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Keeping only current drawings on site

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

At 07:05 on a five-storey concrete-frame research building, the formwork foreman sets out the level 3 shaft blockouts from the plan in his truck: revision 4. Revision 5, issued six days earlier, moved the shaft at gridline F/3 250 mm east. Only the site office set was updated.

Several rolled drawing sets, some tied with string, lying together on the shelf of a wooden plan rack.
Photo: Ryan Waldman on Unsplash

Keep a list of every copy of the drawings and who holds it, replace each superseded sheet in all of them on the day the revision arrives, and tell the crews it affects before their next shift. Copies multiply — the office set, foremen's sets, trucks, tablets, photos on phones — and a revision reaches only the copies someone remembers. The newer issue is the one that counts: in Fisheries and Oceans Canada's construction conditions, for example, later dates govern within each category of contract documents.

The revision routine

  1. Keep a distribution list of every set — office master, foremen's sets, tablets, trades that print their own — and who holds each.
  2. Log the revision the day it arrives from its transmittal: sheet, revision, date and what changed, read from the clouds and the revision block, not the cover email.
  3. Replace, never add. Swap the sheet in every listed set that day, stamp the old one SUPERSEDED, collect it and keep one marked copy in the office.
  4. Tell each affected crew in person before its next shift: show the foreman the cloud and have them initial the list.
  5. Clear the digital copies: update the tablets, move old PDFs to a superseded folder, and tell crews not to work from photos of sheets.
  6. Check the revision at the pre-task talk against the register, and spot-check trucks weekly. Changes made in the field go on the as-built set instead.

Common mistakes

  • Putting the new sheet in front and leaving the old one behind it.
  • Emailing the PDF and calling that distribution.
  • A crew working from a weeks-old photo of a sheet.
  • Throwing superseded sheets away, so nobody can show which revision was built.

Checklist

The day a revision arrives

  • Logged from the transmittal, with what changed
  • Every listed set updated
  • Old sheets stamped superseded and collected
  • Affected foremen shown the change and initialled
  • Tablets and shared folders cleared
  • Revision checked at the next pre-task talk

Check your understanding

A foreman keeps the old sheet behind the new one "in case they change it back". What do you tell him, and why?

Show the answer
Take it out of the field set; the office keeps a marked copy for the history. With two issues in one set, sooner or later someone builds from the wrong one, and a return to the old detail would arrive as a new revision anyway.

Sources

  1. Construction general conditions (GC1.2.2, Order of Precedence)Fisheries and Oceans Canada · Canada (one federal department's construction contracts; shown as an example) · accessed
  2. FAR 52.236-21, Specifications and Drawings for ConstructionU.S. General Services Administration (Acquisition.gov) · United States (federal fixed-price construction contracts) · accessed
  3. OHS Regulation Part 20, Construction, Excavation and Demolition (section 20.17, Worksite-specific plans required for specified formwork)WorkSafeBC · British Columbia, Canada · accessed

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