A submittal is a document the contractor sends to the design team during construction to show exactly what it plans to build or install. The engineer or architect reviews it against the design before anything is fabricated, ordered, or installed. If a beam connection, a pump, or a storefront system doesn't match what the drawings and specifications call for, the submittal review is where someone should catch it.
The project specifications list which submittals are required, usually section by section, and the general requirements describe how they're prepared, sent, and returned.
Common types of submittals
- Shop drawings show how the contractor or a fabricator will make and install something, such as steel connections, precast panels, or duct layouts. They're more detailed than the design drawings on the parts they cover.
- Product data is the manufacturer's information for a specified product: cut sheets, performance data, and the options selected.
- Samples are physical pieces of a finish or material, like brick, paint, or fabric, so the color and texture can be checked.
- Test reports and certificates show that a material or system meets a required standard.
- Closeout submittals come at the end of the job, such as operation and maintenance manuals, warranties, and record drawings.
Who reviews a submittal
A subcontractor or supplier usually prepares the submittal. The general contractor reviews it first, checks it against the contract documents and the field conditions, and stamps it before sending it on. The design firm leading the project reviews it next. On civil, transportation, and water projects, that's usually the engineer of record. On a building project, it's usually the architect, who forwards the parts that belong to consultants such as structural or MEP engineers. Each reviewer marks it up and returns it, and the lead firm sends the combined response back to the contractor.
On a project with several consultants, one submittal can pass through four or five people before it goes back.
What the review stamp means
Each firm has its own stamp, but most use some version of these actions:
- Approved, or no exceptions taken: the contractor can proceed.
- Approved as noted: the contractor can proceed if it follows the comments.
- Revise and resubmit: the contractor has to correct the submittal and send it again.
- Rejected: the submittal doesn't meet the requirements and needs to be replaced.
The design team reviews a submittal for general conformance with the design. Under most contracts, the contractor stays responsible for dimensions, quantities, coordination between trades, and construction methods. The exact wording comes from your contract and your firm's standard stamp, so check both.
The submittal log
The submittal log is the list of every required submittal on the project, with its status, the dates it was received and returned, and who has it now. Contracts usually set how long the design team has to review each one, so the log is also how a firm shows it responded on time.
Many logs live in a shared spreadsheet, which is only as current as the last person who updated it. We wrote about that problem in How to track submittal status without a spreadsheet.
Where submittal reviews slow down
It arrives incomplete. A submittal that's missing product data or doesn't reference the specification section goes back without a real review, and the clock starts over.
It goes to the wrong person. When routing depends on someone forwarding an email, a mechanical submittal can sit with the structural engineer for a week.
It waits in an inbox. Reviews without a reminder wait until someone asks about them, often the contractor as the deadline gets close.
Resubmittals lose the history. When the second round arrives, the reviewer needs the first round's comments to confirm they were addressed. If those comments are in an old email thread, the check is slow or doesn't happen.
How Kineo handles it
In Kineo, a submittal is a document in its project, and it moves through stages your firm names, such as received, under review, and returned. Reviewers open the PDF in the browser, check it against your firm's checklist, and file each markup under the checklist item it relates to.
Each document's review follows a workflow you lay out once and reuse, with a reviewer on each step. Consultants outside the firm review through an emailed link, without an account or a seat. Kineo emails each reviewer when it's their turn and reminds them after the time you set, three days by default. When a reviewer rejects a document, it goes to revision, and the next round returns to the same reviewer, with the earlier rounds kept in the document's history.