Doing Drawing Reviews the RIGHT Way
The consensus among commercial contractors is that drawings have continued to deteriorate in quality and detail which creates a host of challenges for the people who actually have to build out the project. Since it costs much, much more when problems are discovered late in the construction process, it is imperative for you to determine early on where your execution problems are going to be – and to determine exactly how you’re going to solve these issues before they become too costly.
Watch Digging Deeper this week as Dennis delves into the frustrating issue of incomplete drawings and their potential impacts on project timelines and costs while presenting you with a concrete example of how one innovative contractor deals with this challenge.
We look forward to hearing what steps you’re taking to avoid the pitfalls incomplete drawings present.
Hello, everybody. Dennis Engelbrecht with the next installment of our Digging Deeper series. So, one of the problems that
everybody cites, I remember at the last AGC convention I asked the people in the room, "How many of you think drawings
are improving that we have for construction?" Of course, nobody raised their hand. And I said, "How many of you think
the level of drawings are getting worse?" And everybody raises their hands.
Clearly, that is a trend in the industry and it isn't so much that the lines aren't straight or anything like that. What's
happening is the design process has almost transferred out to the contractor and the subcontractors, and it gets fully
developed through the submittal process and all of that where people are doing their shop drawings and everything else.
So, as we launch a construction project today, there just are lots of holes in what this construction project is going to be
and how it's going to get built.
The challenge for the team that's out there building, the general contractor and their trade partners, is to figure out what's
going to be built and find out the best way to build it. So, with that problem being that we're building on drawings that
are less complete, or have less of the answers, connections, detail, all of that stuff, how do we overcome that and still get
the job done on time?
Well, one of our contractors has a best practice and they branded it, so I won't give you the brand, but basically what it is,
is a thorough and detailed drawing review before they ever launch out on site. So, they literally will spend two to three
weeks with the project team, the superintendent, project manager, possibly still folks from the preconstruction team,
going through these drawings and really identifying all the gaps, all the holes, all the questions that have to be asked, and
what they come out of through this process, I've seen some of those binders, their binder is this thick with all the things
that they've got to get answered to properly and efficiently build this project.
So, what they've found through that process is that with that process, it really brings all the parties together to get the
answers sooner, and to make sure that all the questions get answered. One of the things we've also learned through our
Peer Program is the cost of a problem that gets identified later in the process costs a lot more than a problem that can be
identified up front.
The objective of this thorough drawing review process at the beginning is really to get all the questions out there and get
a methodology for getting these answers and getting those answers out to the construction teams, who are going to build
this project. So, if you're not doing this, or you're doing it in a haphazard manner, I definitely recommend it being part of
your process, and get that implemented in your company, and you'll have smoother projects that finish on time.
Again, Dennis Engelbrecht with The Family Business Institute, and we're Digging Deeper.
