The Issued for Construction (IFC) drawings are sets of detailed design drawings prepared by the Design Consultant and are an integral part of the Contract Documents which also includes specifications, the bill of quantity or schedule of values, the contract agreement, the general conditions, and the special conditions.
Under the FIDIC conditions of contract, clause 6.1 requires that either before or with the Order to Commence or Notice to Proceed (NTP), the Contractor shall receive two sets of working drawings and documents stamped “FOR CONSTRUCTION” free of charge. Such drawings must be sufficient to allow the contractor to commence the works on the site per the approved project schedule; if this is not possible, the Order to Commence or Notice to Proceed (NTP) must be withheld until this can be done.
Contract drawings may be issued in stages provided that site activities would not be interrupted or disrupted. The engineer shall issue the drawings within a reasonable time according to Clause 6.3 of the FIDIC Conditions of the Contract. Failure to do so by the engineer may result in extra cost and/or time granted to the contractor.
During the progress of the works, it may be necessary, from time to time, to issue further drawings or instructions to the contractor as in Clause 7.1 of the FIDIC Conditions of Contract. If so, these are also stamped “FOR CONSTRUCTION”. Those drawings supersede earlier versions of the same issued drawings. The issuing of drawings, or further drawings and documents is to be strictly controlled and recorded by the engineer.
The issue of further drawings or instructions must be coordinated with the contractor’s actual progress on site. A record is to be kept of the earliest probable date of use, i.e., ordering of material or constructing the works included in these documents. Claims associated with the late issuance of such drawings or instructions are a continual source of disputes and a contemporary record may prove to be invaluable in establishing the validity of such allegations.
Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) solutions like PMWeb help in managing the business process for the Issued for Construction (IFC) contract documents and subsequent issuance of revisions. The PMWeb drawing list module helps to maintain a record of every single contract drawing or document along with all revisions made on the drawing or document. The actual drawing or document file can be attached to each entry to enable the PMWeb user to view the document. The attached document can also be set to be displayed on the drawing list template.
The PMWeb drawing set module allows selecting the drawings or other contract documents captured in the drawings list module that need to be sent to the contractor. PMWeb allows linking those drawings and contract documents to the drawing set module.
Although the set of Issued for Construction (IFC) drawings and documents can be done directly from the drawing sets module, nevertheless, it is highly recommended this submission be done using the Transmittal business process. The PMWeb transmittal module links the drawing set and transmits it to the contractor as per the pre-defined procedure.
An output form can be created for the transmittal template to include the information that needs to be communicated to the contractor. Those also include the workflow tasks status, among others. The output can be designed and branded in any desired format.
The transmittal output form has a link to the drawings and contract documents list included in the drawing set module. Again, the output form can be designed in any desired form or format with the option to hyperlink to the transmitted drawings and contract documents.
Similar to all other business processes managed in PMWeb, the project team can attach all supportive documents to each drawing list, drawing set, or transmittal template. It is highly recommended to add details to each attached document to better explain what is being attached and viewed to the reader. In addition, links to other relevant transactions or records of other business processes managed in PMWeb can also be added.
It is also highly recommended that all those supportive documents, regardless of their type or source, get uploaded and stored on the PMWeb document management repository. PMWeb allows creating folders and subfolders to match the physical filing structure used to store hard copies of those documents. Permission rights can be set to those folders to restrict access to only those users who have access to do so. In addition, PMWeb users can subscribe to each folder so they can be notified when new documents are uploaded or downloaded.
To enforce transparency and accountability in managing drawings lists, drawing sets, and transmittals, add a workflow to the template to map the submit, review and approve tasks, role or roles assigned to each task, task duration, task type, and actions available for the task. The workflow can be configured to include the approval authority levels as set in the Delegation of Authority (DoA) document.
When a transaction of any of those business processes is submitted for review and approval, the workflow tab available on the template captures the planned review and approve workflow tasks for each transaction as well as the actual history of those review and approval tasks. The captured workflow data includes the actual action date and time, done by who, action taken, comments made, and whether team input was requested.
