Working drawing management
presentation features possibly remaining as an invisible
layer in the set.
Statutory approvals
A chicken and egg situation this one—you can’t get
approval until you’ve submitted the drawing: it’s
pointless preparing the drawing until you’ve got
approval. But visits to the fire officer and the building
inspector in the early stages of the scheme will not only
set up lines of communication which will be invaluable
for the future but will establish principles for
incorporation in subsequent detailing. It is a firming-up
process. It is essential to know at the start of stage C
the spacing of escape stairs the fire officer will demand
and by the end of it their widths. It is essential to know
before the end of stage E the required fire rating of all
doors. Nobody should need to raise such questions in
the middle of stage F.
The decisions and agreements must be recorded, of
course, and it is obviously more helpful to give someone
a marked-up drawing to work from than a bulky file to
read. The final design drawings referred to above as
being issued to consultants form an obvious basis for
the recording of this sort of information (5.3).
Key detailing in draft (stage E)
At the completion of stage E there should be a carefully
thought out solution available for every construction
problem that can be envisaged; this will involve the
production of a sheaf of draft details in which the
principles of these solutions are established.
The drafts will not be elaborated into final drawings.
They will remain as source documents and the decisions
they embody will be fed out into various stage F
drawings—or computer files if CAD is being used for
detailing. General arrangement sections, assemblies and
component details, as well as the specification, will
come into this category.
It should be noted in particular how one draft assembly
section generates a whole series of detailed statements
about various aspects of the building. In the past it might
have been thought adequate to issue the section as a final
drawing, a ‘typical section’ from which the operative might
be expected to infer detailed variations to suit differing but
basically similar situations throughout the building. In
today’s very different conditions this is just not adequate.It is, however, reasonable to expect a drawing office
assistant to apply the principles involved to other aspects
of the building, which they will either identify or which will
be identified for them by others with greater experience or
knowledge of the particular building.This approach to detailing, whereby the basic principles
of construction are established by the principal or the
project architect but are translated into detailed practice
by an assistant, lends itself to considerable drawing office
economies. By defining the necessary drawing office
tasks at the outset of the programme (a subject which will
be dealt with in detail later) the appropriate level of
responsibility may be set for all members of the team.Room data sheets
The advantages of room-by-room scheduling as a
medium for conveying information about internal finishes
and fittings have been noted earlier. The gradual
collection during stage E of such information into a
source document of comparable format will clearly assist
in the preparation of such schedules at stage F. Whether
this is done on a copy of the floor plan or on a series of
individual sheets representing each room or room type,
is a decision which will be made in the light of the size
and complexity of the individual project. At the end of the
day there will exist, hopefully, a complete record of each
room’s requirements, with indications where applicable
as to the authority for those requirements, serving alike
as a detailed record of client instructions and a briefing
manual and check list when the final document is being
prepared (5.3).