No one who has delivered drawings to site and overhead
the foreman’s jocular reference to a ‘fresh set of comics
having arrived’ will deny that the quality of architects’
working drawings in general is capable of improvement.
In some measure we have all of us suffered more or less
justifiable accusations of inaccuracy, inadequacy and
incomprehensibility; and yet drawings are prepared and
issued with the best of intentions. Few offices deliberately
skimp the job, despite economic pressures and time
constraints, for the consequences of inadequate or
incorrect information being passed to the builder loom
frighteningly behind every contract. We do our genuine
best, and still things go wrong which might have been
avoided; still information is found to be missing, or vague,
or incorrect (1.1).The UK Building Research Establishment paper
‘Working Drawings in use’ lists a depressing number of
defects which the authors found giving rise to site
queries. Those defects included: uncoordinated drawings—(i.e. information from
different sources found to be in conflict)
errors—items of information incorrect
failures in transmission—(i.e. information produced
and available but not put in the right hands) omissions—items of information accidentally
missing
poor presentation—(i.e. the drawing or set of
drawings was complete but confusing to read).Analysis of this list suggests that the defects spring from
different causes—some from an inadequate
understanding of the user’s needs, some from an
undisciplined approach to the problems of presenting a
complex package of information, and some from faulty
project management procedures. That the problems
seem to arise more frequently in relation to architects’
drawings than to those of other disciplines merely
illustrates how the difficulty is compounded by
the complicated nature of the architect’s work and the
diversity of the information they have to provide. The
structural engineer need only adopt a simple cross-
referencing system to enable him to link any structural
member back to a general arrangement drawing; but for
an architect economically to give precise and simply
understood directions about, say, a door set—involving a
range of variables which include door, frame, architrave,
finishes, materials and ironmongery—a communications
method of some complexity will be required. Where is
such a method to be found (1.2)?1
CHAPTER