【Haichuan Building Design Review】The review process follows established procedures; incorrect drawings are a common occurrence, and quality control relies on the design review agencies

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The review process is cumbersome, incorrect drawings are common, and quality control relies on the drawing review agencies. We often hear clients complain that the drawings produced by design firms are getting worse, and many people provide valid reasons for this: due to low design fees and limited time allocated for the work, it’s already impressive if designers manage to produce the drawings on time; quality should not be expected under such conditions. But in reality, the root cause of the problems with drawing quality is that the verification and review system at design institutes has become a mere formality. Verification and review are very important steps in design drawings. Everyone has mental patterns; when drawing, mistakes are made as one follows their own way of thinking. By the time self-checking is done, those fixed ways of thinking have already taken hold, making it difficult to identify one’s own errors. Therefore, cross-checking is necessary. Everyone has different perspectives and ways of thinking; this often makes it easier to identify where the problems lie. Just like the staff at train stations, two people are needed to work together: one operates the switch while the other stays on site to monitor. This is a form of error prevention mechanism, as anyone can make simple mistakes. To ensure that a drawing is virtually error-free, at the very least three rounds of review and one final check are necessary ； To produce error-free high-quality drawings, six rounds of proofreading and one review are necessary. But the reality is quite harsh; nowadays, design institutes have laid off a large number of employees. Additionally, the industry’s development trend favors quick and short-term results. For a set of construction drawings, going through an approval process involving five or six people not only takes a lot of time but also increases labor costs, imposing a significant financial burden on design firms. Looking at the designers themselves, they are constantly under the pressure of working overtime and exceeding their workload. When colleagues give you the construction drawings for review, you can usually only set aside about an hour to take a brief look at them. For projects costing tens of millions, such a short amount of time is simply not enough for a thorough review of the drawings. The so-called review is merely a formality – it’s considered complete once someone signs to indicate that they have taken a look at them. The level of detail in this review depends entirely on individual diligence. Currently, design institutes also follow a default practice of leaving all final quality control to the drawing review agencies, as approval and documentation through those agencies are required anyway. However, the focus of the review by the drawing approval agency is solely on whether there are any violations of mandatory regulations; it does not take into account whether the design is appropriate for the local conditions, economically reasonable, or easy to construct. As a result, once the client receives the drawings, they always feel that there are issues everywhere. This situation is no longer an isolated case; it is a common reality across the industry. It is almost impossible to completely change this situation. First, Party A needs to provide a sufficient design period while increasing the design fees accordingly ； Secondly, the management of the design institute needs to distribute more benefits to the front-line design staff. Of course, this is just a beautiful vision.