for some time. The GC's I did this for would usually only give the contractors that spent all that time helping with budgets, the opportunity to the hard bid table

Well the funny thing is this is s public bid project. There are many issues and conflicts. These errors are more than oppsy.

If we contractors had this many corrections upon inspection of completed work , we'd risk loosing our license. These architects risk nothing for being incompetent.

 

[charlie b]

These architects risk nothing for being incompetent.

Yes they do. So do engineers. We can lose our license because of incompetence. That could take some time for the state to prove a case against us. More immediate, however, is the risk of not getting any more work, and going out of business, if an architect or an engineer gets a reputation for making errors in their designs.

Let's not disparage members of other professions.

 

[charlie b]

Please somebody tell me how this works.

Try this on for size:

• During the "Predesign Phase," the basic building concepts are developed. An architectural charrette will determine how many floors there will be, whether some floors will be retail and others be dwelling units, whether there will be a backup generator, etc.
• During the "Schematic Design Phase (SD)," floor plans are developed and preliminary room sizes are determined, the one-line diagram is created, and a preliminary equipment list is developed.
• During the "Detailed Design Phase (DD)," floor plans are essentially finalized, mechanical and plumbing equipment is located, electrical connections are shown for each item of mechanical and plumbing equipment, receptacle outlets are placed on the floor plans, but no circuit numbers are yet assigned.
• During the "Construction Documents Phase (CD)," the design is taken the rest of the way.

For each phase, the design can be issued, to allow the client to review and comment, at any percentage complete that the client wants. We can issue drawings as 50% SD, 100% SD, 75% DD, 50% CD, 100% CD, or any where else along the way. So when the drawings say "100% CD," it means that the design has been completed. Whether that set of drawings is sealed and signed by a PE, and thus is available for use in bidding or in building the project, or whether that set of drawings is issued (one more time) for the client to have an opportunity to review and comment, is all determined by the contract between the owner and the engineer.

 

[flatlander]

Yes they do. So do engineers. We can lose our license because of incompetence. That could take some time for the state to prove a case against us. More immediate, however, is the risk of not getting any more work, and going out of business, if an architect or an engineer gets a reputation for making errors in their designs.

Let's not disparage members of other professions.

Charlie , no intention to disparage a PE like yourself. I seriously doubt that you are not the type of design professional I am referring to. I doubt that you or your company would do the things found in these plans. This is not incompetence. This is deliberate. It appears to be done to favor a contractor. Favor the contractor that the agency will allow to not follow prints. Disfavor a contractor who reads the plans and specs and bids according. I see this too much lately. Frankly I am over it. These design professionals need to be sanctioned.

Again if I did what they do I would have the board crawling up my you know what on very short time.

100 % bid documents my xxx

 

[gadfly56]

Because they are just words. The point is that they are issued for construction as opposed to issued for budgeting or bidding. The phrase is almost always used when interim drawings have been issued prior, mostly to keep track of the drawings internally.

I must say that I have derided Engineers time and again for missing simple things on a drawing, and then I learned how to do CAD. I will never do that again. It is amazing how easy it is to make simple, fundamental mistakes.

After spending the last 10 years with a contractor I joined an MEP firm in January as part of their Fire/Life Safety department. We are currently in the Detail Design phase of one of our projects. I was laying out/checking the locations for fire alarm pull stations. Now, we're using Revit, which is a modeling program that basically puts all the true building elements into a 3-D model. You can cut the model at any location to see and rotate a 3-D view of a portion of the work. When I got to the bottom of an emergency exit stairwell, I found a major (~24") I-beam neatly blocking off the bottom of the stairs. The structural and architectural elements were supposed to have been frozen back in January. Some one's in for an unpleasant day. hmy:

To his credit, my boss is trying to drive us to better detailed and integrated design drawings. Having been on the receiving end of less than satisfactory packages myself, I've been gently suggesting to my coworkers that "Let the contractor figure it out or send an RFI" is really not the best solution to a design problem.

 

[petersonra]

Charlie , no intention to disparage a PE like yourself. I seriously doubt that you are not the type of design professional I am referring to. I doubt that you or your company would do the things found in these plans. This is not incompetence. This is deliberate. It appears to be done to favor a contractor. Favor the contractor that the agency will allow to not follow prints. Disfavor a contractor who reads the plans and specs and bids according. I see this too much lately. Frankly I am over it. These design professionals need to be sanctioned.

Again if I did what they do I would have the board crawling up my you know what on very short time.

100 % bid documents my xxx

For what? If I understand what you are claiming, they are doing what their customer wants. Nothing wrong or sanctionable about that.

As far as I am concerned, a drawing set can't really favor a specific contractor. It might reflect a design that a particular contractor has more experience with, or use methods and/or materials a specific contractor prefers, but that is also not illegal and not unethical.

You then jump to an accusation that the customer is going to allow the contractor to cheat on what is in the prints. Again, how is this the responsibility of the engineer or architect?In any case, in general, the customer is well within his rights to allow deviations from the contract drawings.

 

[gadfly56]

For what? If I understand what you are claiming, they are doing what their customer wants. Nothing wrong or sanctionable about that.

As far as I am concerned, a drawing set can't really favor a specific contractor. It might reflect a design that a particular contractor has more experience with, or use methods and/or materials a specific contractor prefers, but that is also not illegal and not unethical.

You then jump to an accusation that the customer is going to allow the contractor to cheat on what is in the prints. Again, how is this the responsibility of the engineer or architect?In any case, in general, the customer is well within his rights to allow deviations from the contract drawings.

Generally true, except the OP indicated this was public work. If the issuing authority is giving a wink-and-a-nod to one contractor to cut corners while everyone else fully believes that they'll be held to the last jot and tittle of the drawings and specs, he will have a tremendous advantage at the bid phase. The result, beside a guaranteed win for the contractor, is possibly an out-of-spec building, bridge, or tunnel. Much unhappiness may ensue.

 

[flatlander]

You then jump to an accusation that the customer is going to allow the contractor to cheat on what is in the prints. Again, how is this the responsibility of the engineer or architect?In any case, in general, the customer is well within his rights to allow deviations from the contract drawings.

Yes that is exactly what I am saying.
When we loose a bid like this. Me and the guys go and look at the public building once completed. We then try to find the clearly visible discrepancies we noted at bid. We then compare to the close out documents as they are public documents.
So your answer to the accusations of do they cheat. Yes!
There is one place that won't give up the public documents so easy anymore once they figured out what we did.