Every electrical contractor shop drawing and submittal review hour gets worked. Most of them never get written down, and almost none of them ever get explained to the person being asked to pay for them.
The office labor is real. Somebody sat down with the lighting package, checked 200 fixture cut sheets against the schedule, redlined six discrepancies, and sent it back. Two weeks later the engineer returns it "Revise and Resubmit" over fixture color temperature and the same person does it again.
When that time shows up as a line on an invoice or a change order, it usually reads "submittal review — 18 hrs." That line loses arguments. Not because the charge is wrong, but because nothing on the page tells the GC what happened inside those 18 hours.
This post covers the whole thing: what these hours are, when they're inside your base bid and when they're recoverable, what to write down per session so the charge survives review, and how to give notice before the hours pile up. No purchase required to use any of it.
What Counts as Shop Drawing and Submittal Review Hours
These are the office and field-supervision hours spent producing, checking, and re-checking the paperwork that has to be approved before material gets bought or installed.
For an electrical sub on a commercial job, that's usually:
- Product data and cut sheets — pulling submittals from the supply house or manufacturer rep, checking model numbers against the spec section
- Shop drawings — switchgear and panelboard elevations, fire alarm riser and device layouts, lighting fixture schedules, feeder and conduit routing sheets
- Coordination drawings — overlaying your conduit and cable tray against mechanical duct, sprinkler, and plumbing so the ceiling actually fits
- Engineering calculations — short circuit, arc flash, voltage drop, fixture photometrics
- Contractor's review — your own sign-off that what the vendor drew matches what the drawings and specs actually asked for
- Re-submittal rounds — every time a package comes back marked and has to be corrected, re-checked, and re-sent
That last one is the version that never gets logged anywhere. If the hour isn't on a timesheet, it isn't on a job cost report, it isn't in a bid history, and it can't be defended when you ask for it.
Are Shop Drawing and Submittal Review Hours Billable?
Usually the first round is in your base bid, and the extra rounds caused by someone else's change or error are recoverable — but only if your contract says so and only if you documented them as they happened.
There is no universal answer, because the answer lives in the subcontract. What is universal is the sorting exercise. Every hour falls into one of three buckets, and you have to know which one before you send anything.
| Bucket | What's in it | How it gets paid |
|---|---|---|
| In the base bid | First submission of each package in the spec's submittal list. One reasonable correction round on your own errors. | Already in the contract price. Track it for job costing and for bidding the next one — don't bill it. |
| Recoverable as a change | Re-submittals forced by a design change, an owner-directed substitution, a spec revision, an addendum after bid, or a re-issued drawing set. | Change order. Priced at your contract's labor rate language, with the hours itemized. |
| Recoverable, but contested | Re-submittals driven by engineer comments that contradict the original spec, repeated rejections with no substantive change, coordination-drawing scope beyond what the contract assigned you. | Notice first, then a change request. This is where your written record decides the outcome. |
| Direct T&M | Any of the above on a job already running T&M, where the contract includes supervision or office time in the billable rate schedule. | Billed on the regular T&M ticket — same as field hours, with the same backup expectation. |
Two contract clauses control most of this. Find them before the job starts:
The submittal clause. Does it say "submit for approval" or does it specify a number of review cycles? Some specs say the contractor bears the cost of the second and subsequent re-submittals for the same item. If yours does, your first round has to be clean, and you need a record proving the third round was caused by a design change, not by you. The changes clause. Does the definition of a change include design revisions and added coordination effort, or only physical scope? Does it limit overhead and supervision recovery to a percentage markup? If office labor is swept into a markup percentage, your submittal hours are already priced and billing them separately will get rejected.If you can't find either clause, ask the GC in writing before the first package goes out. A question asked during submittal scheduling is routine. The same question asked after 40 hours are burned reads as a claim.
Where the Hours Actually Go: A Worked Example
The re-submittal rounds are where the time stacks up, and they're also the rounds nobody budgeted.
