No O&M Manual from the Manufacturer? What to Submit

When the manufacturer publishes no O&M manual for a panelboard, transformer or surge protective device, submit O&M data instead: the installation instructions, the datasheet marked for what you supplied, and a one-page maintenance sheet built from the manufacturer's literature. Section 01 78 23 asks for operation and maintenance data, not for a book with "O&M Manual" on the cover.

The closeout binder comes back with a comment you have seen before: "Provide O&M manual for SPD-1, XFMR-T1 and LP-2A." You call the rep. The rep tells you, kindly, that a panelboard doesn't have an O&M manual. It has a label, a door, and an installation sheet. Nobody has ever written a 200-page manual for a box of breakers, and nobody is going to start for your job.

So now you're stuck in the middle. The engineer wants a document. The manufacturer swears it doesn't exist. And the binder, plus whatever payment is tied to it, waits on you to sort it out. Here's how to answer the comment once and keep it from coming back.

What the reviewer is actually asking for

The reviewer is checking every item on the equipment list against the binder, and an item with nothing but a cut sheet looks unfinished. That's the whole complaint. They don't need a document with a particular title. They need what 01 78 23 lists for each piece of equipment: a description, operating procedures, maintenance procedures, and parts information. A datasheet covers the first one. You owe the other three.

Read the equipment paragraph of your own 01 78 23 before you write anything, because it names the headings the reviewer will check you against. What that paragraph usually demands is in reading 01 78 23.

Ask the manufacturer for the right thing

Don't ask the rep for "the O&M manual." The answer is no and the call is over. Ask for the literature that does the same job under another name:

• Installation instructions or an instruction bulletin. For a lot of electrical gear, this is where the inspection and cleaning steps live.
• The user guide for anything with a display or status lights, which covers most surge protective devices.
• A replacement parts list, if the product has field-replaceable parts.
• A short letter on their letterhead saying the attached instructions are the product's published operation and maintenance literature.

That letter is the cheapest thing on the list and does the most work. It answers "where's the manual" before the reviewer asks it, in the manufacturer's voice instead of yours.

For panelboards, NEMA publishes NEMA PB 1.1, its general instructions for the installation, operation and maintenance of panelboards. It is about as close to an O&M manual for a panelboard as the industry gets.

Write the O&M data sheet yourself

When the literature still says nothing useful about maintenance, write one page per product type. Use the 01 78 23 headings so the reviewer can check it off line by line:

• Identification. The tags it covers, manufacturer, catalog number, and the nameplate ratings.
• Description. What it does, in one or two sentences.
• Operation. Its normal state, what each indicator means, and what to do when one changes. An SPD with a red status light needs one line here, and the operator will thank you for it.
• Maintenance. Each task with its interval and its source: the manufacturer's instructions with the page number, or NFPA 70B, the standard for electrical equipment maintenance.
• Parts. What can be replaced and how to order it, or a plain "no field-replaceable parts" when that's true.
• Contacts. Who to call for service and warranty.

One rule keeps this page out of trouble: don't invent intervals. Every task points at a source. A reviewer can argue with your opinion. It's a lot harder to argue with page 4 of the manufacturer's instructions.

File the sheet, the instructions, the letter and the marked datasheet together, in that product's chapter of the manual.

Answer the comment once

In your comment response log, answer the comment as Clarified, and say where the answer lives: "Manufacturer publishes no separate O&M manual for this product. Installation instructions, manufacturer letter and O&M data sheet are provided in the Equipment chapter for LP-2A." If the same comment hits six panelboards, give each its own row and the same answer. The reviewer is looking for every comment to be accounted for, and a missing row reads as a missing answer. The full method is in answering review comments.

Find the gaps while you still have time

The worst week to learn a product has no manual is the week the binder is due. You already touched every product once, when you collected datasheets for the submittal. That's the moment to note which ones have no manual and ask the reps, while a letter from a manufacturer still has time to show up. Everything else about building the manual early is in how to build an O&M manual for a control panel.

How Submittal Kit handles this

The hard part is spotting the gaps before the reviewer does. In Submittal Kit, the Parts Library's Missing manual filter lists every part without one, and Find datasheets can search the web for a manual for the parts that lack it. Allen-Bradley parts get their installation instruction straight from Rockwell's literature library.

An O&M manual starts from the submittal you already issued, and its standard recipe requires a datasheet and a manual for every item, so every item without one is marked Missing manual on its equipment list. You see the gap months before closeout instead of in a review comment.

Upload the installation instructions, or the sheet you wrote, as the part's Manual. It lands in that item's Equipment chapter in every O&M manual that includes the part, on this job and the next one. Add the maintenance tasks to the part's Maintenance plan by hand, and the manual's Maintenance Schedule section prints them with the tags they cover. Compile, and the whole thing ships as one bookmarked PDF. See O&M manuals and Part documents.

Disclosure: I build Submittal Kit, and the O&M data sheet above works no matter what you assemble the binder with.