The close-out package

Why this page exists

You cannot inspect our work. It is three hundred feet up, it is finished by the time you hear about it, and going to look costs a mobilisation.

What you can inspect is the package: the photographs, the test results, the red-lines and the punch list. That package is the only verifiable thing a contractor in this trade can hand you, which makes it the product rather than the paperwork attached to the product.

It is also where competent crews lose money. A crew can do genuinely excellent work and hand you a package your QA process rejects on format, and the rework costs a second mobilisation. That is entirely avoidable and the way to avoid it is to agree the format before anybody leaves the yard.

What is in it

Photographs. Taken against the thing they document, in the field, as the work happens — not assembled afterwards from whatever was on a phone. For a modification that means every member installed. For an inspection it means every finding, with enough context in the frame to show where on the structure it is.

Test results. Sweep and distance-to-fault files per line, PIM results per sector against the acceptance threshold, plumb and tension measurements with the temperature they were taken at, load-bank results with the load and the duration. In your submission format, not ours.

Red-lines. Anything built differently from the issued drawings, marked up, with the reason. This is the part people skip and the part that matters most in five years, when the next contractor is working from drawings that do not match reality.

The punch list. Open items, each coded by severity, with what closed them and when. A punch list without closure evidence is a list of unfinished work.

Records specific to the scope. Torque records and material certifications on a modification. Commissioning records and transfer tests on power work. Mapping sheets on antenna and line work. Lighting function checks wherever obstruction lighting was touched.

Sign-off. Who did the work, who checked it, and when.

The format is agreed at proposal stage

Photo naming conventions, mapping sheet templates, test file formats, folder structures and submission portals all vary by carrier, by owner and sometimes by market within the same carrier. None of that is difficult. All of it is expensive to discover late.

So it is a line in the proposal. Tell us the format at scoping, and the crew shoots to it in the field rather than reconstructing it afterwards. If you do not have a format, we submit in ours and it is a complete package on its own terms.

If a package is rejected

Rejected for format — wrong naming, wrong template, missing a sheet your process expects — we correct and resubmit at no charge. That is our problem. We agreed a format and did not hit it.

Rejected for substance — a photograph that does not show what it needs to, a test that was not performed, a member not documented — we go back and get it. Where that needs a mobilisation because the work was ours to document and we did not, that mobilisation is ours.

Where a rejection is a scope change rather than a defect — you now want something documented that was never in the scope — it is priced as a change, in writing, before anybody goes back.

How it is delivered

Digitally, in the structure your process expects: a portal upload, a transfer, or a delivered archive. Photographs at full resolution rather than compressed for email.

We keep a copy for the retention period described in the privacy policy, which in construction is a long one. If you lose yours in a system migration three years from now, telephone and ask.

Ask for a sample

The most useful thing you can do before awarding work to any contractor in this trade is ask to see a close-out package from a comparable scope, redacted as necessary.

Telephone (407) 423-9071 and we will send one. Ask the other bidders too; the difference between packages is frequently larger than the difference between prices.