Site-specific erection plan outlines, assembled from the job file for your qualified person.

Awards arrive with a GC's logistics plan, erection drawings, a few emails and a date for the first column. Someone in your office starts from the last plan that looks similar and works through it section by section, chasing notices, sequence and delivery notes, crane and rigging sheets, and the fall protection approach for that site.

In the test, AI reads copies of finished jobs' files and drafts an outline in your own section order: each controlling contractor notice on file with its date, sequence and delivery notes, crane and hoisting information, column and anchor rod items, and fall protection. Then it lists the sections with nothing on file. It draws only on your documents and your prior plans and adds no means or methods of its own.

The federal rule asks for one in three situations. Under 29 CFR 1926.752(e), a site-specific erection plan comes into play when an employer elects, because of conditions at the site, to use alternate means of protecting employees. OSHA's inspection directive, CPL 02-01-034, names the three cases: safety latches on hooks deactivated or made inoperable, joists over 60 feet at or near columns not set in tandem with all bridging in place, and decking bundles landed on joists before all bridging is installed and anchored. That same directive says the plan need not be in writing except for the decking case. So the outline's first line states which trigger, if any, the file points to, and your qualified person decides.

Appendix A is the usual skeleton, and it is non-mandatory. Subpart R's appendix lists what an erector considers in drafting one: sequence with deliveries, staging and other trades; crane and derrick selection and placement, site preparation, the path for overhead loads and critical lifts; stability, the erection bridging terminus point, anchor rod notifications, columns and beams, connections, decking and ornamental iron; fall protection and falling objects; special procedures for hazardous non-routine tasks; each employee's training certification; a list of qualified and competent persons; and rescue or emergency response. It also has the plan name the site and project, signed and dated by the qualified person responsible. The outline follows your own template if you have one and that list if you don't, and it leaves a section blank rather than fill it.

A notice is only as good as what it states. Writing in December 2005, OSHA said an inspection report can serve as the concrete notice and need not arrive as a letter, but it has to give results as compressive design strength; load data that needs further calculation wasn't enough. An RFI didn't work for anchor bolt changes, since it was written before the work and didn't show the structural engineer of record approved it. The outline lists each notice by type, date and what it says, and leaves whether it is enough to your people.

Different people hold different calls. Subpart R gives the plan to a qualified person and hands other judgments to a competent one: whether a column needs guying or bracing under 1926.755(a)(4), whether a cantilever needs more than two bolts under 1926.756(a)(2), and when plumbing-up equipment can come out under 1926.754(d)(3). A qualified rigger inspects rigging before each shift. Fall protection stays in place for other trades only if the controlling contractor directs that and inspects and accepts it first, under 1926.760(e). The outline names who holds each call only where your file names someone, and lists the rest.

State plans and bridge owners change the form. California's Title 8 Section 1710 puts the plan at (c)(5) and numbers its alternate means provisions (d)(9), (h)(1)(C) and (h)(5)(D). On bridges, owners can write their own. An Illinois DOT provision effective August 9, 2019 has work over or within 25 feet of active railroad tracks planned by an Illinois licensed structural engineer who signs and seals it, and significant field changes go back through that engineer. A 2017 Iowa DOT special provision keeps erection plans apart from erection procedures, shows each stage in a plan view with member weights, centers of gravity and crane locations, and gives the Engineer at least 30 working days to review. Your reviewer picks jobs that show the range you take on, and every draft cites the rule its own job followed.

If your reviewer says yes, new awards get the same outline for about 30 days, drafted while the job is still in preconstruction.

Your qualified person writes the plan from the outline, then signs and dates it, and a person approves each item before it goes anywhere. The scoring continues through the month, and any next job is a separate decision at its own price.