Two different packages get called a submittal, and they go to different people.
The permit application, to the regulatory agencies, asking for authorisation to do the work.
The materials submittal, to the owner’s engineer or the agency’s materials office, demonstrating that what you propose to install meets the specification.
This covers both, because on a public project you will assemble both.
Requirements vary by agency. Use their checklist where one exists; this is the shape.
The permit application
Identify the project
- Applicant and agent details, with authority to act
- Site location, with coordinates and a location map
- Property ownership, including whether any work is on state-owned submerged land
- Adjacent property owners, who are often notified
- Waterbody name and whether it is navigable
- Whether the site is in a mapped floodplain, floodway, or coastal zone
State the problem
- What is eroding or scouring, and the mechanism
- Evidence: photographs over time, survey, measured loss
- What is at risk, and the consequence of no action
- Any inspection reports, scour evaluations, or engineering assessments. See how to read a scour evaluation
Describe the proposed work
- Purpose and need
- Method, sequence, and duration
- Materials, with specifications
- Quantities and dimensions
- Access, staging, and equipment
- Whether dewatering or diversion is proposed
- Construction timing against the work window
Drawings
The part most often deficient. At minimum:
- Location plan
- Site plan showing existing conditions, the ordinary high water mark, the proposed work, its extents, and the property lines
- Cross sections, existing and proposed, at representative locations
- Bed elevations, existing and proposed
- The channel or navigation line, where Section 10 applies
- Details for toe, crest, flanks, and any transition to adjacent treatment
Scaled, dated, and titled. Every drawing should show the ordinary high water mark, because it is the line jurisdiction turns on.
Impacts and how they were reduced
- Area and volume of fill below the ordinary high water mark
- Temporary and permanent impacts, distinguished
- Alternatives considered and why they were rejected
- Minimisation measures, stated explicitly rather than left implicit
- Mitigation, if any
- Erosion and sediment control during construction
Environmental and cultural
- Species list and effect determination, or the status of consultation
- Habitat description
- Cultural resources status
- Water quality protection during construction
Certifications
- No-rise certification where a floodway is involved. See floodplain permitting and no-rise
- Engineering certification where required
- Consistency certification in a coastal state. See state coastal zone approvals
The materials submittal
Sent to the engineer or the agency, and it answers a narrower question: does this material meet the specification?
- Product data and dimensions
- Materials of construction
- Test methods and standards the product is evaluated against, and the laboratories
- Installation method and sequence
- Handling, lifting, and rigging
- Quality documentation
- Manufacturer’s published limitations
- Relevant project experience
What we can supply for it
Stated precisely, because the boundary is the point:
We provide:
- Specifications — dimensions and rated conditions across the range
- Spec sheets — per size, formatted for a package
- Test data and standards — which method backs which claim, and which laboratory ran it
- When not to use rock bags — our published limitations, written to be quoted
- Sizing method and design basis — see design and sizing
- Named project experience, where the client has cleared publication
We do not provide:
- Measured test values. We publish methods, not numbers, deliberately. A plausible figure on a page a reviewer relies on is an invented figure.
- Certifications. We hold none and do not describe ourselves as certified.
- A P.E. stamp. FES is a supplier, not the engineer of record.
If a specification requires a measured value we do not publish, that is a real mismatch and it is better identified at submittal stage than after award. Getting a non-standard product approved covers the routes.
The four things most often missing
1. The ordinary high water mark on the drawings. Jurisdiction turns on it. Without it a reviewer cannot determine the impact area and the package comes back.
2. Existing and proposed bed elevations. “Place armor at the toe” is not a submittal. Elevations are what a reviewer assesses.
3. The alternatives discussion. A package that describes only the proposed work has answered the third question of the avoid-minimise-mitigate sequence and skipped the first two.
4. Evidence the problem exists. Photographs over time and a measured loss rate. Asserted erosion is not demonstrated erosion.
Two practical points
Keep a project record from day one. Photographs, survey, correspondence, agency contacts and dates. It serves the application, the after-the-fact documentation if the work becomes an emergency, and any reimbursement claim.
Ask for the checklist. Most agencies publish one and most will send it. Filling in their form is faster than composing your own and hoping it matches.
Where to go next
- What an agency reviewer wants to see for the reader’s perspective
- Permitting in-water erosion work for the overview
- Getting a non-standard product approved for materials approval routes
- Cost, procurement, and specification for writing the spec
- The permitting hub for the rest
For product documentation for a specific submittal, send the specification and the deadline through the quote form.