This past March and April, I wrote in the monthly column, Tomorrow’s Environment, about “How Much Is Too Much.” I addressed the topic of producing HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning) contract documents (specifications and drawings) for building programs and infrastructure projects.

For more than a century, the building industry’s production of contract documents has progressively increased the number of specification pages and drawings, while dissecting the specification end product with part remaining in the specification, and other parts located on contract drawings. The results have been added consulting fee time to produce these contract documents. Also, via dissecting each equipment specification, contractor time has been increased to consolidate the specification and drawings puzzle.

Going back to the 20th century, an average building project’s HVAC contract specification (Division 15B) could be in the range of 90 to 100 pages or less and the project’s HVAC drawings (designated H-#) could be 10-12 drawings that included:

  • H-1: Site plan
  • H-2 Floor plan(s) and possibly additional H-3, 4, and 5, showing piping and/or sheet metal distribution
  • H-6: Equipment room(s) and/or roof plan with or without a penthouse
  • H-7: Schedule sheet(s) and possibly an additional H-8 drawing
  • H-9: Part plan(s) and section(s) through the equipment room and possibly an additional H-10 drawing
  • H-11: Detail sheet(s) and possibly an additional H-12 drawing

There have been continuous, positive contract document performance results over the years but there have been negative results too. The production of contract documents cost the design engineering consultant addition time and fee. The purchasing of HVAC equipment and coordination of the installation of this equipment takes more time and cost for the construction project’s mechanical-electrical coordinator working with the trade sub-contractors. The construction firm and its sub-contractors turnover to the building owner’s facility department, also takes more time and cost. What the facility department receives in project closeout documents can be compared to an operation and maintenance maze where they are left to organize the uses of documentation before they can efficiently take ownership.

Today HVAC contract specifications consist of 140 plus pages (Division 23) and Contract drawings with an HVAC drawing series list format similar to the following:

  • G000: Cover Sheet
  • M000: Legend, General Notes, and Abbreviations
  • M001: Specification (if applicable)
  • MS101: Site Plan
  • MD100: Demolition Plan(s)
  • M100: Sheet Metal and/or Piping Distribution Floor Plan(s)
  • M200: Pipe Distribution Floor Plan(s) when sheet metal and piping is separated, otherwise omitted
  • M300: Mechanical System Sections
  • M400: Enlarges Views, e.g., mechanical shafts
  • M500: Mechanical System and Equipment Details
  • M600: Schematics and System Flow Diagrams
  • M700: Equipment Schedules
  • M800: Building Automation Control Diagrams and/or Sequences of Operation

Take this 21st century approach to producing contract drawings and apply it to the 20th century contract drawing list and a design engineer will easily increase the number of HVAC drawings by 50%!

Making Mountains Out of Molehills

It should be easy to see that the production of contract specifications and contract drawings has increase over the past 25-years in product volume and consulting fee time. But this assigning of multiple document locations goes far beyond costing the consulting firm time and money for each project. Others cost and time issues that have resulted are:

Specifying in detail the furnishing and installing of HVAC equipment is dissected into 7-segments:

  1. Equipment materials, configuration, etc. and
  2. Installation detail(s), not part of the specification, but instead found on a contract drawing detail sheet (M500 series).
  3. Equipment specifics, e.g., motor horsepower, model number, etc., are not part of the specification, but instead found on a contract drawing schedule sheet (M700 series).
  4. Manufacturer’s packaged automatic controls, furnished with the equipment are included in the equipment specification, instead of the automatic temperature control (ATC) specification. Important to note is that the packaged controls may not be documented in the drawing M800 series of ATC diagrams with the overall ATC diagram, e.g., central chilled water-condenser water system diagram and overall sequence of operation.
  5. Equipment package control specification’s sequence of operation will usually be brief and will also not follow industry standard automatic temperature control (ATC) format when received at the pre-construction shop drawing submittal phase.
  6. Contractor’s responsibility to document the equipment startup usually will not include the manufacturer’s standard startup sheet(s).
  7. Contractor’s responsibility to demonstrate the equipment/system to the commissioning agent and the facility management staff will not be found in the HVAC specification. Instead, this functional performance test (FPT) document will be documented in a stand-alone commissioning specification.

RESULT: The dissecting of the equipment criteria to the contract specification and multiple contract drawings leaves the HVAC contractor, sub-contractors, and equipment manufacturer challenged to put this equipment specification puzzle together often resulting in pertinent costs falling-thru-the-cracks after the HVAC contractor has submitted his/her bid that includes sub-contractor and equipment manufacturer quotes.

