Hiring a Shop Drawing Reviewer

[JedClampett]

We (me and my group) have been busting tail on designs for the last year. A lot of our work is going into construction simultaneously. So I'm proposing we hire a person just to check shop drawings. This is for several reasons, like lowering our costs (having a cheaper specialist rather than an more expensive engineer who views shop drawing review as punishment) and helping morale. I figure that the pay would be somewhere around a senior CAD operator ($35 to $40 an hour) I see this submittal crunch as lasting for the near (a couple years) future.
In my past life, we had Eastern European guys (I'm not sure if they were degreed or not), who must of come into the USA after the war, do this work. They were called shop drawing checkers. They were technically very savvy and could review rolls of shop drawings day after day after day. Some even specialized in reinforcing, others structural steel. These guys are gone, dead or retired or both.
So how could I could hire someone to just do shop drawings? I don't see a new graduate as a possibility. Once they get familiar, they're going to want to move out of this job and do designs. I don't really blame them. And to keep them, even if they don't get burned out, they're going to want regular raises to keep up with their buddies which reduces my economic advantage.
Would a detailer be a good fit? Someone who doesn't want the pressure of doing designs, just checking others work? How do I write an ad for this job?

 

[dhengr]

JedClampett:
Isn’t there some learning value in young engineers checking shop drawings, and learning how things go together and get built? Isn’t there some value in people actually involved in the design doing the shop drawing checking, who else knows the design intent better than they do? I do remember many moons ago, that this was not the most fun part of a young engineer’s job, but it was edifying and I had some advantage becuase it pertained to my design and I knew what I wanted/intended. This, as opposed to someone who sees the design drawings for the first time when you also hand him the roll of shop drawing, (my age betrays me, I mean screen full of shops). Does knowing the design somehow equalize the hourly rate difference, in finding the important points to hone in on? Isn’t there a software for such a menial task today, just hook it up to your BIM and everything spills out including your wife’s (not wives) birth date, and your mistresse’s desires for dinner tonight. Wasn’t BIM intended to make everyone understand everything and have an equal access to all knowledge of the structure?

 

[Lomarandil]

Jed -- what volume and complexity are you working with? I agree that a new hire will only be content and economically viable with it for so long, but an intern may be plausible over a summer break or a semester co-op position. Also gives you a good look at a potential future hire. Of course, you'd want to vet your hire pretty carefully, many college students won't initially have the attention to detail, stamina, and/or prerequisite understanding of what is important to look for in a shop drawing.

Is it important to draw from specific company knowledge and be on-site with your team? Perhaps you could team up with some sort of job training & placement program. I'm actually setting something along those lines up in southeast asia at the moment, although your nearby community college may also be interested.

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The name is a long story -- just call me Lo.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

For that low liability of a job I might consider doing something like that while moonlighting in my spare time. A little lower pay than I'd want but if it's simple work it has a nice attractiveness to it vs. getting a larger engineering side job. How much workload and time crunch we talking about?

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

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[WARose]

Would a detailer be a good fit? Someone who doesn't want the pressure of doing designs, just checking others work?

Would be a great choice. I use to work at a large EPC outfit and we had a guy who did nothing but exactly what you are talking about......and he spent a lot of his career working for a fabricator. We'd catch the strength issues.....he'd catch the dimensional problems.

How do I write an ad for this job?

Just like you said it. You know what you need. Spell out his day to day duties in the ad. And one thing to note in the ad (to avoid scaring off the older guys) is what type of CAD software (if any) he needs to be familiar with. A lot of the older guys I've known who do this full time aren't always up on the latest software. You just print it out for them and turn them loose on it.

 

[CBEngi]

Our structural engineering department has a "field guy" who checks most of the shop drawings and completes the site inspections. He has about 10 years of experience, when he started he did mostly drafting and still does drafting when not reviewing shop drawings or field inspections. Generally he reviews the shop drawings and then I review his comments. I can say from his experience onsite and reviewing numerous shop drawings his "skill" at reviewing and noting issues is better then mine.

From a selling point, if the projects are local you could offer him the field inspection portion. If he has drafting skills he could also help out in that department when he isn't busy. This would help to breakup his day-to-day work. Plus once the shop drawings are done he could transition into a full time drafting positions if the work is available.

 

[JedClampett]

Thanks to all; some great advice.
dheng: I'm not saying new engineers shouldn't ever do shop drawings, but I'm not planning on hiring any new grads, and as others have said, once they get good at it, it's time to move on to either doing designs or quitting.
Lomarandil; We get interns for about three months. Even if the timing and intern (I've had some back out at the last minute) are perfect, it's at least a month before they can read drawings and be productive on reviews. During that month, one of my other people are occupied part time training them. Then I might get about two strong months from them. And if all they see is submittal reviews, they're not going to want to ever come back. The good point is they're basically free labor.

 

[canwesteng]

I'd question the ethics of bringing in interns and not paying them. At 35-40 an hour I can't see you having any trouble finding someone with a drafting background to come in and do it; mind you the economy isn't so great up north at the moment.

 

[JedClampett]

We pay our interns and for interns it's pretty good. But compared to our regulars, it's almost free.

 

[canwesteng]

Might be worth looking into intern programs that are full year around you then. I know when I was in school if I had a chance to get to review some real designs plus get a good reference and some money it would have been well worth the tedium.

 

[spieng89]

x2 on canwesteng response. Look into a close proximity college co-op program. These interns are invested in a company for 4-6 months at a time and are expected to work a full year with a same company when it's all done. You ideally want to lap interns and have the more experienced intern train the newer intern. Throw in some design work here and there to keep the brain juices flowing in their young minds and help them develop into better shop drawing reviewers as well.

 

[WARose]

I'd really question giving interns shop drawings. (That is unless you are just giving them busy work that another set of eyes will look at later.) Granted you have to start somewhere......but you need a guy/gal a further along in their career to trust for something like that.

 

[JedClampett]

One of our competitors was a defendant in a large lawsuit concerning a sewage wetwell lining. I read through the legal stuff, and it turned out that an intern wrote the specification. By the time the lawsuit reached full boil, the intern was nowhere to be found. I'm sure he just copied it, but it looked embarrassing to me. They didn't lose the lawsuit, but if I was the client, I'd be a little peeved that they were having an intern write important specifications.
The lesson I took from this is that anything that isn't going to be completely reviewed should not be given to an intern. Maybe they can do other reviews, but I want one of my permanent employee's name on the product. Including shop drawing reviews.

 

[JStephen]

Practice at a previous employer was the draftsmen would swap drawings and check each other's. That still leaves you hiring a person, but not JUST to check drawings.
I do a fair bit of drawing checking myself, and it does get old, so not what I want to do all day every day.

 

[MrHershey]

Seems like I'm in the minority but I'm with WARose on this one.

Shop drawings are the last chance to catch any design issues before it gets built and most busts I see in shop drawings aren't the obvious, easy to find items. They're the minute, easy to miss details. Both items not really something I'd feel that comfortable entrusting to an intern unless they were really, really good. Them doing a first pass scan is fine, but personally would be a little wary if it's not also getting reviewed (and not just glanced at) by someone with more experience. Preferably someone with more experience who was involved in the design and is familiar with the critical aspects of the design.