Electronic Plan Review

Part 1: Advantages

BRUCE ERKILETIAN, P. E | Wyoming State Fire Marshal's Office

I was asked in an interview one time whether a plan reviewer is a consultant or an enforcement agent. I would say both or perhaps neither. Plan review is actually supposed to be a quality control process that the government provides to protect the public from improper building designs. A plan reviewer is a quality control person.

For example, when a state reviewing agency performs plan review of fire protection sprinkler systems and fire alarm systems, it's providing a quality control function to assure the systems are correctly designed and will operate properly in the event of a fire. In Wyoming, the State Fire Marshal's Office employs a fire protection engineer (this author) to perform that function.

Also, the Wyoming Fire Marshal's Office has set precedence by developing "paperless" electronic plan review. This is much more efficient than conventional plan reviewing methods and is very beneficial to owners, design

firms and contractors that are constructing new buildings or remodeling existing buildings.

Electronic vs. Conventional Plan Review Over the past 30 years or so, building designers (A/E firms and specialty design firms) have transitioned to computerized drawing known as CADD (Computer Aided Design and Drafting). The difference between the conventional drafting board and the CADD system is in the speed of it. It’s astonishing how fast a good CADD operator can produce drawings compared to hand drawing done in the old days. Today a design firm can’t compete with other such firms without CADD capability, because the speed of completing design work is so important.

However, although the days of hand drafting are gone, reviewing agencies are still implementing conventional plan review methods. This requires designers to print paper sets of drawings, calculations, catalog cuts, specifications, etc., package them up and mail them (by snail mail) to the reviewing agency. Conventional plan review can easily take 15 to 30 calendar days due to mailing time and backlog.

In contrast, with electronic plan review, documents are sent instantly as email attachments. There is no printing of documents and no time lost through postal mail service. If corrections are needed, the reviewer can call or email the designer and explain necessary changes. The designer can make the changes and immediately email the corrected documents to the reviewer. This saves valuable time for the designers and contractors. 

The Importance of Time In the private sector “time is money.” For example, suppose a citizen (owner) borrows money to build a grocery store. Every day that goes by costs principle plus interest. Obviously the store makes no money to recoup this cost until the building is built and operating. Too much time and the owner will end up excessively in debt or will go broke before the construction is complete. This puts the designers and contractors under great pressure to finish the work as fast as possible. The old conventional plan review methods slow down the process and often create a no-win situation. Often owners and contractors end up with two options: sit idle and lose money waiting on the review process or break the law by starting construction before plans have been reviewed and accepted by the reviewing agency.

Like the CADD system, the greatest advantage of electronic plan review is in the speed of it. By eliminating paper plans and postal service mailing, the time for a typical plan review goes from as much as 30 days down to one to three days.