Commenting on Submittals

[RobertHale]

I am curious about the colors everyone uses when marking up submittals (shop drawings, calcs, product data, etc.)

When I first started working professionally, I was told that red was for engineers, blue for architects, and green for contractors. No one ever told me what this "edict" was based on (if anything at all). In the company I work for now, we have two teams in the office and one team habitually marks in red, the other team habitually marks in blue. I want to argue for a company standard if only to save myself the hassle of changing the comment colors in the PDF's we generally work with. But before I decide to get on a high horse and advocate for a company standard, I would like to have in my back pocket sources and data for a reasoned position. Let me know what color you use and if you know anything about where it came from.
Thanks in advance.

Robert Hale, PE, SE

 

[TheDW]

I've not worked in a place that color codes between disciplines. One office I worked at we 'signed' all of our comments with the company initials...for example '#4's @ 12" not 16" - ABC'

I'm currently in a 2 man shop and I always use red and often still sign comments like above out of habit, whereas my boss uses whatever color pen is closest to him at that moment (I haven't been able to convince him to switch to bluebeam yet...)

 

[dold]

Never heard this regarding submittals. But i suspect most use a similar color coding for inter-office communication. On paper or bluebeam, etc.

That said, I have noticed some contractors stick to green, and some archs stick to blue. But not all. I dont think it matters as long as you 'sign' the comment.

 

[DrZoidberWoop]

Steel conx. fabricator here. I use a yellow background with blue letters to mark up shop drawings or reply to approval comments. If I need to be mean........ I savagely use all capital letters and a red background.

 

[dauwerda]

Previous company I worked for used green for deletions, red for additions/changes, and blue for general comments (not to be added to drawing but to give additional information to the person that needed to make the changes).

 

[dik]

I use blue and red as dauwerda... Way back, it was common for the various disciplines to use different colours... but, haven't seen that for a couple decades. Most of my markups are on *.pdf documents and haven't marked up a paper document for a decade, nearly.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[bridgebuster]

Blue and red, like d & d above.

 

[SteelPE]

I typically use blue for markups on my shop drawings because everyone else uses red. Every architect I work with uses red so I needed something that differentiated what I was requesting vs the architect or someone who comes after me.

 

[r13]

I use red for corrections, and black for comments on details need not to be revised, or change is preferred, but is optional. Blue was not used as old copy machine produces poor results.

 

[Said the Sky]

some projects specify colors for each consultant, usually at the request of the contractor of architect to keep things simple, but on top of that we signature our comments at the end with our company name.

 

[STrctPono]

I marked all of my submittals in RED. The one and only job I worked on that had an Architect attached to it, the CM requested that the Engineer use BLUE so the Architect could use RED. I never knew how hard it would be for me to follow these simple instructions. Old habits die hard.

 

[WARose]

Pretty much every place I have worked, the mark-up color scheme for shop drawings (especially steel):

Yellow= Ok (i.e. do nothing)
Red= Change as per marks
Blue= Ignore (checker is working up dimensions or sketching provided detail out more)

 

[JoshPlumSE]

My experience is similar to WARose and dauerda.

Yellow: highlighted to indicate it's been reviewed.
Red: required changes
Blue: comments for info or clarification, changes not explicitly required.

 

[structuralCADspecialist]

Sort of related: Once reason I try to stick with black and white drawings is so that the mark-ups (in color) are easier to see. Now that printing in color is cheaper people are using that as an excuse to start coloring things.