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Document control

Setting up document control on a job without a document controller

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

Monday of week one on a two-storey ambulance station. The architect's issued-for-construction set arrives as 64 PDFs, the structural engineer sends a revised foundation plan that afternoon, and two trades ask where to send their submittals. Nobody on the team is a document controller.

Architectural section drawings and a detail sheet spread on a desk beside an open laptop, a pen across them.
Photo: Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

Make one person responsible for every document that enters or leaves the job, and give them four registers — drawings, RFIs, submittals and correspondence — one folder structure and a fixed weekly check. Without that, everyone handles documents and nobody owns them: each inbox holds part of the record, and each trade builds from whatever reached it. The City of Los Angeles's engineering bureau, for one, says document control establishes a central point where all project correspondence and documents are logged and tracked, and warns that a delay in processing them could delay completion and add substantial cost.

The first week

  1. Name the person and a backup in the start-up minutes — usually the coordinator, or the project manager on the smallest jobs. Formal documents come in and go out through them.
  2. Open the four registers on day one, one line per document: number, description, dates received and returned, current holder and status. Drawings add the revision; RFIs and submittals add the date needed.
  3. Fix the folders and file names on day one — the method is in a folder structure and file-naming rule.
  4. Log, file and distribute each document the day it arrives, before anyone answers or forwards it.
  5. Route trade RFIs and submittals through the registers, never straight to the consultant, and send the answers back the same way.
  6. Check weekly, before the site meeting: the field set against the drawing register, RFIs and submittals past their dates, and letters waiting for a reply.

Common mistakes

  • Treating each person's inbox as the record.
  • Registers that list documents but not their status or who holds them.
  • A trade emailing its submittal straight to the consultant "to save time".
  • Dropping the weekly check when the job gets busy.

Action list

Start this week

  1. Name the controller and the backup in the minutes
  2. Open the four registers
  3. Fix folders and file names on day one
  4. Log and distribute every document the day it arrives
  5. Send trade RFIs and submittals through the controller
  6. Book 30 minutes before each site meeting for the check

Check your understanding

Your coordinator is away for two weeks from Monday. What must already be true for the backup to keep document control running?

Show the answer
The registers and folders must be shared rather than held in one inbox, and current to today, so the backup can see what is open, what is due and who holds it. The routine must also be written down. With both, the handover takes an hour; without them, the gap surfaces weeks later as a missed revision or a late answer.

Sources

  1. Project Delivery Manual, Procedure 16.5: Construction Document ControlCity of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering · Los Angeles, United States (a public owner's procedure for its own projects; shown as an example of practice) · accessed

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