Solutions / Construction and contracting / Building a submittal register from the specification

Building a submittal register from the specification

Reading the specification section by section to produce the list of everything that must be submitted, who owes it, and when it is needed working back from the schedule. Currently a person reads the whole book to do this.


Context / construction and contracting Why this one is worth doing here

The estimate, the project system and the accounting system each hold a cost code structure, and the mapping between them lives in a spreadsheet maintained by one person.

A project generates a paper chain where each hop is a re-keying. A field condition becomes a time and materials tag, then a potential change order, then a priced request, then an executed change order, then a budget revision, then a line on the next payment application. Every hop is a place the amount can quietly diverge.

Systems this usually touches

  • Procore
  • Bluebeam Revu

When this is the wrong thing to build

Pick something else if your specifications arrive as scans of scans. Extraction quality tracks source quality, and pretending otherwise produces a register nobody trusts.

The constraint that shapes it

Lien deadlines are statutory, vary by state and by role, and run from a furnishing date rather than from an invoice date. More on how this sector works.

The same shape elsewhere / Document extraction 12 sectors run it

A file arrives. The fields come back typed and checkable. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.

Real estate
Reading dates out of a ratified contract
Real estate
Abstracting a commercial lease into dated fields
Real estate
Filling an MLS input sheet from the listing agreement
Law firms
Turning a docket entry into a calendar
Law firms
Turning a delivered transcript into a usable set of cites
Law firms
Coding a filing fee to the matter that will repay it
What people ask about this 4 of them
  • How do I build a submittal register from a specification book?
  • Which specification sections actually require a submittal?
  • How do I set submittal dates from the fabrication lead time?
  • What separates a product data submittal from a shop drawing?

Back to construction and contracting, or see how this is priced and scoped.