Construction documents for multifamily buildings

What the phase delivers

Construction documents are the phase where a multifamily building stops being a design and becomes a set a plan checker can approve and a contractor can price. TECTO Studio draws that set inside your Revit model, on your template and to your graphic standards, so the sheets that come back read as sheets from your own office.

A typical multifamily CD package from the studio covers:

• General sheets. Cover, sheet index, code analysis with occupancy, construction type, allowable area and height, fire separation and exiting diagrams, and the accessibility plans and unit matrix.
• Site and plans. The site plan coordinated with the civil backgrounds, every floor plan from the garage or podium to the roof, and reflected ceiling plans where your office draws them.
• Elevations and sections. Exterior elevations with materials and openings keyed, building sections through the podium transfer and the stair and elevator cores, and wall sections at each assembly change.
• Enlarged plans. Every unit type, the stairs, the elevator lobbies, the trash and mechanical rooms, and the accessible units at a scale the details can reference.
• Details and schedules. Wall, floor and roof assemblies with their rated listings, openings and waterproofing details, and door, window, finish and room schedules generated from the model.

The sheet numbering follows your office convention. Where a practice has none, the studio uses the discipline designators of the US National CAD Standard: G for general sheets, A for the building sheets your office issues, and S, M, E and P for the consultants.

What your practice keeps

Your architect of record keeps design, direction, review at every issue, responsible control and the stamp. The studio handles the drawing, the coordination with consultant backgrounds and the dated review log that comes with each issue. The split is agreed in writing before work starts, and it is the same split a practice has with a production hire sitting in its own office.

That split matters for more than tidiness. In California, a set may only be stamped by the licensed professional who held responsible control over it. Every state ties the stamp to the licensee's supervision of the work, with its own terms. The guide to responsible control sets out what that requires in practice: your office instructs the work, reviews it at each issue and keeps the record that proves it.

How the work moves

1. Kickoff. Your office shares the model, the template, the office standards and the current consultant backgrounds. Everyone on your set is named, and the studio reviews your template before a sheet is touched.
2. Sheet list first. The package is fixed as a sheet list with a delivery date. Each sheet on the list is either drawn, coordinated or checked, and the list says which.
3. Drawing in your environment. The work sits in your cloud model or file share, under your worksharing rules, so your team can open the model and see where the set stands.
4. Issue with a review log. Every issue arrives with a log of what changed, what was coordinated and which questions need a decision from your office.
5. The 14-point check. Before any issue, each sheet passes the title-block check: numbers, titles, dates, revisions, scales, callouts and consultant references matched across the set.

The pilot

The first engagement with a practice is a pilot: one package on a live set, with the design resolved at DD or later. A one-page scope letter fixes the sheet list, the fee, the start date and the delivery date before any work starts. The package comes back about two weeks after the files arrive, and the fee is paid half on signature and half on delivery.

Where it fits

A CD package is the most common first engagement, because it is where a small practice feels the hours most: most of the sheets in a multifamily set are enlarged plans, details and schedules that follow from decisions already made. The studio also takes on design development ahead of CDs and plan check corrections after them, so the same people who drew the sheets answer the plan checker's comments on them.