Another paper cut
Following last week's post 'Paper cuts', one of my colleagues who used to be a doc controller sent us his thoughts:
"Design documentation is increasingly being managed on an A3 scale with only the co-ordination drawing being larger than that. This allows for drawings to be viewed more easily on screen for markup purposes - with less contained in each drawing, it is easier to review (a comment from Tiago Neves suggests that interactive surfaces, such as the whiteboards commonly used in schools, can further support this process).
"However, this can lead to an increase in the number of drawings, as CAD systems allow the full document to be broken into reviewable elements.
"Drawings are then 'issued for review' in PDF, so that no changes can be made to the underlying document - apart from mark up on a new layer, and the addition of the reviewer's information for approval purposes.
"You will never, not for long time anyway, do away with hard copy documentation 'on site' as there will always be a requirement for user groups to have the plan in front of them for reference during construction/fabrication of the pre-fab units. The only time that I see this changing is when everyone on site is issued with a hand held viewing device (see comment from Paul Harding of Brookfield Construction) linked to central servers beaming the information to them as required. So, until then, document control can phase into electronic document management with the reference copy being issued to site 'for use'".
Labels: Good practice
