All too often drawings are prepared to satisfy only the building control officer and the requirement for the drawings to be suitable to pass on to contractors and specialist sub-contractors overlooked. It is very important in our view that the drawings convey to the specialist sub-contractors your precise requirements in order that they will include all your specification requirements in their initial competitive quotation. Obviously, it is difficult to rule out any amendments and changes to the specification as the work proceeds, but all too often the drawings do not accurately detail specific customer requirements; issues are then subsequently raised by contractors, or the Client, once work has commenced on site and inevitably the project not only suffers from inefficiency and delays, but more importantly the costs can increase dramatically as contractors charging for “extras” once on site are no longer in a competitive situation.

Therefore, in our view, it is far more economical for the drawings to reflect the accurate requirements of each specific client from the onset and the additional time and cost incurred in addressing the clients exact requirements and detailing these on the drawings is by far more cost effective than paying for inflated “extras” during the construction phase.

Detailed construction drawings prevent items being omitted, reduce the additional cost of items being installed retrospectively and resultant delays, as well as greatly assisting the coordination of different specialist sub-contractors. It is far more economical to ensure the drawings are sufficiently detailed from the onset.