Maintenance Submission

Maintenance Submission is the formal procedure by which a defect, degradation, or structural irregularity in the fabric of the Tower is reported to the Librarians for scheduling, deferral, or permanent reclassification as an intended feature. It is distinct from Archival Submission, which introduces new holdings, and from Submission of Inquiry, which challenges doctrine; a Maintenance Submission asserts only that something is broken, and leaves the question of whether it ought to have been broken to the Provisional Adjudication of the receiving desk.

The practice is governed principally by Fourth Concordance, Annex 6, though three later recensions of that annex survive and disagree on the numbering of the form. Its most visible instrument is Form Φ-7, which the Quiet-Masons are required to file before any work is undertaken in service of Architectural Silence.

Procedure and the routing problem

A Maintenance Submission is initiated on Form M-3, a single leaf in octavo, which must be lodged at the Desk of Lateral Correspondence unless the defect lies above Floor 4,100, in which case it is lodged at the Desk of Vertical Reconciliation and countersigned by a Warden of the Stair. The distinction was introduced in the recension of 3,114 following the Grievance of the Eastern Lift Shaft, in which a submission concerning a bowed handrail travelled laterally for eleven months and arrived at a floor that possessed no handrail, no shaft, and no record of the complaint.

Applicants frequently conflate the Maintenance Submission with the Sequencing Submission, since both concern the order in which work is done. The difference is set out with unusual clarity in Circular 12 of the Office of Works:

"A Sequencing Submission states when a thing shall be done. A Maintenance Submission states that a thing is doing something it should not. The two are not interchangeable, and the desk will not accept a form that does both, however economically the applicant may feel the matter has been expressed."

— Circular 12 of the Office of Works, para. 9

Where a Submission in Triplicate occurs, the maintenance file is held open until the tripartite copies agree. In the winter of 3,388, Clerk Ondrey Vasp of the Second Scriptorium recorded that of nine hundred and six maintenance files opened that season, four hundred and eleven remained open solely because the second copy had been filed in a different grade of ink. Vasp's marginalia on the ledger — "the crack widens; the ink does not" — were struck from the record by Concordance 209 but survive in the Scriptorium's working copies.

The Standing Defect Register

Every Maintenance Submission that is neither actioned nor refused within three years passes automatically to the Standing Defect Register, a catalogue of imperfections the Tower has agreed to live with. The Register currently holds just over fourteen thousand entries, of which some six hundred are staircases. Entries are numbered, not described, and may be cited in correspondence by number alone; it is considered poor form to describe a Register defect in words, as though it were new.

• Entry 44 — "the long gallery, east end"
• Entry 1,102 — "the third reading room; not the second"
• Entry 6,790 — "see 44"
• Entry 9,331 — "unresolved at time of filing"
• Entry 11,004 — "steps 3 and 4, which are not consecutive"

The Register's custodians have twice declined to renumber it in sequence, noting that the numbers are cited in older instruments and that renumbering would invalidate the surveys of Surveyor Halbrandt Nesh, whose floor measurements remain the standard despite having been taken with a chain later found to be short by nine inches.

Scholarly dispute

The central disagreement concerns when a defect becomes a defect. Third Concordance, Annex 2, holds that a condition exists as a defect only upon acceptance of an M-3, and that before acceptance the Tower is simply as it is. Fourth Concordance, Annex 6, holds the contrary — that a defect exists from the moment of its occurrence and that failure to submit is itself an offence under Clause 3. The two have never been reconciled, and the desks operate in practice on the Third.

Librarian-Provisional Aris argued in a submission of 3,402 that the question is undecidable, since a defect unobserved and a defect unsubmitted are indistinguishable in the record, and the record is the only witness the Tower permits. Aris's argument was accepted for filing and declined for adjudication, a disposition the desk was later unable to explain.

Refusal and reclassification

A Maintenance Submission may be refused for want of a Provisional Sigil, in which case the applicant must first obtain a Submission for Concordance or establish Jurisdictionally Contested status, which requires the countersignature of two Librarians whose names are not published. More commonly, the submission is accepted and the defect reclassified.

Reclassification under Form 33 converts a fault into an authorised departure, and under Proposed Provisional Classification into a departure pending review. The distinction matters chiefly to the Quiet-Masons, who may not touch an authorised departure without a fresh Φ-7 but may inspect a provisional one, provided they inspect it without tools and do not descend below the floor on which they began. Where a reclassification is disputed, the matter goes to Findings and Reconciliation and is typically resolved by amending the Concordance rather than the building.

The Office of Works maintains that reclassification is cheaper than repair by a factor of forty. It has never published the figure.