Why Review Before You Detail
Once detailing starts, every design problem discovered becomes an RFI, a hold, or a revision. Found during a pre-detailing constructability review, the same problem is just a conversation. The review takes a day or two of an experienced detailer's time and routinely surfaces issues that would otherwise cost weeks — missing connection design responsibility, impossible erection sequences, members that can't be shipped.
The 10 Questions
Run through these systematically on every new package:
- Who designs the connections? Delegated to the fabricator's engineer, fully designed by the EOR, or the dangerous middle ground of 'typical details'?
- Do the structural and architectural drawings agree on elevations, slab edges, and openings?
- Are there members too long or too heavy to ship without permits — and is splicing them allowed?
- Can every piece actually be erected? Look for members trapped by earlier-sequence steel.
- Are anchor bolt layouts coordinated with the concrete drawings, and who verifies them in the field?
- Where are the moment frames and braced bays, and are the demands on those connections defined?
- Do stair and rail packages have enough architectural information to detail, or will they stall on RFIs?
- Are camber, deflection, and tolerance requirements spelled out or left to inference?
- What existing conditions touch the new steel, and does anyone have field-verified dimensions?
- Is the release sequence defined — which areas fabricate first, and does the drawing package support it?
Turn Findings into a Kickoff Agenda
The output of the review isn't a memo that gets filed — it's the agenda for the detailing kickoff meeting. Every open item becomes either an RFI issued in week one (when responses are fastest), a documented assumption in the detailing proposal, or a scope clarification. Front-loading the questions compresses the entire RFI cycle into the start of the project instead of dribbling it across the schedule.
The Detailer Is Your Early-Warning System
A detailer reads the drawings more closely than anyone else on the project — every dimension, every callout, every conflict. Fabricators who treat their detailer as a constructability partner, not a drafting service, consistently see fewer field problems. Ask your detailer for a formal review-and-findings pass at the start of every project; the return on that time is enormous.