The Holloway Consulting provides construction expert and dispute resolution services to law firms, public agencies, project developers, owners, design professionals, construction managers, general and trade contractors, etc. We have been retained by plaintiffs and defendants, including third and fourth party defendants.

This is the second post in Holloway’s series covering some of the construction design issues that have arisen on the hundreds of projects, claims and disputes we have worked on over the past forty years. This post covers structural concrete shop drawing issues.

Construction Design Experts Shop Drawing Claims

Structural Concrete Disputes – Shop Drawings versus Contract Design Drawings

Structural Concrete is one of the trades requiring shop drawings. Structural Concrete reinforcing is custom-fabricated from 60-foot-long reinforcing bars, and requires specialized shop drawings for the fabrication of the final materials. These reinforcing bars are cut to length and bent to specific configurations. The shop drawing and the accompanying “cut sheet” lists the quantity, sizes, lengths, and shapes of the reinforcing bar. This information is provided to the structural engineer for review to ensure that it meets the requirements of the contract. The Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute (CRSI) has developed standard symbols, graphics, and formats for shop drawings and cut sheets that generally are used by reinforcing steel fabricators. Each fabricator has a particular style for shop drawings and cut sheets.

A job is built according to the shop drawings and cut sheets prepared by the subcontractors and manufacturers after these documents have been first reviewed by the general contractor, and then approved by the architect and/or engineer. Shop drawings represent, by their very nature, “design and detailing.”

Resort Hotel Litigation

The leveling of post-tensioned structural concrete slabs at a resort hotel were the subject of recent litigation. These PT slabs were comprised of elements such as formwork, rebar, embeds, and tensioning cables. Each were the subject of shop drawings that were prepared by the GC/sub and approved by the A/E.

The GC alleged that its bid, “Excludes design & detailing to accommodate “Structural Movement/Tolerances” per S1.01”, and, therefore, excludes PT floor leveling. However, neither the GC nor any of their subcontractors or vendors referred to this exclusion during the job. It was not mentioned in the sub’s bid nor any other bid, none of the subcontractor correspondence refers to it, and the GC and sub only mentioned the exclusion at the end of the job when a related claim arose.

In the absence of any such exclusion, the owner asked, “precisely what would you have included in your shop drawings that is not included in your approved shop drawings? Similarly, precisely what “design and detailing”, i.e., create drawings, did you actually perform to level the guestroom post tensioned floors?

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The Holloway Consulting Group, LLC
Construction Advisers, Managers and Experts
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Lakewood, CO 80228-2701
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Email: steve.holloway@disputesinconstruction.com
Blog: disputesinconstruction.com
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