Here's labeled example arithmetic with every input visible. These hour figures are illustrative — run it with your own packages, your own rounds, and your own rate.
Example inputs: one lighting package, roughly 200 cut sheets across the fixture types and accessories, prepared and reviewed by a PM at a stated billing rate of $95/hr. Three total rounds.| Round | What happened | Example hours | At $95/hr | Bucket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — original | Assemble cut sheets, build fixture schedule, check against spec section and drawing tags | 12.0 | $1,140 | Base bid |
| 2 — engineer comments | Engineer marks 14 fixtures for wrong color temperature and 3 for mounting type; re-tag, re-pull cut sheets, re-check | 5.5 | $523 | Contested — depends on whether the spec was ambiguous |
| 3 — owner substitution | Owner changes the lobby fixture family after approval; rebuild that section, re-run photometrics request, re-submit | 6.0 | $570 | Change order |
| Total | 23.5 | $2,233 |
Check the arithmetic: 12.0 + 5.5 + 6.0 = 23.5 hours. 12.0 × $95 = $1,140; 5.5 × $95 = $522.50; 6.0 × $95 = $570. Sum: $2,232.50.
In this example, $1,140 of that was always yours to absorb. $570 is a clean change order — the owner changed a fixture after approval, and that's a documented, dated event. The middle $523 is the one that turns into a phone call.
Now scale the shape, not the number. If a job has eight submittal packages and the same three-round pattern, the office labor on submittals alone is a real line on that job's cost — and on most job cost reports for small shops, it's a line that doesn't exist at all, because none of those hours were ever entered anywhere.
That's the actual problem. Not that the hours are big. That they're invisible, and invisible hours can't be bid, costed, or billed.
What to Write Down at the End of Every Review Session
Write one line per session, at the end of that session, with the date, the time span, the package, the revision, and what specifically changed.
This is the whole method. It takes about twenty seconds and it's the difference between a charge that gets paid and a charge that gets argued.
A record that says this:
Submittal review — 5.5 hrs
tells the reader nothing. They have no way to check it, so they assume the worst and ask you to cut it.
A record that says this:
Tue 9:10a–2:40p — revised lighting shop drawings sheets E-401/E-402 per engineer comments rev 2, 14 fixtures re-tagged from 3500K to 4000K, 3 mounting types changed pendant to surface, re-pulled cut sheets for Types F3/F7/F11, resubmitted 9/16
ends the conversation. Every element in it is checkable. The engineer's comment set exists. The sheets exist. The re-submittal date is in the GC's own submittal log. Nobody argues with a record they can verify against their own paperwork.
The five elements of a session note that holds up:- Date and actual time span. Not "5.5 hrs."
Tue 9:10a–2:40p. A span is falsifiable; a rounded total isn't. - Which package and which sheet or spec section.
Lighting package, sheets E-401/E-402, spec 26 51 00. - Which revision or comment set.
Per engineer comments rev 2orper ASI 04orper RFI 17 response. - What specifically changed. Counts and identifiers:
14 fixtures re-tagged,6 discrepancies marked against panel schedule,panel LP-2 circuit schedule revised. - What caused it. One clause:
per owner substitution 9/14,per re-issued drawing set rev C,engineer comment contradicts spec 26 51 00 §2.3. This clause is what sorts the hour into a bucket later.
The same note-quality rules apply to field tickets, and the reasoning behind them is worked through in T&M billing best practices. Office hours are not a different animal — they're the same hour with a desk under it.
Log the note in whatever you already use. A dated notebook works. A shared spreadsheet works. A text file per job works. Whatever it is, one rule applies: the note gets written at the end of the session, not at the end of the month. A reconstructed note reads as a reconstruction, and reviewers can tell.
If you already run digital timesheets for your field crew, the same habit works for office hours — pick the job, log the session, and put the note in the same field your electricians use to describe what they did on the floor. Our time tracking guide walks through that setup. FieldTimesheet does this with a note prompt at clock-out; so do most other time apps, and so does a legal pad. The tool isn't the point. The note is the point.
