Practical, experience-based project management lessons for project engineers, developing project managers, and field professionals.
Friday Field Notes #12: Submittals Protect the Work
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FRIDAY FIELD NOTES #12 Submittals Protect the Work Good morning team, This week’s topic: submittals. 1. From the Field Submittals are sometimes treated as an administrative requirement that must be cleared before the work can begin. In practice, they serve a much more important purpose. A submittal gives the project team an opportunity to confirm that a proposed material, procedure, supplier, plan, or piece of equipment meets the contract requirements before it is incorporated into the work. That review can prevent rework, procurement delays, rejected materials, and disagreements about what the project expected. I’ve seen teams lose time because they ordered material before approval, relied on a verbal acceptance, or assumed a previous project’s requirements would apply again. Submittals slow the work down when they are handled late. When they are planned early, they help protect the work. 2. Leadership Perspective Good leaders look ahead far enough to give others time to review and respond. Submitting information at the last minute may technically meet an internal deadline, but it transfers unnecessary pressure to the rest of the team. 3. Field Observation A submittal log is most useful when it is connected to procurement and the project schedule. Knowing that a submittal is “open” is not enough. The team should understand when approval is needed, how long procurement will take, and what activity depends on the item. That connection is where a PE can provide real value. By following the submittal through review, approval, purchasing, delivery, and field use, the PE helps prevent an administrative item from becoming a production delay. 4. Spreadsheet Tip This week’s formula: WORKDAY Use this formula to calculate a future working-day deadline. =WORKDAY(B2,C2) If Cell B2 contains the submittal date and Cell C2 contains the allowed review duration in working days, Excel returns the expected response date. To exclude company holidays listed in Cells H2 through H15, use: =WORKDAY(B2,C2,$H$2:$H$15) This can be useful for submittal reviews, RFI responses, procurement follow-up dates, and other deadlines based on working days rather than calendar days. 5. Question for the Week Which upcoming activity on your project depends on a submittal that should be moving now? Have a great weekend, Dan |
Friday Field Notes
Practical, experience-based project management lessons for project engineers, developing project managers, and field professionals.
Good morning team, This week’s topic: look-ahead schedules. 1. From the Field A look-ahead should represent what the project team actually believes is going to happen over the next few weeks. That sounds obvious, but I’ve seen look-aheads continue showing activities that everyone onsite already knows are not going to start on the dates listed. At that point, the document stops being a planning tool and becomes an exercise in updating dates. A useful look-ahead should reflect current field...
Good morning team, This week’s topic: project schedules. 1. From the Field A project schedule is obviously a planning tool, but I’ve found that its real value comes from how well it helps people understand what is supposed to happen next. A schedule can be technically correct and still be difficult to use. If the field team cannot tell what areas should be available, when subcontractors are needed, or what activities are driving the next few weeks of work, the schedule is not doing much to...
If you’re new here, Friday Field Notes is a short weekly newsletter built around practical project management lessons from the field. I originally started writing these notes for Project Engineers I was helping develop. The goal was simple: give them something useful they could read in a few minutes and apply to a real project. A lot of project management is learned through formal training, procedures, software, and project controls. But some of the most important lessons come from...