How to keep a technical query log and the drawing issue sheet

A technical query is managed well when every one is logged on the day it arrives with the drawing it refers to and the date an answer is needed, one engineer owns it, and the answer is tied to the drawing issue that carries it. The issue sheet is the other half of the same record: which drawings went out, at which revision and status, to whom and when. Kept together, the two show what the contractor asked, what you told them and what they were entitled to build from. The logging and reminding can be handed over, and the answer stays with an engineer.

When a job goes to site

Questions now come from the contractor in writing, each a formal request, called a technical query or a request for information (RFI): a clash between a beam and a duct, a dimension missing from a detail, a product the supplier can no longer deliver. They arrive in the project's document system, in the shared inbox, and sometimes straight to the engineer's own email because the site manager has it.

The steps, and who does each today

1. Receive and log. Each query gets a number on a register, with who raised it, the date, what is asked, the drawings it refers to and the date a response is required. A document controller does this where the firm has one. Where it does not, the engineer does, after answering, if at all.

2. Find the current drawing. The query may quote a revision that has since been superseded. Someone checks the issue sheet for what the contractor actually holds.

3. Give it an owner. The project engineer, or whoever designed that element.

4. Answer. The engineer writes the response, which is design work.

5. Revise the drawing if the answer changes it. The drawing is updated, checked and reissued at a new revision. On projects run to ISO 19650, each drawing carries a revision code and a status code. Under the UK National Annex a revision beginning with P is preliminary and one beginning with C is contractual, and the status code tells the recipient what the drawing may be used for: S3, for one, is suitable for review and comment only.

6. Issue, and record the issue. The issue sheet lists each drawing sent with its revision, its status, the date and the recipients. It goes out with the drawings and stays on the job file.

7. Close the query. The date of the response goes on the register, with the issue that carried any revised drawing.

Why the dates matter more than the answer's speed

Designing Buildings, a construction industry wiki, advises recording the date a query was sent, the date a response was required and the date it was received. If a contractor later claims that late information delayed the works, those three dates are your account of what happened. A query answered from an engineer's own inbox and never logged leaves you nothing to show. The same goes for the issue sheet: if a drawing marked for comment was built from, the status on the sheet is the record that it was not issued for construction.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

The register and the reminders are the job to hand over. An AI worker becomes AI staff when it is given that job in writing, a named person who checks its work and a review each month. It can read each query as it reaches the shared inbox, give it the next number, record the dates and attach the drawings it cites. It can compare the revision quoted in the query with the latest one on the issue sheet and say so when they differ. It can pass the query to the engineer who owns that job, remind them before the response date, and give the project lead a list each week of what is open, what is due and what is late. When a drawing is reissued it can prepare the issue sheet from the drawing list for a person to check, file the sent copy and mark the query closed.

The other roles a consultancy can hand over are on our page for engineering consultancies.

What waits for an engineer, and why

An engineer writes the answer, because a response to a technical query is a design decision and goes out under their name. Whether a query is really a change to the design, with a cost that someone must agree, is the project engineer's call and often a director's. The revision and status of a drawing are set by the people who checked and authorised it, never by the agent. Under CDM 2015 in Great Britain a designer's duty to pass design information to the principal designer, the client and the principal contractor stays with the designer. Where queries sit in a document system that belongs to the client or the contractor, reading them there needs their agreement as well as yours.

What to have ready before you start

• One register per job, with the same columns on every job.

• One address that queries are sent to, and a line in your appointment or your pre-start meeting that says so.

• The drawing list for each job with current revisions and statuses.

• The name of the engineer who owns each job, and their cover.

• Your rule for when an open query is raised with the project lead.

• Your issue sheet template.

The single address and the single register are worth doing this week, with or without anyone new to keep them. How this record keeping eats into the hours engineers can charge is in how to scale an engineering consultancy without hiring.

Across your projects, the worker would log every query with its dates, remind every owner and file every issue sheet, while your engineers write the answers. A query answered from one engineer's inbox is hard for anyone else on the job to find. Talk to our agent.