Maizer Ouijdani, Vice President The Voice Newsletter August 2023

One of the most important steps of pre-planning and field efficiency is the development and use of shop drawings for our trade. Reflecting on my early days as a field engineer, I vividly recall manually scrutinizing construction documents along with shop drawings our team of detailers put together. Back then, the procedure was straightforward: meticulously comb through a range of plans including Structural, Architectural, and MEPs, along with shop drawings from other trades. The objective was to pinpoint disparities, which would then prompt the formulation of Requests for Information (RFI’s) to either rectify erroneous dimensions or seek clarification on the accurate ones. The underlying principle was to diligently trace the trail of multiple callouts on plans until the accurate information materialized.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, it is my belief the detailing trade is on the cusp of transformation. AI systems possess the potential to generate these intricate shop drawings with remarkable speed. The intricacies of the programming that underpins such a feat are beyond my circle of competence, yet I am confident that the ingenuity of brilliant minds will unravel these complexities and we will witness the implementation within our lifetime.

With AI poised to revolutionize how we approach tasks historically executed by human hands, the detailing trade stands at the threshold of a new era. As we embrace this inevitable evolution, collaboration between AI and human expertise might not only help us generate shop drawings faster, but it might also enhance the quality of such shop drawings.