Coordination between Engineer and Draughtsman 10

[L4Legit]

Hi All,

I would like to ask how actually you coordinate between yourself and your draughtsman? How do you organize the project between you two? And how strict are you with the deadlines etc?

Thanks.

 

[JAE]

How large is the firm?
[blue] Not a large firm (<30)[/blue]

How difficult is it to switch between your engineer and draftsman hat?
[blue] The design effort gets rather seamless at times. There is a gray fuzzy line between when design ends and drafting begins. Especially with BIM where the design decisions tend to happen much earlier in the process as the building is modeled out as to what it is (rather than sketched in rough idea-fashion and then designed later on). There are also a lot of analysis/design modeling that goes on at the same time as the BIM build model (think RISA Floor - to RISA 3D - to RISA Footing design and then convert over to Revit). Our engineers can draw as fast or faster than any draftsman I've ever worked with.[/blue]

Do you find projects are generally more profitable as compared with using drafties?
[blue]We think so. The issue with engineers doing their own drawing (modeling) is that you are paying a higher rate to draw vs. a lower rate draftsman. However, when you look at the alternative you have something like this:
1. Engineer sketches up the design or the draftsman (if they are good) will set up plans and sections preliminarily.
2. Draftsman gives first take drawings to engineer.
3. Engineer reviews, calculates, designs, etc. the engineered element and hands back the information to the draftsman.
4. The draftsman draws it up and returns a copy to the engineer for "final" review.
5. The engineer redlines up the "final" and returns it to the draftsman.
6. The draftsman finishes up the redlines.
7. The engineer may re-check the "final" and there may be another cycle.

The back-and-forth of this takes a lot of time. Meeting and briefing the draftsman on the project takes time. When you add it all up you most times have more cost than just having the engineer do it all as a matter of a continuous process within one person's head.[/blue]

What are the downsides of your current arrangement?
[blue]The only thing I can think of is that it seems as though it is more difficult to have more than one engineer working on a project at a time. I think this is more due to Revit/BIM though and not the engineer-draftsman issue.

I'll add some upsides to the arrangement:
1. Quality assurance/quality control is much simpler and quality seems to me higher (comparing the years of working both systems)
2. The engineers have a much more intimate knowledge of the engineered product and drawings.
3. I've seen over the years a lot of personnel conflicts between engineers and draftsman (especially with young engineers and older draftsman) that is avoided by using engineers in the drawing process.
4. Your firm is a leaner cost firm...not as many moving parts.
[/blue]



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[Trenno]

Top post, JAE.

I'm currently looking into bringing myself up to speed in Revit (~3.5 years design experience). At first, I'd like to be able to do basic things such as note changes, adding/editing typical details, taking sections and drawing rebar/PT. Know any good beginner tutorials?

Take the rebar/PT drawing as an example, one can spend a few hours doing up a nice markup of the rebar/PT in Bluebeam which is then handed onto a draftsmen. This usually involves a few cycles of back & forth to get the drawing 'right.' Now wouldn't it be logical for younger, with <10 years experience who are good with software, to draw the rebar/PT directly in Revit? This method eliminates a whole lot time spent red penning drawings several times over.

 

[GregLocock]

JAE's post reminds me of when we had typists. Now quite obviously paying an engineer to do a typists job is ridiculous, but that's what we do. So unless the entire western world is insane there must be advantages that outweigh the cost.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[berkshire]

Greg,
That reminds me of when I first started writing G code, I would write the lines on an 8 1/2" x 11" pad , then hand them to a typist who typed the thing out on a teletype machine , They would not trust me to type them out on the machine myself.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[IRstuff]

"Now quite obviously paying an engineer to do a typists job is ridiculous, but that's what we do. "

Thank goodness; I might otherwise be out of a job ;-) The time it took to write out a proposal longhand, get it typed up, proofed, revised, rinse&repeat, was a very tedious process.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[JohnRBaker]

Besides, you can now 'cut & paste' stuff from the last five proposals that you did...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
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It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[JAE]

I might add that there are some draftsman (I'd call them techs) that are very very good and can do essentially what the engineer can do in terms of putting designs together, details, notes, coordination and checking, etc. They are rare and it takes a few years to develop their skill set but they do exist. I've known some - one in particular taught me how to design bridges.

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[IRstuff]

"Besides, you can now 'cut & paste' stuff from the last five proposals that you did..."

Yeah, the managers like to say, "Just dust off XYZ proposal; it shouldn't take more than a few hours..."

