The submittal process is one of the few construction workflows that is entirely administrative and entirely capable of delaying a building. Nothing is fabricated until a submittal is approved, and every rejection adds a full review cycle to a chain that is already serial.
Understanding where cycles are lost is worth more than accelerating any single step.
The workflow
1. Submittal register. At project start, the specification sections are read and every required submittal is listed with its type, responsible party, and required-by date worked back from installation.
2. Preparation. The subcontractor or fabricator produces the shop drawings, product data, and samples.
3. Contractor review. The general contractor reviews before forwarding. This step is contractually required in most standard forms and is frequently skipped, which is a significant contributor to rejection rates. The contractor's review checks coordination with other trades, compliance with the contract documents, and completeness.
4. Transmission. Submitted through the project's document system with a transmittal identifying the specification section, the drawings referenced, the revision, and any deviations.
5. Design team review. The architect or engineer of record reviews for conformance with design intent, coordinating with consultants for their portions.
6. Return with action. Approved, approved as noted, revise and resubmit, or rejected.
7. Distribution and record. The reviewed submittal is distributed and logged. The approved version becomes the record for fabrication.
8. Fabrication release.
Realistic durations
Review durations are contractual but often unrealistic in practice. Planning figures that hold up:
- Contractor review: 3–5 working days
- Design team review: 10–14 working days for standard items
- Consultant coordination within that review: adds 3–5 days for multi-discipline items
- Resubmittal review: 7–10 working days
A single rejection therefore costs roughly three to four weeks. Two rejections on a long-lead item can move a completion date.
The critical planning consequence: a submittal schedule must be built backwards from installation dates, including fabrication and delivery lead time, review cycles, and at least one contingency cycle for high-risk items. Submittal dates set forward from the project start bear no relation to when the information is actually needed.
The most common rejection causes
Incomplete field verification. Dimensions taken from design drawings rather than site, or taken before the substrate was complete. This is the leading cause across nearly every trade.
Unmarked deviation. Departing from the specified product, detail, or material without flagging it. Reviewers who find one unmarked deviation reasonably assume there are others and reject the whole submittal.
Missing product data. Drawings without the corresponding cut sheets, test certificates, or compliance documentation named in the specification.
No coordination with adjacent trades. An element detailed in isolation that conflicts with something already approved.
Wrong specification reference. Submitted against the wrong section, so the reviewer applies the wrong criteria.
Illegible or incomplete drawings. Missing dimensions, unreadable scale, absent sections through critical conditions.
Contractor review skipped. Forwarded unreviewed, so errors the contractor should have caught reach the design team.
Substitution submitted as an equal without justification. Proposed alternatives require a comparison against the specified product's performance criteria, not just a claim of equivalence.
Reducing rejection rates
Pre-submittal meetings for critical packages. A short meeting before preparation, covering the design team's expectations and known coordination constraints, routinely converts a two-cycle package into a one-cycle package. It is the single highest-return intervention available.
A deviation log with every submittal. A one-page list of every departure from the contract documents, with reason and proposed resolution. Reviewers respond far better to disclosed deviation than to discovered deviation.
Complete packages. Partial submittals to "start the clock" almost always fail and consume a full cycle producing no information.
Consistent format. A reviewer working through a familiar layout finds problems faster and returns the package sooner.
Field verification recorded on the drawing. A note stating when dimensions were taken and by whom removes the most common single question.
The submittal log
The log is the project's control instrument. Each entry should carry: specification section, submittal number and revision, description, responsible party, date required by procurement, date submitted, date received by reviewer, date returned, action taken, and current status.
Two derived metrics are worth watching weekly:
Submittals approaching or past their required-by date. This is the schedule risk indicator.
Average cycles per approved submittal. A rate materially above one indicates a systemic quality problem in preparation, not a review problem — and it is addressed by pre-submittal meetings and better contractor review, not by chasing reviewers.
What review does and does not cover
Standard forms of agreement are explicit: the design professional reviews for conformance with design intent and the information given in the contract documents. Review does not relieve the contractor of responsibility for dimensions, quantities, fabrication techniques, construction means and methods, or coordination of the work.
Both parties benefit from stating this on the review stamp. Contractors who treat approval as dimensional verification, and designers who review as though checking a fabricator's arithmetic, both create liability confusion that surfaces during disputes.
Digital submittals
Most projects now run submittals through a construction management platform. The benefits are real — automatic logging, version control, parallel consultant review, and an audit trail — but two disciplines still have to be imposed manually:
Mark-up consolidation. Multiple reviewers marking the same document must have their comments consolidated into one returned position. Contradictory comments returned unresolved put the fabricator in an impossible position.
A single current version. The platform should be the sole source. Parallel email exchange of marked PDFs reintroduces every problem the platform exists to solve.
Building the submittal schedule
The submittal schedule is derived, not invented. It is built backwards from installation, and every intermediate duration must be real.
For each package, work back through:
- Installation start date from the construction programme
- minus delivery time from the fabricator's location
- minus fabrication duration, which for long-lead items may be months
- minus material procurement, particularly for anything with its own supply lead time
- minus approval-to-release administration
- minus review duration, at the contractual period
- minus contractor review
- minus preparation time, including field verification where the substrate must be complete first
- minus one contingency review cycle for anything complex or novel
The result is the submittal due date. Where that date falls before the information needed to prepare the submittal will exist, the conflict is real and should be raised immediately rather than absorbed. It usually indicates either a procurement route that needs changing or a design information date that needs pulling forward.
Long-lead items — switchgear, chillers, lifts, curtain wall, specialist equipment — deserve their own schedule, reviewed weekly. On most projects, three or four items determine the completion date, and they are identifiable from month one.
Managing resubmittals
When a package is returned for revision, the response determines whether it costs one cycle or three.
Read the whole return before starting. Comments frequently interact; resolving them individually can produce contradictions.
Query ambiguous comments immediately. A comment that is not understood will be addressed incorrectly, and the next return will repeat it. A short call resolves in minutes what another cycle resolves in three weeks.
Respond to every comment explicitly. A comment response sheet listing each comment and what was done about it lets the reviewer verify quickly rather than re-reading the whole package.
Mark revisions clearly. Clouds and revision triangles on what changed. A resubmittal with no visible indication of change forces a full re-review.
Do not introduce unrelated changes. Changes made in a resubmittal that were not requested, and not flagged, are the fastest route to a third cycle and to a reviewer who reads everything sceptically thereafter.
Frequently asked questions
Can fabrication begin before approval? At the contractor's risk, and generally unwise for anything with material cost or long lead time. Some contracts explicitly prohibit it.
What if the design team exceeds the agreed review period? It should be logged and notified promptly, since delay to a critical-path submittal may support a time extension. Notification at the time, not retrospectively, is what makes the record usable.
How many submittals does a typical project have? A mid-size commercial building commonly generates several hundred. Large or complex projects generate thousands, which is why the log and its metrics matter.
Related reading: MEP Shop Drawings: Coordinating the Interstitial Space · Millwork Shop Drawings: Detailing Joinery That Fits the First Time
Vantage CAD Services prepares submittal-ready shop drawing packages with deviation logs and field-verification documentation. Contact info@vantagecadservices.com or +1 (512) 543-0831.