What a door schedule is
A door schedule is a document, usually a table on the drawings or a separate spreadsheet, with one row per opening. Each row carries a mark or opening number that ties back to the floor plans, and columns describing the door, the frame, the rating, the hardware and the finishes for that opening.
It exists because a building can have dozens or hundreds of openings, and you need one organized place to say exactly what each one is rather than reading it off the plans opening by opening. The schedule is that place.
What a door schedule contains
Schedules vary by office, but most carry the same core information for each opening. The columns below are the ones you will see on nearly every commercial job.
- Opening or mark number, keyed to the floor plans
- Location or room the opening serves
- Door size (width, height) and thickness
- Door type and material (hollow metal, wood, aluminum, etc.)
- Frame type and material
- Fire or smoke rating, where required
- Hardware set or group number for the opening
- Finishes for door, frame and hardware
- Glazing or lites (vision panels and their glass)
- Keying notes and remarks
Who produces and uses it
The architect, often with help from a hardware consultant, specifies the schedule: what each opening has to be and do. It becomes part of the contract documents the job is bid and built from.
From there the distributor and estimator take over. They read the schedule to price the work, then order doors, frames and hardware against it, and the installers hang and finish each opening to match. So the same schedule is read by very different people at very different stages, which is exactly why it has to be unambiguous.
How to read a door schedule
Start with the opening number and find that same mark on the floor plan, so you know where the opening physically sits. Then read across the row: size and thickness tell you the door, the type and material columns tell you what it is made of, the frame columns tell you what it hangs in, and the rating column flags any fire or smoke requirement.
The hardware column usually points to a set or group number rather than listing every item, because the detail lives in the hardware schedule or hardware sets. Finish and keying columns close out the row. Read a few rows this way and the pattern becomes quick.
Why accuracy matters
An estimator builds the takeoff straight off the schedule, counting openings and pricing the doors, frames and hardware each one calls for. If a line is wrong, the error does not stay on paper: it flows into the quantities ordered, the hardware pulled, and what shows up on site.
A mismatched rating, a wrong hand, a missed lite or the wrong hardware set can mean a return, a delay, or a field fix, all of which cost money and time. That is why careful estimators check the schedule against the plans and elevations rather than trusting any one document alone.
From schedule to order
Because so much depends on the schedule being read the same way every time, it helps to work from it in a system rather than retyping it into a spreadsheet. eMullion takes the door schedule as the backbone of a project, so the openings you price are the openings you order and submit, without the line drifting along the way.
