Understanding Business Rules for Material Acceptance Actions

AASHTOWare Project is a powerful tool for tracking material acceptance. An acceptance action establishes what samples, tests, or field inspections are required for the acceptance and approval of a material or material category. It may include multiple options, each with one or more rate/frequencies, such as one daily work report per contract, or three slumps test per 50 cubic yards installed, or one certification per source used, and so on.

The Acceptance Action Summary component contains all of the information for an acceptance action. See Maintaining Acceptance Actions.

When you run the Sampling and Testing Status report or add a payment estimate, the system calculates the number of records required and assesses how many records match the criteria. For payment estimates, the system creates an Insufficient Materials exception and adjusts the payment estimate when the number of records is less than the number required. See Maintaining Payment Estimate Exceptions and Maintaining Contract Adjustments for a Payment Estimate.

Evaluating Material Sufficiency

How to specify sufficiency criteria

An acceptance action specifies how your agency accepts a material or material category for use on a contract. Each acceptance action can have a different evaluation method. When evaluating material sufficiency by:

Quantity: The system considers an acceptance action satisfied if the Approved Satisfied Represented Material Quantity is greater than or equal to the Approved Reported Material Quantity for the contract project item material set material.
Record Count or Both: Create one or more rate/frequency rows to specify different ways that the system can accept a material or material category for use.

These rate/frequencies identify the action that material testers must take to evaluate acceptance, as well as how often the action must occur to achieve material sufficiency. For example, you can test soil density and moisture with either a sand cone test or a nuclear density test. Agencies can set each of these test methods as a different option to satisfy material acceptance of soils.

Note: When you set the Evaluation Method to Quantity, the system does not consider acceptance action options and their rate/frequencies in the material sufficiency evaluation.

In order to track material acceptance, you must first set up the system with materials and actions, and create action relationships between them. Then you can add a rate/frequency row to an acceptance action option.

In the system, a rate/frequency is based on an action relationship, and the two work together to define a material requirement. An action is a test, inspection, certification, or other action performed to or for a construction material or item. Your agency can create as many action types as needed for the way you work. An action relationship is an association between an action and a material, material category, item, or item family.

In particular, the action relationship defines what documents are required for achieving material acceptance, while the rate/frequency defines how many of them are required. When you create an action relationship, you can require:

Material tests. Select an Action Documentation Type of Sample Record and choose a Test Method. Sample Type and Acceptance Method to ensure that only the right documents are applied toward your material requirements.
Acceptance records. Select an Action Documentation Type of Daily Work Report and choose a Field Inspection Value.
Completed agency views attached to acceptance records. Select an Action Documentation Type of Daily Work Report and choose an Agency View Name.

See Maintaining Action Relationships for a Material.

No matter which document type you select for the action relationship, three fields on the linked rate/frequency determine the number of records required for material acceptance. Specifically, the system divides the Action Rate by the Action Frequency, and compares it to the Frequency Type and related conditional fields, as these examples demonstrate:

Frequency Type	Action Rate	Action Frequency	Conditional Fields	Resulting Business Rule
Contract	2			2 records per contract
Quantity	3	100		3 records per 100 installed material units
Source	1			1 record for each source
Source	2		Source X	2 records for Source X
Temporal	1	3	Days	1 record for every 3 days
Work Location	3			3 records for each location
Work Location	5		Location Y	5 records for Location Y

For payment estimates, the system calculates the number of records required and assesses how many records match these criteria:

On approved daily work reports, acceptance records that have the same Field Inspection Value as the rate/frequency.
Tests that have:
- The correct method.
- The Counts Toward MAA field selected.
Tests that are on sample records that have:
- An association with the contract project item material set material.
- A Sample Date between the contract DWR Creation Date and the payment estimate End Date.
- A Sample Status in accordance with the Accept Samples By agency option.
- Values in the Sample Type and Acceptance Method fields that match the rate/frequency action relationship.

To evaluate material sufficiency, the system compares the number of records that meet all these conditions to the number of records required. This comparison does not display in the user interface, but it determines the values displayed in the Installed Quantity Records Required and Installed Quantity Records Deficient fields on the Sampling & Testing Status Report.

Configure the system for agency-specific business processes by turning off this records-based sufficiency evaluation:

System-wide. Set the Insufficient Materials exception type to Not Calculated or Displayed. See Maintaining Payment Estimate Exceptions.
For an individual acceptance action. Set the Evaluation Method to Quantity. See Maintaining Acceptance Actions.
For one rate/frequency. Select the Exclude from Pay Est field. See How to track rates and frequencies without affecting payment.
Until a specified amount of material is installed. Add a value to the Minimum Quantity Required field. The system evaluates material sufficiency only when the amount of material installed exceeds the minimum required. See Maintaining Acceptance Actions.

How to track rates and frequencies without affecting payment

The system provides the option to evaluate material sufficiency without affecting payment estimates. For example, when your agency performs independent assurance testing in pace with construction work, you may want to use the Sampling and Testing Status report to check progress, but you may not want to deduct from the contractor’s payment. To do this, select the Exclude From Pay Est checkboxfor the rate and frequency used to evaluate material sufficiency.

When to associate material acceptance actions with items or item families

Agencies can associate material acceptance actions with items and item families to tailor the criteria for material sufficiency on contracts. For example, you could set up acceptance actions for materials and material categories to apply only when the material is used for work on specific items or item families. When you do, all options, rates, and frequencies included in the acceptance action apply only when the material is used for the associated item, or for any item within the associated item family.

If you do not associate a material or material category acceptance action with specific items or item families, the acceptance action applies whenever the material is used.

Note: Select a Material acceptance actions that have an association with an item or item family are different from acceptance actions created on an item or item family. Acceptance actions for items and item families are for reference information only and do not affect material sufficiency evaluations on a contract.