In the pre-construction phase of the job, the prime contractor’s mechanical-electrical coordinator effort, working with the project’s sub-contractors and equipment manufacturers, to provide field coordination drawings prior to fabrication of sheet metal and piping systems, will incur time and effort to complete the equipment 7-part puzzle. Unfortunately, excess time and associated costs will be required to put the puzzle together because the contract specification and contract drawings have been separated in the design phase of the project with pertinent information in 4-locations: 1) Equipment specification. 2) M500, System and Equipment Details. 4) M700 Equipment Schedule. 8) ATC Diagrams and/or Sequence of Operation.

RESULTS: Instead of all equipment data and coordination criteria located in a single equipment specification section in the design phase, the field coordination team must pull together the 7-part tasks. Quite often, it is at this early point in the construction phase that questions arise relative to conflicts between the packaged sequence of operation and the ATC specification sequence of operation requiring the design engineer to modify how the HVAC system(s) is to function. This will then require changes in the final overall sequence of operation and the commissioning agent’s FPT narratives that will take individual’s time and their labor cost. The larger the HVAC project, the more time and cost it takes to complete a field coordination solution.

The construction firm and its sub-contractors’ turnover criteria to the building owner’s facility department will often result in the field coordinated drawing becoming the record drawings rather than the original design engineer-produced contract drawings but the 7-part puzzle will remain as part of the closeout documents.

RESULTS: The record drawings will have been produced at a premium due to the 7-part equipment specification overriding original contract specification because neither the consultant engineer nor the contractor will be required to consolidate all relative equipment specification, associated details, flow diagrams, sequences of operation, startup sheets, commissioning FPT, operation and maintenance manuals, etc.

What the facility department receives project closeout documents it can be compared to an equipment maze where they are left to organize the uses of documentation before they can efficiently take ownership.

RESULTS: With the facility staff left to organizing the pertinent information, the preventive maintenance work order system cannot be implemented until the data input is finished, understood, and the work order system database is populated. Then proactive maintenance can begin.

Contract Drawing “Scope Creep”

Scope creep is the uncontrolled or gradual growth of a project's scope, which can include additional tasks, modification to design intent, and/or growth that goes beyond the original contract agreement. With the full equipment scope of work documented in part, in 7-locations of the contract specification and contract drawings, the final project cost can and usually arise.

There are no benefits to dissecting equipment/system design intent mixed between specification and multiple drawings. The design engineer makes his/her job more difficult to do by separating the equipment/system information that will come back to the designer in the form of “request for clarification” by the contractor in the construction phase. The prime contractor’s mechanical-electrical coordinator, and the HVAC sub-contractor or his/her sub-contractors field coordination and shop drawing submittal submission activities and time and inherently add labor cost during the pre-construction phase of the work.

The High Performance Contract Specification and Drawing Solution

The optimum solution to the industry standard mode of producing contract documents (equipment specification and drawings) with its dissecting each piece of equipment among the multiple drawing additions, e.g., M500, M600, M700, and M800 series, is to “break the mold” on this process.

SAMPLE EQUIPMENT SPECIFICATION TEMPLATE (see Figure 1 attachment) consolidates all pertinent information and drawings into each contract equipment specification, e.g., Refrigeration Unit specification example. This format eliminates the practice of placing portions of the equipment data, as well as system design intent information on to contract drawings, thus eliminating the 7-part puzzle format that has been used since the end of the 20th century.

Who benefits? The design engineer will be the first to benefit because he/she will have consolidated and coordinated the equipment’s design intent thus eliminating time and cost associated to responding to pre-construction “request for clarification” in the shop drawings submittal and field coordination phase of the job. The prime contractor’s mechanical-electrical coordinator, and the HVAC sub-contractor or his/her sub-contractors addition field coordination time and cost can inherently be avoided with the single-source equipment specification format (Figure 1). The facility management team post-construction time and cost can be reduced in their preparation to complete the maintenance management database and begin proactive implementation of preventive maintenance work orders.

Summary

The contract specification volume, as well as the contract drawing volume has increase as discussed at the start of this article. While some may say, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” the reality of contract documents is,” The process is broke”!

Often, “The obvious is not obvious” and this has applied for year with the increase production of design phase specifications and drawings. Resolving the problem with single-source equipment specifications results in:

  1. A better project delivery
  2. Effective use of time spent in the design phase, as well as reduction in consulting fee cost to produce the contract documents (specification and drawings)
  3. Reduction of field coordination time, requests to the design team for clarification from the prime contractor’s project manager, all resulting in labor cost savings
  4. Avoidance of contractor request for change order(s) resulting from the “requestion for clarification” by the contractor team
  5. A more efficient and complete project closeout initiative by the contractor
  6. More single-source product closeout product to be received by the facility staff resulting in owner ownership sooner

References:

  • March, 2024 Tomorrow’s Environment column, How Much Is To Much-Part 1
  • April, 2024 Tomorrow’s Environment column, How Much Is To Much-Part 2
  • March 2022, Tomorrow’s Environment column, Begin the Closeout of the Project at the Start