Built on Collaboration

Coordinating the review of drawings between parties on a project is challenging and needs to be planned and controlled. Delays can affect the production or construction of related elements, so it's important to get it right.

One of the most common activities in document review is the marking-up or redlining of drawings. In case you use another term, this is the practice where project team members provide feedback by getting out a red marker and drawing clouds, comments, annotating and sketching over a design drawing.

Recently, collaboration tools have provided the functionality to perform this process electronically and, in theory, this should offer a far more streamlined way of doing things. If instead of team members having to print the drawing, manually redline it, scan it on the system and then send it to the next person, they can simply open the file on their PC, perform mark ups on screen and click 'transmit'. Collaboration technology can also provide virtual 'review rooms', where participants can join a session to perform a coordinated review from their computer. Sounds easier, right?

Well, not everyone agrees. A complaint I've heard more than once is that electronic mark-up is neither user friendly nor practical - for example, trying to view an A1 drawing on a 15inch LCD monitor just isn't realistic. And many believe that nothing can beat having the copy in front of them.

The solution isn't necessarily clear-cut. I've seen online mark-up work extremely well for companies by speeding up their review cycles and improving coordination between disciplines; and I've also seen manual mark-up work for firms who prefer to stick with what they know. I'm seeing more and more projects use electronic whiteboards as well, which provides a more accurate imitation of the paper-based world.

So, the solution may not be just one product or application, it could be a case of picking from a menu of tools that best support the project's working practices and culture.

For the time being at least, some people will prefer to just get out their red pen!