What is a conformed set of drawings?

Where the conformed set sits in a project

A drawing set changes names as a project moves, and most of the names describe a moment rather than a different set of drawings. The bid set is the set bidders priced. Addenda are the changes issued while they were pricing it. The conformed set is the bid set with those addenda folded in, prepared when the contract is awarded. Issued for construction is a status stamped on the set the contractor builds from, which is often the conformed set under another name. The record set is what the drawings looked like when the building was finished.

The table below is how I explain the sequence to a client who has just been told there will be four versions of the same drawings. Each column answers one question: when does this set exist, who makes it, what is in it, and what is it for.

What goes into a conformed set

Everything the addenda changed, and nothing else. An addendum, in the words of AIA A701-2018 §1.3, is one of the “written or graphic instruments issued by the Architect which modify or interpret the Bidding Documents by additions, deletions, clarifications or corrections,” and the conformed set is those modifications drawn into the documents they modify. In practice that means three kinds of edit. Sheets the addenda replaced outright are swapped for the addendum versions. Sheets the addenda changed in part are redrawn with the change clouded and a revision triangle in the title block, with the addendum number next to it. Sketches issued with an addendum, the SK sheets, are either drawn into the parent sheet or bound into the set behind it, so that the information lives on a numbered sheet and not in an email attachment.

The specifications are conformed the same way, and this is the half that gets forgotten. An addendum that changes a hardware set or a product in Division 08 changes the project manual as surely as it changes a plan, and a conformed set of drawings sitting next to an unconformed project manual is a set that disagrees with itself.

Each conformed sheet carries a note in the title block or the revision block that says what it is and what it incorporates, something like Conformed Set, incorporating Addenda 1 through 4, with the date. A reader picking up one sheet two years later should be able to tell from the sheet alone which addenda are in it.

• Sheets replaced by an addendum: the addendum version is the conformed version.
• Sheets changed in part: the change is clouded and the revision block names the addendum.
• Addendum sketches: drawn into the parent sheet or bound behind it as numbered sheets.
• Specifications: every section an addendum touched is reissued in the conformed project manual.
• The sheet index: updated so the list of sheets and their revision numbers matches the set.

Conformed set vs issued for construction

The two are confused because they are often the same drawings. Issued for construction is a status: the architect is telling the contractor that this set is the one to build from. The conformed set is a content description: this set has the addenda in it. On a straightforward project the architect conforms the set at award, stamps it Issued for Construction, and the two names point at one pile of paper.

They separate when something happens between award and the start of work. A permit comment, a value-engineering round or an owner change after the contract is signed produces an IFC set that is the conformed set plus one more revision package. The conformed set is still the contract baseline; the IFC set is the first revision of it. Keeping both names in use is how you keep the distinction, and it is the distinction a change order argument turns on.

Who prepares it, and when

The architect, almost always, because the architect issued the addenda and holds the drawing files. The AIA owner-architect agreement, B101-2017, lists responding to bidder questions and issuing addenda among the architect’s bidding-phase services, and conforming the set is the natural end of that work. Whether it is inside the fee or billed as an additional service is settled firm by firm and contract by contract. If it is not written down, it is inside the fee in practice, because the contractor will ask for it and someone will produce it.

The timing is at award, before the first construction meeting. A conformed set issued after the contractor has already started building from the bid set and the addenda is a set that arrives after the first mistake it was meant to prevent. On a design-bid-build project the window between award and mobilisation is the right one. On a project with a negotiated contract the set is conformed when the price is agreed and the drawings stop moving for bidding reasons.

How to conform a set without losing track of it

The work is clerical and the failure mode is clerical: a sheet that was replaced by Addendum 2 and quietly reverted when the set was reprinted from the model, a sketch that never made it onto a numbered sheet, a sheet index that still says Rev 0. The defence is a list. Before conforming anything, write down every sheet the addenda touched and what each addendum did to it. Then conform against the list, and tick the list.

Keep the superseded sheets. The bid set is still the basis of the contract sum, and when a contractor claims that a condition was not in the documents he priced, the sheet he priced is the evidence. A conformed set that overwrites the bid set has destroyed the record it was meant to clarify. The superseded sheet goes in a record folder, stamped superseded, with the issuance that replaced it noted.

Then issue the set as a set, with a transmittal that names it, dates it and lists the addenda it incorporates, to everyone who holds the bid set. The transmittal is what turns a folder of PDFs into an issuance a project can refer back to.

The conformed set, the field set and the record set

The conformed set is issued once. The day after, the first ASI supersedes a sheet, and from then on there are two sets worth naming. The current set is the conformed set with every revision to date folded in, sheet by sheet: what the crew should be building from today. The record of how it got there is every superseded sheet, kept, with the issuance that replaced it. Most offices keep the first and lose the second, because the second is a folder nobody is paid to maintain.

LODE keeps both, and names them. The Field Set is the current set, regenerated on every issuance: only the current sheets and sections, with the sheet index. The Revision Record Set is every superseded sheet, stamped, in order, so the whole history is one document. The conformed set is the Field Set on the day of award; the as-designed record drawings at the end of the job are the Field Set on the last day; and the Revision Record Set is the trail between them. Conformed vs record drawings takes the far end of that trail.

The mistakes that cost the most

Every one of these I have watched happen, and two of them I did myself.

• Conforming the drawings and not the specifications, so the project manual still names the product the addendum deleted.
• Reprinting from the model after conforming, and losing an addendum change that had been drawn only on the issued PDF.
• Leaving addendum sketches as loose SK sheets, which are the first things to fall out of a field set.
• A title block that says Conformed Set but does not say which addenda, so a later reader cannot tell whether Addendum 4 is in it.
• Overwriting the bid set, and having nothing to show when the pricing argument comes.