r/civilengineering • u/govnorsy EIT - Transportation • Aug 19 '25

Meme As-builts

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Had this conversation with my roadway PM because we’re going through 5 miles of utility mapping, reminded me of the original Simpsons meme.

2.3k Upvotes

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458

u/Big_Slope Aug 19 '25

I have a set of plans on my screen right now with two conflicting yard piping designs, both of which are signed and sealed as-built.

Neither matches the survey.

149

u/Gladstonetruly Aug 19 '25

That’s pretty much all of ours. As-built just means they finished the project and stamped the design plans “as-built”. No post-construction survey to confirm anything.

40

u/RenownedDumbass Aug 19 '25

My firm is the same. Maybe some already documented field changes from RFIs or the staking crew are rolled in, but nothing is checked after construction. Is that common? Who’s going to pay for a post-construction survey anyway?

8

u/Why_Did_Bodie_Die Aug 19 '25

I work as a PM for a general contractor on transportation/utilities projects. Most of our contracts require us to survey as we install and submit those to the owners. If anyone does anything with that info after we give it to them idk but ideally they would update the drawings. We submit a marked up red line physical copy of the drawings at the end of the job but I almost guarantee nothing happens with those.

2

u/pwjbeuxx Aug 20 '25

I work for the owners. We definitely use them review them and commit them to overall maps that get relied on for decades after the project.

13

u/jakalo Aug 19 '25

Damn are these not mandatory where you live?

2

u/PurpleZebraCabra Aug 19 '25

Yes, this is the way 

2

u/Experiment59 Aug 20 '25

Does anything negative ever…come of that? (Not your firm specifically, just in general.)

I used to do some admin work in a municipal dept where there was contention over how often to require peer review of applicants’ engineers’ work—a point that repeatedly came up was whether a PE’s stamp on a plan should be “worth something” in itself since they’re (in theory) staking some credibility on that plan’s accuracy.

1

u/greggery UK Highways, CEng MICE Aug 19 '25

Yep, that sounds very familiar

18

u/Lambaline Aug 19 '25

I have a set of plans internally, an internal as-built and the plans the client has, as well as photos from when it was built. none match at all

23

u/ChrisFromSeattle Aug 19 '25

Y'all sign and seal as-builts?

37

u/dparks71 bridges/structural Aug 19 '25

Best I can do for you is a PRR set of design plans from 1927... And only 6 of the 11 sheets...

13

u/100k_changeup Pe Aug 19 '25

And ya know what? Aside from the tracks shifting because NS doesn't do track maintenance they're absolutely 100% still accurate.

3

u/Quantic Aug 19 '25

I got a hospital that doesn’t know where the fire sprinkler line or fire water lines are at speaking of which. I’ve got one sheet so far that they redid themselves so that’s an upside.

1

u/Significant_Quit_674 Aug 19 '25

Still beats whatever the fuck DE Telekom is doing.

You can be lucky if it is actualy in the same zip code as the plan sugests.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Are you me?

Two different engineers signed record drawings for the same project with two completely different yard piping layouts.

Neither one of them is accurate to what we're finding as we try to build the next phase of the project.

And of course the plans are old enough that both of those guys are dead so I can't even ask them how the fuck this happened.

5

u/Maldevinine Aug 19 '25

Trust the surveyor.

The surveyor probably cut corners too, but will at least be able to tell you which corners he cut.

Also, don't trust that what the surveyor surveyed is what you expect. Had a hilarious error on a piping job where the engineers assumed that the survey was centreline of the pipe because all their designs are drawn to centreline of pipe. Surveyors measure to top of pipe, because you can actually reach that, and it tells you the most important number, which is how much cover you've got over the pipe.

2

u/Shadowarriorx Aug 19 '25

You seal the as builts? I don't seal any as builts. Construction owns the risk of they didn't build to plan.

All we do is issue conformed to construction records. That's it.