6 Type of Civil Engineering Drawings for Construction- Very useful to know

Table of Contents

Concept Design Drawings

Preliminary Design Drawings

Detailed Design Drawings

Approval for Construction Drawings

Standard Detail Drawings

As-Built Drawings

Takeaways

If you are a Civil Engineer then preparing or reviewing civil engineering drawings must be a part of your daily job, but do you know how many types of Civil Engineering Drawings are prepared for any infrastructure design and construction project?

If you are keen to know this, please read this blog in detail.

Concept Design Drawings

A Civil Engineering project generally starts with a concept design, where the client or government agencies would like to conceptualise the possibility or feasibility of new infrastructure, be it a new motorway or airport or Metrolink, etc. So, they commence the Concept Design Process and prepare Concept Design drawings to understand the pros and cons of the project in detail.

Although these drawings are prepared with loads of assumptions and exclusions, they tend to assist the government to decide the way forward of that project.

Preliminary Design Drawings

If the concept design drawings receive a positive nod from the government, the next step is formalising the design and filtering down the assumption. At this stage, designers work on the granularity of the project and develop each discipline’s model and drawings of the project.

For example, in a highway infrastructure project, individual disciplines like highways, drainage, Lighting, Road Restraint System, etc develop their own drawings. They work collectively to produce the design mode. These drawings are called Preliminary Design Drawings.

These drawings are reviewed by all stakeholders and health & safety teams. Risk assessments are carried out and mitigation measures are recorded for the next stage of the design. The gcelab.com provides online courses to explain how to use Auto CAD to develop civil engineering drawings.

Here you can find three Auto CAD courses and a total of 13 modules to cover all key commands to develop CAD drawings.

Here is the link to those courses:

1. Auto CAD basics – Level-1
2. Auto CAD – Level-2
3. Highway Drawings with CAD

Please see some of our AutoCAD courses at our Youtube channel.

Detailed Design Drawings

The Detailed Design stage, the project moves to great detail and all the safety issues are mitigated through design. Detailed design drawings are prepared along with the tender package for the contractor to Bid for the project via a Tender Process. These drawings play a very important role during the tender stage.

Any missing information or error in the design would lead to delay or cost overrun at the construction stage.  So, the designers need to make sure that the design drawings are developed in thorough detail with zero error.

Approval for Construction Drawings

Once the Detailed design drawings are approved by the client, the “approval for construction drawings” is issued to the contractor to commence the construction process. The construction drawings along with the setting out information are used by the contractor to prepare the construction programme and sequencing.

At the first stage of construction, the contractor generally commences the diversion of underground services like telephone lines, broadband, electric lines, drainage pipes, etc. at this stage, Statutory service owners play a very important role. They provide their utility diversion plans and liaise with contractors to smoothly accomplish the diversion process.

After this, all the remaining assets are constructed as per the construction programme.

Standard Detail Drawings

There are many products that are used as standard products many times. For example, drainage manholes, Gullies, Street Lighting Columns, Traffic Signals are standard products. So, it is recommended to develop standard drawings for those products. Sometimes clients provide their own standard details to use for some assets.

These assets come with the client’s bespoke design or logo. For example, the county council sometimes prefer to have pedestrian guardrails or Bollards or Bins with their specific design, colour and council’s logo marked in them. Similarly, the various product manufacturers provide their own bespoke products, so they have their own standard details.

For example, Aco provides various drainage products like kerb drains, slot drains, etc so they have their library of standard details.

As-Built Drawings

As-built drawings are produced by the contractor once all the construction activities are complete and all underground and overground assets are constructed and the road is ready to open to the public for use.  These as-built drawings help the client to use it in future if any new project is planned to initiate in the same project area.

For example, if a new car park is planned close to a newly built junction, then it's very important for the client to know what underground services are laid in the project area and how they will impact the new design proposal.

Takeaways

Civil Engineering drawings play a very important role to transform the design into reality. The quality of drawings and the inside information needs to be well presented and with zero errors. The quality of drawings represents the sincerity and hard work of engineers, designers and CAD technicians.

It gives immense satisfaction to the designers once they see the newly constructed infrastructure on the ground that they used to see on paper for years during the design development process.

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  Read More:

• What is Swept Path Analysis? 6 Important Points

• What are As-Built Drawings in Construction? 6 Important Points

• 30 Most demanding and useful design software for Civil Engineers

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Founder at gcelab.com, Pooja is an Entrepreneur unlocking human potential. Working in the Principles of Lean Start-up, Pooja believes in Transparency and User Happiness the most. Pooja’s background in teaching gives her a sophisticated grasp on even the most tedious aspect of course building. She is passionate about people who believe that good is not enough.