As I do more and more construction administration, its kind of scary how this last part of the process is really a LOT of paperwork. After taking a week and a half off in Vegas, I came back to a pile of 200 or so emails. That doesn’t sound so bad, but still, given our paperwork tracking software and the contractor’s paperwork tracking software, it took me a day and a half to go through all the emails and just put them in the right place. Literally, just moving these individual emails into the correct filing boxes. Ugh.
And I have it easy. The typical construction administration process stipulates that all correspondance with the consultants (MEP engineer, structural engineer, etc.) goes through the architect. With the way my two projects are set up, at least the contractor is able to email the consultants directly — otherwise I’d be a bottleneck and I’d be forced to do this sort of mailbox cleaning every day just to make sure the project is being digested properly.
I’m not sure if there is a better way to do things, but the amount of filing I’ve been doing makes me think there has to be a better way!