Successful construction projects require alignment at every stage of a project. Submittals are a fundamental process to keeping project teams aligned by ensuring critical project information like materials and equipment match project specifications.
When managed well, submittals keep GCs, architects, engineers, and owners connected from the start. Nonetheless, submittals are known to be labor-intensive processes prone to error and mistakes, causing project slowdowns.
Alternatively, a smooth and efficient submittal review process saves you time and money by keeping crews moving. When things are installed correctly, teams don’t have to wait around for approvals to move forward. Submittals can also help identify mistakes earlier, allowing for faster, and more cost-effective, solutions. Additionally, an organized submittals process ensures that materials are up to standard, minimizing defects and preventing potential safety hazards from unapproved or unsuitable materials.
Most people want to move fast and get things done, but when it comes to submittals, a faster process isn’t the only answer. Teams must balance speed with thoughtfulness, and construction quality management must never be compromised.
Therefore, the right tools and processes are critical to reducing tedious and manual submittal tasks while retaining quality standards. Autodesk Build can help you do that by serving as a single source of truth and providing tools to streamline the submittal process without sacrificing quality.
For instance, Submittals in Autodesk Build streamlines collaboration by establishing roles and responsibilities, ensuring clarity on next steps and due dates. The annotation and custom stamp features simplify workflows, eliminating the need to use other software to complete the process. Users can also create customized review workflows to involve relevant stakeholders in the submittal process.
Even more good news: we’ve released several new features in Autodesk Build to optimize the submittal process even more in 2024.
Using Custom Review Workflows, Submittals in Autodesk Build can be tailored to each project – you can specify the number of review steps, reviewers, and more.
We know that recreating a custom review process for each submittal item can be time-intensive, which is why we added the capability to create review templates for multiple submittal items.
You can bulk-apply review templates by selecting multiple submittal items and applying the relevant review template.
Learn more about Custom Review Workflows
You can create custom alphanumeric numbers for new submittals before they’ve been reviewed or closed. Even better, Autodesk Build gives you the flexibility to select between two numbering systems – Global numbering, where all items are labeled with sequential numbers, or Spec section numbering, where each item number includes its spec section in the numbering.
This provides flexibility, improves clarity, and ensures each submittal item meets your project numbering standards.
Learn more about Custom Numbering.
Looping the right people into your submittals ensures items are assigned and reviewed quickly. After all, the last thing you want is to miss assigning items to relevant stakeholders and slow down the process.
Autodesk Build helps prevent this from happening by providing the ability to assign roles and companies to ball-in-court fields. With this feature, you can be sure that submittals land on the desks of all relevant stakeholders without having to add each person individually.
In short, you never have to worry about missing or forgetting to assign the right people to your submittals. You can get the process started faster and move forward with confidence.
The best submittal processes are the ones that strike a balance between being efficient and being thorough.
With Autodesk Build, you don’t have to compromise any part of the submittal process. Tools like Custom Numbering and Custom Review Templates allow you to maintain consistency across multiple submittals and projects. And because you can apply these settings in bulk, you save time and reduce potential errors.
Finally, the ability to assign roles and companies to ball-in-court fields means all stakeholders are looped in and can review submittals promptly.
Ready to get started? Learn more about how Autodesk Build can uplevel your construction management processes in our previously recorded LinkedIn Live.