How to Build the Submittal Review Log
Keep one log per job, one row per session, and add three columns most contractors leave off: the cause, the bucket, and the notice date.
Here's the layout. Copy it into a spreadsheet and use it today.
| Column | Example entry | Why it's there |
|---|---|---|
| Date | 2026-09-16 | Ties the hour to the GC's own submittal log dates |
| Who | PM | Sets which rate applies |
| Time span | 9:10a–2:40p | Falsifiable; a rounded total isn't |
| Hours | 5.5 | What gets extended against the rate |
| Package | Lighting — spec 26 51 00 | Groups hours by package for pricing and for bidding the next job |
| Round | Rev 2 re-submittal (use "Original" for the first submission) | Makes the churn visible as its own cost |
| What was done | 14 fixtures re-tagged 3500K→4000K, 3 mountings changed, cut sheets re-pulled F3/F7/F11 | The explanation the reviewer reads |
| Cause | Engineer comment rev 2 | Sorts the hour into base bid / change / contested |
| Bucket | Contested | Tells you what to do with it |
| Notice sent | 2026-09-17 | Proves you flagged it before the hours accumulated |
Two habits make the log worth keeping:
Total it by package, not just by month. A package that took 31 hours across four rounds is the number you want in front of you next time you bid that engineer or that fixture rep. Review the "contested" rows weekly. Any row still sitting in contested with no notice date is an hour heading toward being absorbed.The free T&M Billing Backup Kit includes a labor backup sheet and a change-order log in this shape if you'd rather not build the columns yourself. Same structure, printable, no signup.
Give Notice Before the Hours Pile Up
Send written notice the same week a re-submittal is caused by something outside your control — not at the end of the job with a stack of hours attached.
This is the part that decides whether the contested bucket gets paid. A contractor who sends notice on September 17 about a September 16 event is running a job. A contractor who sends the same information in December with 60 hours attached is filing a claim, and claims get treated as claims.
Notice doesn't have to be adversarial. Here's wording that isn't:
Subject: Lighting package — re-submittal notice, rev 2>
The lighting submittal was returned 9/15 marked Revise and Resubmit with comments requiring 14 fixtures to be re-tagged from 3500K to 4000K and 3 mounting types changed. Spec section 26 51 00 §2.3 calls for 3500K in these areas, so we read this as a change to the specified product rather than a correction to our submission.>
We are proceeding with the revision so the package stays on schedule. Review labor for this round is being tracked and will be submitted as a change request with the session log attached. Estimated at 5 to 6 hours of PM time.>
If our reading of the spec is wrong, let us know this week and we'll withdraw the request.
Four things that letter does:
- States the event with a date, so it can be checked against the submittal log
- Cites the spec section, so the disagreement is about a document, not about opinions
- Says the work is proceeding, which removes the "you held up the job" counter
- Offers to withdraw, which signals you're tracking the hour honestly, not fishing
When the change request goes in, attach the log rows, not a summary. The reviewer's job is to verify, and you make verification easy. A packet that lists the dates, spans, and what changed in each session gets approved or gets one specific question. A packet that says "review labor, 18 hrs" gets a negotiation.
If you want to see what that reviewer-facing format looks like laid out, there's an annotated sample billing packet — no signup, no email, just the page.
Coordination Drawings Deserve Their Own Line
Coordination drawing effort is frequently assigned by the GC after award, and it's rarely priced in an electrical base bid — treat it as its own scope conversation, not as submittal overhead.
Shop drawing review is checking someone else's document against the spec. Coordination is producing a new drawing: your conduit runs, cable tray, gear pads, and feeder routing laid over mechanical, plumbing, and fire protection until the ceiling plenum works.
