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Most shop drawings fail their first review not because of technical errors, but because they lack clarity around coordination, assumptions, and risk ownership.

Glazing projects often encounter their greatest risks not within individual scopes, but in the unmanaged spaces between trades where responsibility is unclear.

On glazing projects, loss of control rarely begins in the field. It starts earlier, when coordination gaps and deferred decisions quietly erode predictability while the schedule still appears intact.

Fast-track schedules often push facade teams to release fabrication early. But dispute data shows that coordination failures and late design changes are leading causes of overruns—especially in glazing, where geometry locks in early and flexibility disappears quickly.

In glazing projects, an approved submittal often feels like risk has been reduced and progress secured. In reality, approval confirms document compliance—not that the system is fully coordinated, constructible, or ready for fabrication.

Concrete, steel, and facade systems each have their own allowable tolerances, defined by different standards and reviewed independently. Yet when those tolerances are not reconciled as a unified system before fabrication, compliance on paper can still produce conflict in the field.