I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve reviewed a construction schedule with 50% or more of the activities carried under a WBS for submittal-review. My response is invariably to indicate that a construction schedule is not a shop drawing or submittal log, and need not represent every submittal cycle on the project. The practice does nothing to bring more clarity to the process, and only contributes to confusion. As an oversight expert, it’s not unusual for me to delete the entire submittal WBS from a schedule as a matter of best practice if not good housekeeping.

Schedulers are not wholly to blame for the phenomenon because they are often merely following project scheduling specifications to the letter. At the end of the day, it’s not unusual for there to be numerous disparate versions of the submittal-review and shop drawing log schedule: the general contractor or project manager’s, the architect’s, the subcontractor’s, fabricator’s, and the one represented in the schedule.

Despite overrepresentation of submittal-review in the baseline, few schedules ever track dates and progress of these sequences. Invariably, unactualized submittal/review sequences are left hanging, only to become out-of-sequence as they are ignored, gumming up project logic. In other words, stuffing submittal-review cycles into a schedule doesn’t bring more clarity to a schedule – it obfuscates clarity.

Since submittal-review cycles drive the delivery and subsequent installation of product on-site, if these activities are not actualized, they will eventually appear as unrealized or delay activities in the schedule, even when the product has been delivered and installed. It is then simply a matter of deleting the submittal-review activity or its driving-logic.

It’s not uncommon for an inexperienced scheduler to simply create a submittal-review/approval cycle for every trade without any consideration for complexity or relevance of magnitude, and cut and paste it into every trade WBS. For example, does the schedule need to track gypsum board or gym-locker submittal/reviews? Are those items as critical as say a fire alarm wiring diagram or duct shop drawing? Durations are all the same regardless of complexity of the submittal or potential additional cycles. There are a number of misgivings regarding the practice:

• The construction schedule submittal-review WBS need only represent release dates taken from the shop drawing log for long-lead and critical path product and information. The scheduler is less concerned with submittal review/cycle details than he is with working release and delivery dates. It’s not unusual for the project manager to be clueless as to these dates, thus, they are not posted to the schedule until someone insists
• Schedulers typically include a single submittal-review cycle for each trade or submittal, disregarding the rare event of a single cycle: most submittals require at least two cycles
• Submittals are typically understated in schedules – and would be better omitted altogether. For example, if the HVAC section has only one submittal and review sequence, that assumes that all HVAC program and product will be submitted, reviewed, and released for order concurrently, which is never the case, and does not help the team plan for delivery of respective product. Thus HVAC submittals might include respective submittal-review sequences for: equipment, duct/pipe, controls, coordination, and SMACNA and basic requirements
• Submittal-review cycles tend to have the same duration across trades regardless of complexity. For example, HVAC equipment submittals always need more cycles and review duration than carpet submittals 
• It’s unrealistic to track the dates – and especially the percent completion rates – in the schedule, especially if there are multiple cycles. This is best done in the shop drawing log

My preferred method of representing submittal-review cycles in the schedule is intended to streamline the process by representing only long-lead, critical – or near critical-path sequences, and MEP coordination activities. Here are some of the guidelines I’ve established:

Tracking submittal-review cycles in the schedule requires a different approach than managing a shop drawing log. The easiest way I’ve found is as follows: only actual-start and actual-finish dates are input. I.e., only the date of the first and last submittal and review are represented: it’s futile to track every cycle as it is to track percentage complete.

Release dates are driven by fabrication windows. If the release date is too early – denoted by excessive total-float – I like to insert a soft constraint in lieu of the as-early-as-possible, so that product doesn’t arrive on site before it is needed, requiring unnecessary safeguarding, staging, and warehousing. It is mandatory to notify fabricators of these as-late-as-possible dates. It’s not unusual for me to assign as-late-as-possible to all procurement. Soft-constraints are wholly accepted by AACE and PMI, and should never be confused with hard-constraints. When modeling the critical path, it is generally recommended to filter out as-late-as-possible soft-constraints, as they will otherwise appear on the longest path.

Inordinate total-float in submittal-review cycles generally denotes that the fabrication window is not built-in, or that project logic of the sequence is incomplete. This makes it rudimentary to weed out errors and omissions in the schedule. It’s not unusual to review a schedule with 30% critical path activities that still shows exorbitant float in procurement – a counterintuitive asset of which such a project does not have the luxury of enjoying. I’d rather eschew representation of placeholder submittal/review cycles with exorbitant total float in the schedule until such time as the entire procurement cycle (including fabrication) can be assessed.