General Contractors

Signage as a trade, not an afterthought

Interior signage falls under CSI MasterFormat Division 10 14 00 (Signage), and it behaves like any other trade on your schedule: it needs accurate information early, lead time against fabrication, and coordination with the trades around it. Treated as an afterthought bolted onto the punch list, it becomes the thing holding up your certificate of occupancy. Treated as a scheduled trade, it isn’t.

What we need, and when

Room schedule and message schedule, as early as possible. The room schedule tells us what rooms exist and what they’re called. The message schedule tells us exactly what each sign says. We can start design work on preliminary information, but fabrication doesn’t start until the message schedule is locked, because every sign in the package changes if a room name or number changes after production starts.

Submittals and shop drawings before fabrication. We provide shop drawings for review and approval before we cut, print or engrave anything. Build our submittal review time into your schedule the same way you would for any other trade with a fabrication lead time. A rushed or skipped submittal step is the most common cause of a sign package that doesn’t match what got approved.

Field verification before final fabrication. Drawings and as-builts drift from actual field conditions more often than anyone wants to admit, especially on renovation and tenant improvement work in buildings modified before. We run a field survey to verify dimensions, wall conditions, door swings and mounting substrate before locking fabrication, not after signs come back from the shop and don’t fit.

Lead times against your schedule

Tell us your target install date as early as you have one, not when you need signs installed next week. Fabrication lead time depends on sign type and quantity: engraved and dimensional signage takes longer than printed graphics, and a full building sign package with mixed sign types needs more lead time than a handful of room IDs. If your schedule moves, tell us as soon as it does. We can usually adjust if we hear about it early and rarely can if we hear about it the week of install.

Illuminated signage and electrical coordination

Anything illuminated, channel letters, backlit panels, illuminated directories, needs electrical coordination before rough-in, not after drywall is up. We’ll specify power requirements and rough-in location, but your electrical sub needs that information on their schedule, not ours. Loop us in with your electrical contractor early on any project with illuminated signage.

Blocking and substrate

Dimensional letters, heavier wall-mounted signs and anything mounted to drywall without a stud behind it needs blocking in the wall before it closes up. If blocking isn’t in for a sign location, we either can’t mount it as designed or we’re back on site after the fact with a less clean fix. Give us wall locations before framing closes so blocking requirements go to your framing sub with everything else.

Punch list and closeout

At punch list, we walk the installed sign package against the approved shop drawings and message schedule, and correct anything that doesn’t match. For closeout, we can provide as-builts of the final sign locations and message schedule for your project documentation, matching what actually went on the wall, not just what was originally designed.

When the room schedule changes mid-project

It happens on almost every project of any size: a room gets repurposed, a department moves, a suite number changes after signs are already in production. Tell us as soon as the change is confirmed. Before fabrication, it’s a schedule update. After fabrication, it’s a change order, and we’ll quote it the same way any other trade would quote a change to already-fabricated work.

Occupied renovations

On a tenant improvement or occupied renovation, sequencing matters as much as the sign spec itself. If part of the building stays open while another part is under construction, we plan install around the same phasing your other trades already follow: which corridors are live, which are behind barricades, and when we can be on site without disrupting the occupied side. Tell us the phasing plan and we’ll fit our install into it rather than asking for a separate window.

Working with us

Send us the room schedule, a message schedule if you have one, and your target install date, and we’ll come back with a lead time and a submittal schedule that fits your project. Tell us what you’re working on.