Why Construction Document Contradictions Are So Expensive
A contradiction between the drawings and the spec costs almost nothing on the day it is created. The same contradiction, found after the steel is fabricated, can cost six figures. Nothing about the error changed. What changed is how much work was built on top of it before anyone noticed.
The cost curve is not linear
A conflict caught in design review is an edit. Caught at bid, it is a clarification or a qualified number. Caught during submittals, it is a rejected shop drawing and a resubmittal cycle. Caught in the field, it is an RFI, a stop-work on that scope, a change order, and often a schedule impact that ripples into trades that had nothing to do with the original mistake.
Each stage adds committed work, committed material, and committed time. That is why the construction industry's rule of thumb puts the cost of a field fix at an order of magnitude over the same fix in review.
Why manual review misses them
The conflicts that survive review are rarely obvious. They are distributed: the requirement is on one sheet, the contradiction is in a spec section two divisions away, and the schedule that should reconcile them is a third document. A reviewer would have to hold all three in their head at once, across a set that runs to thousands of pages, under deadline. Some get through. They always do.
FAQ
How much does a typical field RFI cost to resolve?
Industry studies commonly cite an average of several hundred dollars in soft cost per RFI just to process, before any rework. When an RFI triggers a change order or a schedule delay, the total cost can climb into the tens of thousands, depending on the scope affected and whether other trades are held up.
Can document contradictions be eliminated entirely?
Not entirely, because sets are produced by many people under time pressure. But the large majority of field RFIs trace back to contradictions that were present and detectable in the issued set. Catching those in review is the difference between a short edit and an expensive field event.
Where do the most expensive contradictions come from?
The costliest conflicts tend to involve fabrication or structure: a member sized two different ways, equipment that exceeds the support designed for it, or a connection detailed against the wrong load. By the time these reach the field, material has already been committed.
The takeaway
The economics are simple: find the conflict early and it is an edit; find it late and it is a claim. Lintel reads the entire set and surfaces the contradictions while they are still cheap to fix.