S.O.S How does your obsoleting practice work?

Hey guys,

I had a bit of a heated discussion with our Document control department here, and before arguing with only my experience, I would like to hear about further practices.

Doc Control here say I have to create a new revision to my drawing when obsoleting it and I say no because I am obsoleting the actual revision the drawing is physically at with no further rev. upgrade, so...

My experience (15 years as a drafter) says if my drawing is Rev 01 I obsolete rev 01 and it stays Rev 01 with Obsolete stamp applied

Doc Control say Rev 01 becomes Rev 02 with obsolete stamp applied.

I can't say who is wrong or who is right, but I would like to know if there is a legal statement to this issue?

Thanks for your feedback

Wherever I have worked, hand-drawn or CAD drawings, we have always given a drawing that is being obsoleted a new issue level, with a stamp across the drawing and a note in the reason for issue saying-

"Obsolete - Replaced by ########", or just "Obsolete - do not use (refer #####)" if it not being directly replaced.

This note is put both on the drawing itself and in any DMS/document control.

Putting it through the system like this ensures that old drawings are not used (and are removed from the factory floor if that applies).

If you don't change the issue level then how is anyone going to get notified that the drawing is now obsolete?

(You could set up a system to notify everyone who may be affected - but you already have one; the revision system).

Here we just throw a stamp on it and send off to never never land and indicate in the records that its void. But given the poor condition of many of our documents, its a hard case to make that that is right way to do it.

That said if you are working in a situation where documents of record are to maintain a change log, the removal from service should be included in the change log. I have spent a lot of time working in environments with controlled documents (outside of drafting) and this was common but not necessary. It usually depended on you companies policy and interpretation (and auditors expectations) of your policies. Usually if something is removed from the scope of operations no one cared about its demise except for retention purposes (which dont care about current revs), but if it was a change the conditions proving need of the change needed to be included in the 'history' of the process/service.

My 2 cents: If it comes down to a legal/regulation thing, do what they ask so you can keep you nose out of law suits (even if its stupid). If its a quality system thing you may have some leeway and i would try to figure out why they think they need that. It may be as simple as changing the classification of a drawing to another form of documentation out side of other forms of documentation. If it just internal policy you have to weigh your ability to maintain your job by aggravating those who want to see it done.

Its probably not a bad way to do things, but we do not have a set guidelines as to when revs are necessary so to apply something like this would need us to build a policy around it which is a bigger issue. So perhaps thats the justification you can use to stop it... if you currently don't have a policy indicating when a revision takes place.

Hey guys, we got our answer, first there is NO legal statement on the issue so we're safe there, second, the stamp itself is the universal visual to the state of the drawing, so as long as the stamp is there and visual (dated and signed) the revision does not need to be updated for an obsoleted drawing,but the stamp must be visual. But, since all other drawing states (issued for quoting, issued for comment, issued for construction, as built and so on are indicated in the revision box, the Obsolete may be updated there also but still with stamp) so in the end we are both right and the decision is to the discretion of the company

hope this helps

thanks everyone for taking the time to reply

We have a similar problem looming that others want all our dwg's accessable by anyone for viewing thats fine but how do we recognise that the works were actually carried out, its a common problem that our GIS has recorded drainage in the groud but no amount of digging will ever find it as it was never built. This was caused by saving every drawing into the system with no checks for as built. We are looking at "as built" only being recorded to save the peace between different factions. just because its says "issued for construction" does not mean it was built nor is it a redundant dwg ofetn an older plan is dragged out tarted up and built.

I've got drawings that are 40 years old that we cant verify in the field because they are underground. We dont know if the asset is there because of no designation on the drawings.

The corollary to this was that at another site the drawing that was assumed to be as built were not, excavation hit a live 480v line that no one knew was buried.

Things can get real messy when proper documentation is not in order.