Working Drawings Handbook
What does it cost?
As to the cost of introducing (and indeed of operating)
new drawing methods one is on less certain ground.
Certainly all the available feedback suggests that it is
unusual for a practice to revert to unstructured working
drawings once it has started producing structured sets,
which seems to indicate that at least the structured set
is not so overwhelmingly expensive to produce as to
render it uneconomic in practice. Short of carrying out
parallel drawing exercises using two methods and
comparing the cost there is no real way of being sure.
What is clear, however, is that the more comprehensive
nature of the information likely to be produced within a
structured format, its greater potential for coordination,
and the greater ease of information retrieval which
it offers to the contractor, will all combine to reduce
time-consuming queries once the work is on site. An
honest analysis of office time spent on so-called ‘site
operations’is perhaps a salutary exercise for any
practice. Bearing in mind that the plan of work defines
stage K as consisting of ‘Administration of the building
contract up to and including practical completion.
Provision to the contractor of further information as and
when reasonably required’, consider how much time in
practice is spent in the drawing office in amending
existing drawings and in providing new ones to illustrate
details which could (and in retrospect clearly should)
have been provided during the working drawings stage.
Consider also the predictable reaction of the poor
unfortunate who is dragged back a year later from the
multi-million pounds fantasy on which he is happily
engaged in order to sort out the door detail he had
unfortunately omitted from the working drawing set
which had been his previous task. It must always be
cheaper to produce information at the right time.On the other hand, any change in working method must
have some cost implication, as the change to metric
dimensioning demonstrated. As with metrication, this cost
should be looked upon as an investment for the future.And the future?
A whole new world of technology lies ahead of us. But it
is difficult to visualise a bricklayer laying bricks other
than by using a paper drawing to instruct him where to
lay them. The role of the architect and of the
architectural drawing office appear to be secure for the
foreseeable future.The more important consideration is: how will CAD itself
develop?The twenty-first century looks like being an exciting one.