May 20, 20213 min read

How to do a Construction Schedule Submittal Review - Beginner or Advanced in Depth Guide

Updated: Sep 11, 2021

To do a schedule submittal review, there are a few levels.

For anyone who can afford to outsource this (and other scheduling processes) to a good, experienced consultant - do that.

The little money you might save from not hiring a consultant may be lost many times over through inefficient scheduling, not spotting mistakes, and perhaps having to go to court!

That said, if you are on a budget (or you want to go a few steps further and make your projects more efficient), you should look to implement the best technology you can to automate as many elements of your project as possible - schedule submittal reviews included!

And if you are looking for the best possible outcome - simply hire a consultant to work on top of that technology and hopefully massively reduce your billable hours!

As for how do we do the above? Keep reading!

The Technologies

Now, in the construction space, the common project planning software such as Primavera P6 have a number of add on tools to do certain functions at the click of a button - schedule submittal reviews being one of them!

Whereas in the past it might have taken an experienced consultant a day or two to pour through a P6 file, sniff out issues, choose which ones to highlight, compile them in a report, then fill it in with writing, recommendations and then review all that -

Now there is a software to do that in a few *minutes*.

This is called Claim Cracker and it is made for you to simply import the schedule submittal files (even if you don't have Primavera P6 on your computer) and use AI technology to create an automatic schedule submittal review with expert opinion and recommended action.

This technology is now a must-have for consultants and owner's representatives alike as it takes this routine manual task down to a few minutes.

Using Claim Cracker is really a no-brainer for all parties involved in the schedule submittal review process and runs around a 100 metrics then creates custom, advanced reports - with additional explanations so that even beginners might be able to understand exactly what is going on and know precisely what the issue is that has been detected.

This technology takes care of the 80% - which for the vast majority of people will be more than enough - to create an expert schedule submittal review - the type that would have taken years of learning and practical experience in the past.

Claim Cracker is like a helmet for a motorcycle, you shouldn't have to think about using it - and if you don't you may end up in a very nasty situation!

To learn more, check it out here!

Consultants

The extra 20% of customizing and tailoring submittal reviews to the client is the consultant difference.

This is definitely worth it if you can afford it - but bear in mind that this is commonly around 10 times more expensive than the software alone (every month)!

A good consultant should consider your entire situation, the project, the contractors, the stakeholders, the goal, and more and then tailor a report based on the specific situation and what needs to be done.

There is no comparison for this and again, if you can afford it then after automating whatever you can, delegate this task to this trained consultant.

It's strange how people are willing to stump up millions of dollars in delay costs and claims - but not spend a few thousand on outside help to avoid all that!

As with any skills, you may either hire, partner or learn it.,

This particular skill set is something that might take decades to learn and build proficiency in - so really - hire.

To put you in perspective, this post was originally being written to show you the actual process of how you might do this manually - but seriously, to do it all justice might take writing a book or a series of books instead (... and there is software that does this automatically now!)