Knowledge base for building contractors when the site foreman asks which concrete grade goes into the basement.

It can show what you have to hand. The deadline itself is in the contract: where ÖNORM B 2110 is agreed, daily records of time-and-materials work must be kept and submitted to the client within the agreed period to confirm type and scope – if no period is agreed, it is seven days. If the sheet arrives later, you have to prove the work by other means. You ask by project and item; the answer gives the time-and-materials sheet, daily site report and correspondence with date and source, as far as they are in the knowledge base, and if the system finds nothing, it tells you so. The contract is not interpreted; the assessment is still yours.

How well scanned handwriting is read depends heavily on the writing: neat block capitals are a different matter from hours scribbled down in a hurry. That’s something to establish in the first weeks after go-live with a stack of real reports – including whether illegible passages are flagged as such. So that you can check, every answer gives the page it comes from. With the daily site report, it’s worth looking at the date it was sent: under ÖNORM B 2110 it must be handed over within two weeks, and if two weeks pass without objection, it is deemed confirmed. That date is on the scan or in the email it was sent with.

The answer gives the revision with its index and date from the title block, plus the source. In the first weeks after go-live, check with a drawing that exists in several revisions whether the answer also points out that older ones exist. Site management still decides which revision applies on site. If you ask for the drawing for a building element, the file path is included, so the foreman gets the right one rather than whichever happened to be on top. If the system finds no drawing for that element, it tells you so.

That’s a typical question for the knowledge base. Under ÖNORM B 2110, a disruption to performance must be notified without delay as soon as its effects become apparent; the notification should state the reason, the estimated amount and the expected delay to the construction period, and it should be in writing, because if it comes to it, you are the ones who have to prove it. If the mailbox is included, you can ask about the notification; the answer gives date, recipient and source – even from the mailbox of a site manager who left long ago, as long as it still exists. What was only said in a meeting and never written down won’t turn up here either; if the system finds nothing, it tells you so.