Building from a superseded drawing is one of the most avoidable causes of rework in construction. The new revision existed. It was issued. Somebody simply built from the old one, because it was the one in the site cabin, in their inbox or on their phone.
Revision control is the discipline of making the current revision the only one anyone can mistake for current.
How superseded drawings reach the site
The routes are almost always the same:
- Email attachments that live forever in people's inboxes.
- Printed sets that nobody collects when a new revision is issued.
- Shared folders where several revisions sit side by side with similar names.
- Messaging apps where a photo of a drawing becomes the drawing.
None of these are failures of effort. They're failures of system: the old revision is as easy to find as the new one.
What good revision control looks like
Whatever tools you use, good revision control has the same features:
- One register: a single list of documents showing the current revision and status of each.
- One current revision: every document has exactly one revision that is valid for use.
- Changes create revisions: an approved document is never edited in place. A change is a new revision with a reason.
- Approval before issue: a revision goes through its review and approval before it becomes current.
- Superseded is visible: older revisions are kept for the record but clearly marked as superseded.
- A record of who received what: you can show which revision went to which party, and when.
Approve, then issue
Two different decisions are often mixed up. Approving a revision says its content is right. Issuing it says it now replaces the previous one for use. Keeping them separate means a revision can be approved and held back until the right moment, for example until a package is ready to change over.
Handling the change on site
When a revision changes the work, the drawing isn't the only thing that needs to change:
- Open inspections against the old revision may need to be re-checked.
- RFIs and method statements may refer to the previous revision.
- Materials may have been ordered against the old specification.
A good process flags these links rather than relying on someone to remember them.
Note: Ask your site teams how they know a drawing is current. If the answer involves checking an email, you have a revision control problem.
How Traklio helps
In Traklio every document has one current revision and at most one revision in progress. New revisions go through review and approval before they're issued; issuing one supersedes the previous revision automatically; and anyone who opens a superseded revision is warned and pointed to the current one. Every revision, review and download is kept in an audit trail that can't be edited.