Documents & process

As-Built Drawing

A drawing updated to show what was actually constructed, rather than what was designed. It is the handover document operations will rely on for decades — and it is almost always produced badly, at the end, under pressure.

The standard failure is treating as-builts as a closeout deliverable rather than a rolling one. Marked up months after the work was covered, by someone who was not there, from memory and a red pen. The result is a document that says where the services were supposed to go.

And the cost of that lands on the operator, years later, drilling into a wall to find a pipe nobody recorded. As-builts should be a rolling product, updated as the work is concealed, alongside the photographs of the same work.

See also