Version Control

How is the version control on your projects? Are your contractors, engineers, and management all looking at the latest revision of the project prints, scope documents, and schedules?
Of course! That’s a given, right? Not necessarily.

I was on a project, in a support role, where the project sponsor requested several significant changes directly from the design engineer. They worked on the changes via phone, neither of them communicated the changes to the Project Engineer, and nobody updated the active files. Then the project sponsor threw the Project Engineer under the bus at an update meeting. “Why are you showing us an outdated version?”

More often, issues are just oversights.

I’ve seen contractors in different trades in the same company referencing different revisions of the prints – electricians running conduit to where equipment was supposed to be in the previous rev.

Contractors should have good version control practices in place, but mistakes happen, especially when they’re spread out across multiple jobs.

Vendor drawings may change multiple times from the bid package to final installation. Make sure you’re referencing the latest and, again, sharing the changes with your contractors.

Scope changes and revisions happen on any project. It’s important to communicate these to stakeholders throughout the project so everyone is on the same page. You don’t want your plant manager doing a final walkthrough and one of their wish list items was left off or changed.

If you’re in the middle of a project right now, here’s my challenge — spend an hour or so today and check your document control.

• Do you have contractors installing equipment? Check the Revision number or date on their active drawings. Do they have the latest? All trades? Are the old copies gone?
• Do you have the latest vendor drawings somewhere that everyone can reference them? Older versions are archived where it’s unmistakable?
• Do you have a good document control log?

An hour of checking now can save a ton of rework later, or however that saying goes.

Have a good week.

Common project uh-ohs are:

• Contractors, engineers, and management looking at different versions of the drawings. This is way too common. I’ve seen contractors in different trades in the same company referencing different versions – electricians running conduit to where equipment was supposed to be in the previous rev.

• Status tracking and reporting – OK, this is cool. MS Project has some pretty good tracking tools. You can set a Status Date and generate reports for your weekly update meetings.

Bridge Blog Post – Project Scheduling – Bridge Technical Services, LLC