Keeping bus duct fabrication aligned with real site conditions from day one

The brief

A Grade-A commercial development requiring precise coordination of MEP services with structural elements and vendor manufacturing. Bus ducts fabricated off-site would have to land on a structure already in motion — with no margin for misalignment, no time for re-fabrication, and a vendor who would (rightly) bill for site changes after shop drawing approval.

Why it was risky

Vendor-fabricated MEP components fail in a predictable way: the as-built site condition deviates from the shop drawing, the vendor manufactures to the (now-outdated) drawing, and the assembly arrives on site unable to be installed.

• Bus duct misalignment between the shop drawing and the actual site condition meant the unit would not seat as designed.
• Vendor coordination gap between the design consultant, the contractor, and the vendor's drafting room left no single owner of the latest measurement.
• Rework requirement: without a catch, the duct would have been remanufactured at the vendor's cost-plus rate and the project schedule would have absorbed the delay.

What Kaël did

• Integrated vendor workflow rolled drawing management, RFI tracking, and vendor coordination into a single real-time workflow — no parallel WhatsApp threads, no offline e-mail loops.
• Drawing sync ensured the vendor manufactured against the latest approved drawing, with site-verified measurements appended to the release.
• Site verification ran before each fabrication release; discrepancies were raised as RFIs and resolved before production began.
• Vendor coordination paused fabrication until each open issue had a closure date and an owner.
• QA inspection gates confirmed each released drawing matched site conditions.

Outcome

Bus duct fabrication proceeded against the latest site-verified drawings. No units were remanufactured, no schedule was lost to vendor-side rework, and the original delivery date stood.