Best practices book - Flipbook - Page 218
The City of Plano Pioneers an Electronic Plan Review Process Based on PDF
The Plano, Texas Building Inspections Department is a trailblazer in implementing electronic plan
review and permitting. The group began digitizing architectural drawings back in 2001 to solve a
problem faced by many municipalities - they were running out of storage space.
"With all the commercial building projects going on in Plano, our archival room was quickly filling up
with plan review drawings," said Anthony Han, City Plan Review Services Supervisor. "We had to go
paperless. There was no other choice."
The first step in the City's paperless initiative was to digitize the thousands of full scale,
architectural drawings it had in storage. Members of Volunteers in Plano (VIP), a local service corps,
assisted the department by scanning these documents. They initially experimented with different
output file types, but eventually decided to archive in PDF, a universal file format that is easy to
access and distribute to city departments, architects, building owners and also to fulfill open
records requests from private citizens.
"Scanning all of these drawings was a huge undertaking," recalls Han. "We literally had thousands of
drawings to convert. The VIP volunteers were a crucial component in getting these files converted
and archived in PDF."
The existing project documents were only part of the paper problem. For every new project that
broke ground, architects would submit three or four complete drawings sets; each can include
hundreds of pages. Han wanted to further reduce his department's paper usage and storage by
transforming the plan review process, too. "We tried a few different solutions for electronic
markup, but we moved forward with the new process when we discovered Bluebeam Revu," recalls
Han. Recommended by a colleague in 2006, Han instantly saw how Bluebeam Revu, a PDF creation,
markup and editing solution built for the design and construction industry, could bring plan review
and commenting from a paper-based to electronic workflow. The timing of this product discovery
was perfect, as it coincided with increased interests from local architects and building owners to
electronically submit documents.
The City of Plano Building Inspections Department uses Bluebeam's PDF markup tools to
electronically redline plan review drawings.
For two years, Han's team accepted electronic copies of drawings and other project documents
from architects and owners on a voluntary basis. Many of these files were submitted in PDF;
however, when paper copies were submitted, the Plan Reviewers would convert them to PDF
through their full size scanner and use Bluebeam Revu to review the drawings. For commenting, the
reviewers used Bluebeam's industry-standard markup tools, such as clouds and callouts, to redline
the drawings and document code violations. The plan reviewers also found Bluebeam's copy/paste
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