That's detailer hours, and on a BIM job it's a weekly clash-resolution meeting on top of the modeling. Three questions to answer in writing before the first session:
- Who's assigned coordination? The spec may assign it to the GC, to mechanical as lead, or to each trade for its own systems. If your subcontract is silent and the GC assigns it at the kickoff, that's an assignment of scope after bid.
- What level of detail? Modeling to an installable level of development is a different number of hours than marking up a 2D overlay.
- How many clash rounds? Unlimited rounds is not a scope — it's an open account.
Related Office Hours That Follow the Same Rules
The submittal log is one instance of a general pattern, and the same five-element note works for every office and supervision hour on the job.
The other three that eat the most time on an electrical job:
- RFI response and change-order pricing labor. Writing the RFI, waiting on the answer, pricing the impact. Same buckets, same notice discipline, same five-element note.
- As-built and redline drawing hours. Post-construction, almost always in the base bid, almost never budgeted realistically. Log them anyway — they're the number you're missing next time you bid closeout.
- Site orientation and safety training hours. Field hours, not office hours, but the same problem: real time, frequently unpriced, and invisible unless somebody writes down the date, the span, and who sat through it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are submittal review hours billable on a lump-sum job?
The first submission of each package is almost always inside your base bid on a lump-sum contract, so you track it for job costing rather than billing it. Re-submittal rounds caused by a design change, an owner substitution, or a re-issued drawing set are a different story — those are change-order territory if your changes clause covers design revisions and added effort. Read the submittal clause and the changes clause before the first package goes out, because the answer is in those two paragraphs and nowhere else.
Who pays for a re-submittal the engineer caused?
If the engineer's comments contradict the original spec or direct a product change, that's a change to what you bid, not a correction to your work. Those hours are recoverable, but they land in the contested bucket, which means the outcome depends on your written record. Send notice the same week with the spec section cited, keep the session log, and attach the rows when you price it.
How many review cycles am I supposed to include in my bid?
Check the submittal clause for a stated number. Many specs say the contractor bears the cost of the second and subsequent re-submittals for the same item, which effectively gives you one original plus one correction round. If the clause is silent, price one original and one correction round per package, and treat everything after that as a documented event rather than absorbed overhead.
Do coordination drawings count as submittal review?
No, and mixing them is why the numbers come out wrong. Submittal review is checking an existing document against the spec. Coordination is producing a new drawing — your conduit, tray, and feeders laid over the other trades until the plenum works. Log coordination sessions with the package field set to "Coordination" so the two totals stay separate for pricing and for your next bid.
What do I write down so a review hour survives a GC audit?
Five things: the date and the actual time span, the package and sheet or spec section, the revision or comment set, what specifically changed with counts and identifiers, and what caused it. "Submittal review — 5.5 hrs" fails the audit because nothing in it can be checked. "Tue 9:10a–2:40p, sheets E-401/E-402, per engineer comments rev 2, 14 fixtures re-tagged 3500K to 4000K" passes, because every element cross-references paperwork the reviewer already has.
When do I have to give notice on a re-submittal?
The same week the event happens, before the hours accumulate. Notice sent the day after a return is routine job administration. The identical information sent at closeout with sixty hours attached reads as a claim and gets handled like one. Keep it short: state the dated event, cite the spec section, say you're proceeding so the schedule holds, and offer to withdraw if your reading is wrong.
The One-Page Version
Start this on your next job, not your next contract.
- Find the submittal clause and the changes clause. Know your review-cycle limit and whether office labor is swept into a markup.
- Open one log per job with the ten columns above.
- Write one line per session, at the end of the session. Date, span, package, revision, what changed, what caused it.
- Sort every row into a bucket the week it happens: base bid, change order, or contested.
- Send notice the same week on anything in the contested or change bucket. Short, dated, spec-cited, offers to withdraw.
- Attach the rows, not a summary, when the change request goes in.
- Total by package at closeout and carry the numbers into your next bid.
The charge was always fair. What was missing was the explanation.