SI Tip of the Day - Submittal reviewer abbreviations

Found out the hard way a few projects back - if you use anything longer than ONE character for the first reviewer abbreviation, the entry in the Submittal Register will be split into two rows, with no reviewer on the first row, and the second row being empty except for the reviewer abbreviation appearing in the submittal item column.

The rule of thumb is the first abbreviation must by one character (such as "G" for Government review), and the second abbreviation can be 1 or more characters, apparently limited to 3. Refer to the editors notes in any spec section, and it will give you the run-down on the meaning of each standard abbreviation used by the Army. The Navy, Air Force, and NASA typically only use "G" and no other codes after that.

Problems will arise if, for example, you wish to use an Architect/Engineer designation (often "AE") or Designer of Record Approval ("DA") without preceding it with a "G". The format must

be ..; <SUB>G, AE</SUB>. You can not use ..; <SUB>AE</SUB> or your submittal register will look like this:

What you really want is something like this:

...but then it requires you to also have Government review (probably a 30-day process which is not popular on Design/Build projects unless it is really meant to be required).

Now that LEED is becoming predominant on many Federal Government projects too, a whole new level of review is being added to the process -- something this system doesn't seem to address consistently yet in the UFGS masters, nor in the submittal register at all.

After a lot of experimentation, it finally became clear that the problem revolved around using anything longer than one character - unless you have more than one review abbreviation, then it seems to accept up to three for the second abbreviation. There can be no more than two abbreviations, or it will either spill over into the Contractor schedule date column, or start a new blank row and drop them all there.

Examples of failed attempts to use more than 2 reviewer abbreviations:

A compromise that is being successfully used on one of our projects now is to abbreviate Designer review as simply "D", and LEED review as "L". Looks like we will be in good shape as long as we don't need all three for the same item! This may or may not work for Army projects either, because they often require "DO" District Office, "RO" Resident Office, etc.

So our introductory paragraph in submittals reads:

Government approval is required for submittals with a "G" designation. Submittals having a "D" designation are for approval by the Contractor's Designer, either the Architect or Engineer as appropriate for the discipline. All other submittals are for Contractor Quality Control Approval. [When used, the designation "L" following the "D" designation indicates that the Project LEED Accredited Professional will review the submittal. ] The following shall be submitted in accordance with Section 01 30 00 SUBMITTAL PROCEDURES: ...

Please comment if you have explored this at all before, and if you have any reactions yet from Government reviewers on variations in the use of this system. This posting is simply to share the tiny bit of knowledge about which number of characters will do what and where.