Quality Control, Issues/Revisions?

[barrie.sharp]

I have started a drawing office from scratch within a wel established consultancy. I introduced BIM and have slowly made headway. However, I'm trying to implement QC and I'm meeting resistance. I'm using Revit's OOTB sheet parameters:
Approved By
Designed By
Checked By
Drawn By

I'm interested in what standards people use and how that interpret Revit's offerings. For instance, Checked By with be filled in on first issue. Do you simply overwrite it for the next issue on each sheet? Would you therefor clear that field immediately after issue to avoid issuing with the old name? Same goes for the Sheet Issue Date.

Revisions have an issued to field. Would you create a revision for each party that you issue to to record every set?

I would love to know how people use these fields and why so I can put systems in place and justify them to my colleagues. I find it difficult to create these processes from scratch in an environment that doesn't support them. I know it shouldn't be like that but I have to press on and do things right by me.

[iru69]

I'm probably not well qualified to address this since I work in a relatively small office, but even in drawing sets from larger offices that I've seen - those fields don't seem to get used much in the modern age of computers. Seems like an interesting topic though.

Next time, you might post a question like this in the "In Practice" forum and avoid having it get so quickly buried by a hundred other threads.

[barrie.sharp]

I'm probably not well qualified to address this since I work in a relatively small office, but even in drawing sets from larger offices that I've seen - those fields don't seem to get used much in the modern age of computers. Seems like an interesting topic though.

Next time, you might post a question like this in the "In Practice" forum and avoid having it get so quickly buried by a hundred other threads.
Fair point. I was interested in why Revit has these parameters and wondered if I should use them. We are a very small office so I may not need any of them but I like to make an informed decision.

[tomnewsom]

You could publish to DWF and then have an "approved" stamp that only exists on the principle architect's workstation. He would mark the set and save it back to the server for issue or printing.

This is hypothetical - all our drawings have those boxes on but I haven't seen them filled in once in the 8 years I've worked here :)

[barrie.sharp]

...This is hypothetical - all our drawings have those boxes on but I haven't seen them filled in once in the 8 years I've worked here :)
LOL. Lets hope you don't have ISO9001 reviews.

So I don't suppose anyone is interested in accountability because it's up to a single person to ensure that the client gets a good document. It would certainly mean less house keeping and I would happily not use them if that's the concensus. I guess these fields are for the days of the drawing board.

What about the issuing fields. Unless you create a revision for each issue (which would mean different parties were on different numbers) then a seperate drawing register would make more sense? Do drawing registers even make sense?

Currently, I use drawing shedule on an A4 sheet to list sheet numbers and their latest revision. Under that is a revision schedule for reference and a time stamp at the bottom. When the set is published, this sheet can be used to confirm the latest sheets. We can send the set to whomever. People can then check from the time stamp to see how recent the set is. Does that do everthing required in 'the modern age of computers'?

[patricks]

I'm also in a small office, where almost every project is bid out to the lowest bidder (a good portion of our work is public projects that must be bid out by law). As such, contractors typically do not have their hands on our drawings before the bid stage. During the bid stage we try our best to keep addendum revisions on 8.5x11 sheets, and the same for revision sketches during construction. We RARELY re-issue a whole sheet unless we re-issue the entire set (if many revisions happen between bidding and construction).

So, we don't bother with showing what sheets have been revised on the cover sheet. We also don't use all the Check By, Approved By, etc. fields. Our titleblock uses the Drawn By field, and has the heading "Drawn/Check by:" in which the person in our office drawing the sheet puts their initials, followed by a forward slash, followed by the boss's initials. That's about it.

[barrie.sharp]

I'm also in a small office, where almost every project is bid out to the lowest bidder (a good portion of our work is public projects that must be bid out by law). As such, contractors typically do not have their hands on our drawings before the bid stage. During the bid stage we try our best to keep addendum revisions on 8.5x11 sheets, and the same for revision sketches during construction. We RARELY re-issue a whole sheet unless we re-issue the entire set (if many revisions happen between bidding and construction).

So, we don't bother with showing what sheets have been revised on the cover sheet. We also don't use all the Check By, Approved By, etc. fields. Our titleblock uses the Drawn By field, and has the heading "Drawn/Check by:" in which the person in our office drawing the sheet puts their initials, followed by a forward slash, followed by the boss's initials. That's about it.
So do you track who you are sending drawings to or do you just send them as and when they need them?

[patricks]

So do you track who you are sending drawings to or do you just send them as and when they need them?

During bidding the revised sketches go out with an addendum to all plan holders, and are also available to registered contractors on our website. During construction we e-mail a PDF or fax the sketch sheet to the contractor's project manager in charge of the project.

[jsnyder.68308]

I have started a drawing office from scratch within a wel established consultancy. I introduced BIM and have slowly made headway. However, I'm trying to implement QC and I'm meeting resistance. I'm using Revit's OOTB sheet parameters:
Approved By
Designed By
Checked By
Drawn By

I'm interested in what standards people use and how that interpret Revit's offerings. For instance, Checked By with be filled in on first issue. Do you simply overwrite it for the next issue on each sheet? Would you therefor clear that field immediately after issue to avoid issuing with the old name? Same goes for the Sheet Issue Date.

Revisions have an issued to field. Would you create a revision for each party that you issue to to record every set?

I would love to know how people use these fields and why so I can put systems in place and justify them to my colleagues. I find it difficult to create these processes from scratch in an environment that doesn't support them. I know it shouldn't be like that but I have to press on and do things right by me.

We use Checked By and Drawn By as these are fields that are used in the management section of the titleblock examples in the National CAD Standard. These are filled out for the Permit Set (the first issue that requires a stamp) and remain unchanged for the Bid Set and any subsequent issues/revisions. If more than one person worked on a sheet (e.g. detail sheet), we put everyone's initials in the field. These two fields are solely used for internal management tracking over time (people come and go), and no one ever cares about them until a project goes in the ditch.

The person ultimately responsible for the information and content of the sheet/set is the person whose stamp appears thereon. It is conceivable that the Checked By field could be populated by the intitals of the person(s) who did the QR. In our case, it is usually the PM whose initials go there.

I am not sure how the the other two fields would be used in an Architectural context. Who designs a sheet? Approved By would be the architect/engineer who stamps the set by default, so that one seems extraneous as well. My guess is that some programmer at the factory put those in there based on titleblock examples from a manufacturing/engineering scenario.

[barrie.sharp]

During bidding the revised sketches go out with an addendum to all plan holders, and are also available to registered contractors on our website. During construction we e-mail a PDF or fax the sketch sheet to the contractor's project manager in charge of the project.
There seems to be a distinction between sketch sheets and plans. We just use plans and revise any changes. Is there something I'm missing out on? We have had situations where the contractor has been using out of date drawings on site even though they were sent the latest. They will deny it of course.

... and no one ever cares about them until a project goes in the ditch.
Love it! That is why I started looking at all this. When things go wrong, people come in and say 'you draw the plans, why is there so much suffering in the world?!' It seems that most of these processes are as redundant as carbon copies.