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Facility Managers & Drafting Departments

No architect or engineer, in the normal course of producing contract documents or working drawings for construction purposes, produces record drawings. Record (or "reference" or "background") drawings are accurate, bare-bones representations of floor plan information, in a form that has stripped away (or hidden) all of the construction information. Accurate record drawings are very important to the Facility Manager. As-built CAD drawings, verified in the field, are of enormous benefit to the Facility Manager.

Originally, record drawings were manually drawn, and seldom included furniture or equipment. CAD -produced drawings have changed all that, enabling the FM to zoom in on the smallest floor plan area, reflecting detailed information. Everything can be shown on one floor plan for FM purposes, and may be output via desktop printing on A-sized sheets; a virtual desktop graphic database of the facility.

Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) systems entered the picture on PC's in 1987, and the use of CAFM programs using AutoCAD has been growing ever since. All of the PC CAFM programs require that the FM have set of record drawings to which room-by-room polyline outlines have been added. Those polylines are assigned attributes (i.e. room names, room number, square footage, department, room occupants, telco/data jack numbers, furniture, office equipment, client specific cost-center codes, etc.) to which the room function is assigned. CAFM programs can generate a plethora of information and reports regarding the nature and use of the room or space, including location, size, function, capital cost or worth and much more.

Today, many Architects, Drafters and Facility Managers prefer to create record drawings by "building the building" from scratch, using the information contained in the existing as-built drawings, coupled with a current Field Verification. Field Verification is necessary to confirm that what is shown to be constructed is accurate. More often than not, field modifications made during construction are never formally recorded.

Any FM or building owner who receives CAD-produced architectural and engineering drawings in electronic or digital format should be encouraged to take advantage of the Architect's foresight in using CAD to develop the initial contract documents, and begin to institute an initiative to perform Field Verification and development of a current set of Record Drawings, reflecting the current as-built conditions.