Month four
Rex spots the clash and tells Stevie.
Stevie: Good spot. Now ask it properly.
Stevie's journey · Engineering · Lesson 4
Ask the designer
Before you start
In the story
The answer was right. Nobody else ever saw it.
Back to the story
The right way
The query
Rex raises a technical query on the CDE: the photo, the drawing and revision, and the question. Alex answers it there and revises the drawing, and everyone working from it gets the new revision.
Month nine
The plant room pipework fits. Rex's phone chats go back to being about football.
Asked in a chatThe right answer, seen by one person, and pipework 200mm too high.
Asked on the CDEA query, an answer and a revised drawing everyone can see.
Think like Stevie
A question to the designer is information, and so is the answer. Ask where the rest of the job can see it, quote the drawing and its revision, and don't build until the answer is on the record or the drawing.
Continue Stevie's journey
Story 5: Show me your working
Rex's crane pad calculation is checked with a tick. The sums are perfect. The numbers going in aren't.
The right way, explained
You can shout a question across the street to the planning office and get a nod back. But the nod isn't on the town map, and the next builder only has the map.
If you're the designer
Answer queries where they were raised, not in a side channel, and revise the drawing when your answer changes it. A reply on your phone leaves the job when your phone does.
In the town See it in the town: the answer was right. So why did the pipework arrive 200mm too high?
Stevie's view: two routes to the designer. Only the proper one leaves a trail the next builder can follow.
Show:
The proper route. Every stop is recorded.
Back alley. Faster, but it leaves no trail.
The exchange map
Which line, which parcels, and when
Every project needs a map of its proper routes: who sends what, to whom, and when. Drawings come in on the design line, go out to site on the site line, and up to the client for acceptance. If it's on the map, everyone knows where to look. The back alley never is.
This is a Technical Query!
A question to the designer, and the answer, both on the record, and the drawing changed to match.
Sam's Heads Up Phone chats aren't the enemy
InfoTown good practice: Questions and answers that change the work go through the CDE.
On your job: Quick chats on a phone will happen, and they're useful. The rule is that anything that changes what gets built ends up on the CDE, as a query and an answer, the same day.
For the audit What the auditor will ask
- Show me how a change agreed on site got onto the drawing.
- Where are your questions to the designer, and their answers, kept?
For the audit What good evidence looks like
- A query log on the CDE, each with its drawing, revision, answer and dates.
- Revised drawings that point back to the query that changed them.
ISO 19650 Exchanging information
ISO 19650 expects information to be exchanged through the CDE, so there's a record of what was shared, by whom and when. Technical queries are a common way to do that on site; the name and the form are your project's, not the standard's.
Based on the ISO 19650 series: the ideas come from the standard; the plain-English wording, examples and advice are InfoTown's. ISO 19650 is © ISO and BSI. You'll hear the same language across the industry. Read more for free in the Information Management Initiative (IMI) Framework guidance from BSI and nima. For the full requirements, use the standard itself.