But, just like resumes and cover letters, proposals do need considerable tailoring, so it's sometimes easier just to write the proposal directly to the subject matter.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[JohnRBaker]

One thing to keep in mind is that much of today's technology utilized in what's called PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is the capturing of what we referred to as 'tribal knowledge'. Now the motivation for this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is the need for capturing more of the expertise of existing staff members the results of the potential that they will soon be leaving due to issues like retirement? Or is this simply a way of being able to do the job with less people and therefore we'll capture this knowledge as a precursor for choosing to not hire new staff and thereby accomplish the existing tasks with less bodies?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[CWB1]

JAE's post reminds me of when we had typists. Now quite obviously paying an engineer to do a typists job is ridiculous, but that's what we do. So unless the entire western world is insane there must be advantages that outweigh the cost.

Like most decisions in life I would say that choosing the "best" process depends on the details of the task at hand. Sure, most engineers are plenty capable of creating a half decent print for simple parts given the usual 100+ classroom hours of GD&T. Give an engineer a complex part however and tell them the print has to meet a book of corporate drafting standards and the situation changes entirely, time lost due to markups, discussion, and correction is miniscule compared to time for print creation where the draftsman is much more efficient. Something else to consider if you are selling to repeat customers is the very real cost of lesser quality prints and models, its a pretty commonly tracked supplier quality metric today bc of this practice of combining roles. Should your combination engineer/draftsman release a couple bad prints to a customer you might regret not having the extra oversight that an experienced draftsman provides. In the same vein, not having separate engineering roles (analyst vs component design vs systems etc) often leads to the proverbial "jack of all trades, master of none" that's sadly common today due (I believe) to technology.

 

[dogleg43]

I do both the control system design and AutoCAD drawings for those designs. My leaders can't seem to remember that I'm not just creating drawings off of existing designs or sketches.

We could not just hire a draftsman to do what I do. He (she) would just be printing out blank sheets w/title blocks. Admittedly, a good draftsman can take a sketch and run with it but our stuff is all serial #1.

 

[JAE]

Give an engineer a complex part however and tell them the print has to meet a book of corporate drafting standards and the situation changes entirely, time lost due to markups, discussion, and correction is miniscule compared to time for print creation where the draftsman is much more efficient.

CWB1 - I think this brings up a good point. In your world - what you engineer and create may have vastly different drawing/modeling requirements than what my world has in doing structural building designs.

We just don't have that tight of requirements for drafting standards, layer setups, text fonts, etc. Our standards actually just come from we engineers who understand how to properly communicate a design to a contractor bidding and constructing the building. We can do it much faster I think than the option of back-and-forth interplay with a draftsman.



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[KENAT]

CWB1 - disagree that what you say is universally true. I'll do a much better job of drafting print to ASME or what have you stds than most draftsmen & designers I've worked with.

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[berkshire]

Ok Kenat,
Having drawn it , who do you get to check it?
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[BiPolarMoment]

What's a checker?

 

[JAE]

berkshire - we have other engineers who review each other's work prior to going out. This includes both the drafting and the design.

If you have other draftsman checking other's drawings you still need to pay for engineers to check the design in any case.

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[berkshire]

JAE,
What you say is true, The job of the drafting checker is not to second guess the engineering ( Although some of them do.) The Checkers job is to make sure Dimensions and tolerance stack ups work properly, that all words are spelled correctly, that material call outs are correct for the job, that the drawing has the correct revision number, and even that the drawing number is correct. In short they are an editor who's main function is to make sure the drawing leaves the office as a working document that can be read by a third party with no glaring typos or errors that prevent production of the part.
An old saying that is still true today is " The error is always, in the thing you, know, is absolutely correct.".

Since you are mostly involved in structural drawings, you would be more involved with steel and concrete sizes and sections. Most times I have been trying to put equipment into the structure.
I have had my times on a light table with 6 or 7 layers of mylar stacked up trying to snake a duct or chute down past machinery and other equipment avoiding columns and walls in the process. New CAD drafting programs like Revit take a lot of the heartburn out of stuff like that, But like any computer program it depends on the operator, Engineer or drafter.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[JAE]

I must say I have had good draftsman question designs at times and reveal issues.
Hat tip to my old friend Reg who's no longer with us. He used to occasionally, and with some glee, point out design issues.
He also would occasionally leave off an arrow head on a leader - just to see if we would find it.

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[CWB1]

KENAT, not sure where you read a universal truth in my posts, the point of the last two was that there is no universal truth bc SOME companies save more than enough money and time to justify dedicated draftsmen.

 

[sticksandtriangles]

I wish I could do all my own drafting where I am currently.

We do not have engineers do drafting, but I grew up on Revit (haha still relatively new to the Structural engineering world) and it feels like home to me. I can draft very quickly in Revit, but our draftspersons love to be in control on the revit model. You added one additional thing? Why didn't you tell me!!!! I can no longer properly layout my sheet!!!