Do you re-submit an entire data book/compilation or just the requested documents if your customer returns comments?
This is a question that usually does not have a black or white answer. It really depends on your customers individual preference, in my opinion, one that warrants a clarification request if it’s not clear… ensuring you are delivering exactly what your customer wants saves everyone time and hopefully avoids confusion and/or frustration. Especially when considering that often customers withhold up to 10% of the order total based on the approval of all documentation.
In my time as Vendor Document Lead at an EPC, we always preferred you only re-submit the documents that were needing to be replaced or added, as noted by the Responsible Engineer. The reason being is once we received a Final Data Book/Compilation initially, the book would go through checking, first with Document Control to ensure the included TOC was the approved version, the bookmarks matched the approved TOC, etc. The more clerical requirements were met.
Then the book would be sent to the Responsible Engineer for content review. It was usually at this stage the Engineer would note if any documents weren’t the latest approved version, weren’t applicable, or were missing entirely.
On the rare occasion the R.E. would identify miscoded documents and request they be resubmitted for review individually, though this wasn’t ideal for anyone. This is the purpose of getting all documents approved prior to submitting the final book but we’re all human and sometimes things get overlooked.
Finally, the book would go back to Document Control and we would pass on any comments pertaining to the data book to our supplier. Many suppliers took this response as a request to resubmit the entire book! And I can’t say I blame them for thinking so, however when they would resubmit the entire book (especially without noting the exact changes that were made), we had to start the entire review process over again.
For us and our processes this created a lot more work, so we always preferred our suppliers ONLY resubmit the required documents. We (our DC team) would then make the changes to the book in house and return the updated version to our supplier for their records.
This quandary has me curious and I’d love to hear your thoughts:
If you are an EPC, what would you prefer to see your suppliers do when comments are made on data books? Entirely new submittal or just the requested documents?
If you’re a supplier, what do most of your customers request when they have comments on submitted Final Data Books/MRB’s/Compilations?