Commercial Construction works are quite typical; they need a specialized blueprint or Construction Drawings plan to proceed. A single construction project involves various teams, each specializing in unique trades.
Each team produces its outcomes employing a clear and concise drawing sheet. The sheet must encompass all the final deliverables and should replicate the actual. These Construction Drawings provide the exact outcome which helps various stakeholders make necessary decisions on time.
In this blog, we will explore the eight major types of commercial construction drawings and their major applications in the construction sector.
Table of Contents
What are Commercial Construction Drawings?
Commercial construction projects follow detailed blueprints to follow the workflow and processes involved in the building phase. Commercial drawings include floor plans, elevations, and sections with detailed dimensioning.
These drawings will also include HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems along with their materials and properties.
Clarity and accuracy are the two main variables that affect the exact results. Additional information like accessibility, security, and safety is also included in commercial designs. Implementing these strategies can minimize errors, cut down on reworks, and make the best use of their investment.
Types of Commercial Construction Drawings
Let us have a look at the eight major types of drawings used in commercial construction projects.
1. Architectural Drawings
Architectural Drawings give the overall view of the building. These drawings display the number of rooms, doors, windows, and other architectural features. They help the final contractor or builder in building the final product.
In past years, architects used to draw them on a sheet of paper with all manual work without compromising the technical factors. With digital tools, these drawings are printed with just one click and simplify the process.
2. Structural Drawings
Structural drawings provide the framework behind the overall design. These designs are prepared by structural engineers based on the architect’s input.
These drawings extensively focus on the structural aspects of the building, like beams, columns, frames, slabs, and more.
With structural drawings, contractors can start the foundation of the building as soon as the designs are approved and in place. These drawings ensure the building is constructed safely and according to the intended design.
3. Interior Drawings
Interior drawings provide a detailed visual representation of the building’s internal structure. These drawings ensure the furniture placement, roofing, lighting fixtures, and other essentials contributing to the functionality and the overall aesthetics.
4. Elevated Drawings
Elevated Drawings represent the outer visuals of the building. Compared to other drawings, elevated drawings visualize the vertical dimensions of the building. These dimensions are presented in four different elevations., Front, back, left and right.
Apart from the dimensions part, they also provide asset information, outer décor fixtures, and aesthetic information.
5. MEP Drawings
In commercial projects, MEP stands out as one of the most important trades. It involves inputs from three different streams, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.
From the mechanical team, plans and frameworks related to HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems are encompassed in the drawing sheets according to the building architecture model.
The electrical department provides the layout of the earthing, wiring, safety device placements, and much more in coordination with the builders and their requirements in a visual format. Also, electrical drawings include various schemas for transformers, power grids, and different circuits.
Plumbing drawings in commercial construction are key in helping builders provide the water supply, drainage, and gaseous substances with a route map. These drawings come with the materials of the sanitary devices needed and the pipeline analysis.
6. Floor Plan
The floor plan depicts a bird’s-eye view of the entire building, showing the layout of each level. Most commercial buildings go beyond a single lever or floor.
These detailed drawings cover various aspects of each floor, like wall dimensions, asset information, materials used, room details, and much more.
7. Site Plan
The site plan acts as a map of the site where the construction is being done. Site plans provide an overall blueprint of the construction site which includes nearby ongoing construction details, environmental analysis of trees, soil, land elevation, and more.
A Site Plan is prepared initially before the construction phase starts. Using the same, architects and structural engineers plan further.
8. Sectional Drawings
Section drawings provide a sliced-up view of the final building. These drawings help get clarity on the building and its various components and are also used to review and validate the plans.
These drawings play a crucial role in preparing the construction documents by guiding builders in understanding the assembly components in the building and ensuring the standard codes.
Apart from this, section drawings empower opportunities for value engineering, identifying options for optimization while maintaining compliance and design integrity.
How do Commercial Construction Drawings Impact your Projects?
