Construction Contract Documents: Including Plan Reading Essentials and Extensive Lists of Abbreviations and Construction Glossary Terms

The purpose of contract document courses taught by this author over the past three decades has been to provide students and professionals of all levels the ability and confidence to ‘read’ different types of plans, or drawings. There is not a great and economical book on this topic and those that do exist include copies of several sets of expensive drawings. This book includes introductions to construction documents, contract documents, the design process, and an extensive discussion of drawings and specifications and why it is important that we ‘read’ various contract documents.There does not appear to be a comprehensive source of construction abbreviations and glossary terms available until now. The source of many of the abbreviations and glossary terms included here are from the author’s other publications as well as a thorough review of other construction management books, but most importantly from several sets of construction contract documents including drawing sets.The concept of ‘how to’ read a set construction drawings is difficult for some to get their arms around and even more difficult to write or read about. One cannot simply read a book about plan reading, there are several available, but the only way to learn this construction management tool is to ‘do it’. The way this author teaches the topic is to have students open drawings and we slowly leaf through them together, pointing out important items on each sheet and within each design discipline, and then assign them a list of items to find on their own by hunting through the drawings. The exercises become progressively more involved as the course moves along. The drawing reading narrative included in this book, along with the reference tools, is a very effective reading assignment prior to those exercises. In addition to ‘drawing reading’, because of all of the other tools included in this book (tables and figures and appendices) it can be a go-to reference source in a variety of situations. This is an economical short book, or workbook which can be be an effective reference tool for any construction student or professional, such as:*Reference tool for the construction professional;*Reference tool for any built environment student, including construction management, architecture, and engineering students;*Economical accompaniment to a traditional textbook;*Economical accompaniment for every student throughout their complete construction management program; and others.Abbreviations and terminology are utilized throughout construction documents and contracts, especially on drawings and in specifications. It can be a considerable challenge for the student or new construction professional to navigate a set of construction drawings due to the use of abbreviations. This book includes one of the most comprehensive lists of construction industry standard abbreviations and glossary terms to be found in any single construction book, or collective volumes of several books. These lists are of course not 100% inclusive as there are nuances throughout our industry and new terms, slang, and abbreviations are developed daily. Future editions will undoubtedly include many more.Why do we ‘read’ drawings? Reading and interpretation of contract documents, including drawings and specifications is not the final product, it is not the end goal. After we leaf through a set of drawings we ‘do’ something with them – likely prepare a cost estimate, construction schedule, and later a subcontracting plan. So it is important for the contract documents student to understand what they are going to do with the information after they have navigated the documents. To that end, abbreviations and glossary terms have been connected with construction contract documents including plan reading and Construction Specification Institute (CSI) specification divisions. Construction trades and subcontractors are also mixed in with drawing review throughout the book.