“They are important for those who use the finished product, as they provide a legacy of what was actually built.
As the Construction Management Association of America explains:
#As built drawing copy right professional
While submitting as-built drawings is not necessarily a must on every job, it’s a helpful component to any completed project, and if completed correctly, reflects well on your company’s professional image.
#As built drawing copy right software
One helpful tool to detail changes is mobile technology powered by construction software to enable you to track adjustments immediately, avoiding loss of changes and errors in recording them. Because truly useful as-builts require so many nitty gritty details, it’s simpler to use technology to record changes along the way than it is to try to recover the details of those changes afterward. “For in-house design jobs … these could be put together by anyone on the design team or the shops,” whereas for “out of house design jobs … the drawings are put together by the contractor, typically with the assistance of sub-contractors for submittal to the architect for inclusion in the record drawings.”Īs mentioned, as-builts on a whole are much easier to accomplish with detailed notes from every phase of construction. According to Cornell University Facilities Services, the people in charge of as-built drawings differ depending on whether the design job is in-house or from an external party, like the contractor:
They are familiar with the original specifications and are therefore the most qualified to reflect recorded changes. Typically, the architects or designers who originally designed the project will also create the as-builts. Dedicated as-built surveys make as-built drawings much easier to construct in the end, because of the greater level of detail recorded from every stage of the project. These are used during the construction phase to continually track how the land and building is changing as work progresses. The final as-built drawings include any and all of the following, as well as every other change made during the construction phase of a project:Īs-built drawings go hand-in-hand with as-built surveys, also called as-built maps. They reflect all changes made in the specifications and working drawings during the construction process, and show the exact dimensions, geometry and location of all elements of the work completed under the contract.” According to Business Dictionary, as-builts are a “revised set of drawings submitted by a contractor upon completion of a project or a particular job. What Is an “As-Built?”Īlso known as record drawings and red-line drawings, as-builts drawings are documents that allow a compare and contrast between the designed versus final specifications, and provide a detailed blueprint of the building and the land around it as actually constructed in the end.
We’ll also offer a roundup of the most critical items to include in each as-built drawing. Below, we provide a thorough look at what as-built drawings are, who creates them and why they’re important. Nonetheless, as-built drawings remain an essential process in a project, especially to maintain a project’s lifecycle after construction has ended.ĭespite this, as-builts are often not included, or are only addressed right at the end when an accurate product is far less achievable because of a failure to record changes to the project along the way. But in all seriousness, with the hundreds and thousands of steps and documents needed to complete just one project, as-builts might be overlooked for their importance. If a picture can speak a thousand words, in a project, as-built drawings can speak a thousand construction processes.