1. Material Quantity Extraction from Construction Drawings
For cost estimation and budget allocation, construction drawings impact a lot. You will get a complete estimate of the electrical equipment, pumping, pipes, and plumbing utility budgets with MEP drawings.
Similarly, structural and architectural drawings provide complete data about the structural materials. For overall dimensions, elevated, interior, and floor plans help.
With this help, stakeholders decide the quantity of the raw materials and predict the wastage that may incur during the build phase.
2. Effective Project Review with Construction Drawings
Construction projects need to be reviewed at regular intervals to ensure successful execution. Construction drawings, serve as blueprints for communicating how a building or structure is to be constructed.
A thorough understanding of the architectural and technical details, cross-disciplinary coordination to guarantee seamless alignment, and early detection of possible problems to reduce risks and stick to project schedules are important components in carrying out these evaluations.
Precise construction blueprints not only help adhere to building standards and guidelines but also promote efficient communication, well-informed choices, and ongoing evaluations to accommodate modifications throughout the building process.
3. Labor Cost Estimation Using Construction Drawings
Labor estimation and budget allocation is one of the critical aspects of commercial projects.
It begins with a thorough review of the various drawings such as architectural, structural, MEP, and more, and analyzing the scope of work, and construction methods involved as per the visuals depicted from the drawings.
Using each drawing, stakeholders break down the tasks and allocate the labor as per the complexity, and size of the area to be worked on or any other KPIs as specified in the drawing.
This needs to be documented and accompanied by the construction drawings for further reference.
As the project progresses and design changes occur, continually update and revise the labor estimates to reflect the latest drawings, specifications, and site conditions.
Incorporating Additional Costs and Contingencies into Construction Drawings
Incorporation of additional costs and contingencies helps a lot in maintaining transparency and accountability of your construction projects.
Stakeholders get a clear perspective of the factors that influence project costs by documenting the potential risks and discrepancies.
This begins by observing the drawings and finding out the risks and uncertainties as per the project requirements. These observations will be incorporated into the drawings employing legends, annotations, or by attaching them as a reference copy digitally.
These may include:
Risk Register:
A file that maintains all the identified risks, their effects, and strategies to mitigate them.
Contingency Plan:
A document that lists all the criteria about the contingency allocation, and calculations for the whole project.
Allowance Register:
A document detailing the allowances, expenses, and additional costs, including comprehensive information on their allocation.
Manage your Commercial Construction Drawings with Enginero!
Enginero’s 2D Drawing Management is a platform where your project teams can easily access engineering drawings from any device in a reliable, secure, and effective way. With a centralized repository dedicated to drawings and sheets, Enginero helps you centralize all your drawings from various CAD software in one place.
Enginero’s 2D drawing viewer provides you with an interactive viewing experience with numerous features like zooming, panning, and much more to achieve hassle-free viewing during the drawing validation. Compatible with devices such as desktop, mobile, and laptop without opening the native CAD application to view and doesn’t rely on internet access.
Enginero helps project teams to communicate easily by creating customized markups and annotations to convey updates and feedback.
Also, with markups users can ask the respective team member for any information in the form of RFIs, if any complexity or discrepancies are found in the drawings, they can be raised as an issue then and there and the respective personnel will do the same.
Furthermore, Enginero generates versions automatically upon each drawing update from native software, making it easy for users to compare modifications with earlier markups in the viewer.
Conclusion
In Commercial Construction, drawings are indispensable assets as they provide an outline that guides the teams to each aspect of a construction project, ensuring clarity, accuracy, and efficiency from conception to completion.
Construction drawings impact material quantity extraction and labor cost estimation, which is crucial for budgeting and project planning in commercial construction.
Stakeholders use construction drawings to assign labor based on complexity and size. Updating labor estimates as design changes occur is crucial. Including additional costs and contingencies in drawings fosters transparency.
Enginero’s 2D Drawing Management platform revolutionizes construction project workflows by offering a seamless solution for accessing, annotating, and managing drawings. By empowering project teams to streamline communication, minimize errors, and maximize productivity, Enginero becomes an essential tool for achieving success in commercial construction projects.
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