What the Issue Stamp on a Drawing Set Means

Why this matters

A drawing set is reissued several times between the first sketch and the last day of construction, and every issue has a purpose printed on it: for bidding, for the permit, for construction, for the record. Those sets can look identical at a glance, same sheets and same numbers, and the differences between them are exactly the changes that send a crew back to cut out finished work. The issue stamp is the line in the title block, or the watermark across the sheet, that says which one you are holding. Reading it is one glance. Not reading it is how a shop roughs in a slab from drawings the building department has already asked to change.

The issue history on one sheet

Many firms keep a running issue list in the title block or on the cover, so the history of a single sheet reads top to bottom. A typical one for a plumbing plan on a small commercial job:

ISSUE HISTORY - SHEET P-101
------------------------------------------------
MARK  ISSUE                             DATE
 -    100% CD - NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION    12/18
 A    ISSUED FOR BID                    01/15
 B    ADDENDUM 1                        01/29
 C    ISSUED FOR PERMIT                 02/12
 D    CONFORMED SET (ADDENDUM 1 INCL.)  03/01
 E    ISSUED FOR CONSTRUCTION           03/14
      (PLAN REVIEW COMMENTS INCL.)
 F    RECORD SET                        (CLOSEOUT)
------------------------------------------------

Letters for issues before construction and numbers for revisions after it is a common scheme, not a universal one. What matters is that the latest mark on the sheet in your hand is the latest mark on the GC's log.

What each issue is, and what it is for

Progress sets (50%, 90%, 100% CD). Snapshots of the design while it is still being drawn, usually stamped "NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION" or "PRELIMINARY" across the sheet. They exist so the owner and the consultants can review. Nothing on them is final, and that stamp means exactly what it says: you do not build from it and you do not price a firm bid from it. A budget number from a progress set should say so on its face.

Bid set (issued for bid). The set bidders price from. It is complete enough to price, but it is not the contract yet. During bidding the design team answers questions and fixes errors through addenda: numbered documents that change the drawings or the specs, issued to every bidder before bids are due. A bid set plus its addenda is what you priced. The bid set alone is out of date the moment Addendum 1 goes out.

Permit set (issued for permit). The set submitted to the building department for plan review. It is often prepared in parallel with bidding, sometimes from an earlier state of the drawings than the bid set, and the plan reviewer may return comments requiring changes. Until those are answered, the permit set describes what was submitted, not what was approved and not necessarily what will be built.

Conformed set. After award, the design team folds the addenda, and sometimes changes negotiated at bid time, into the drawings themselves, so the contract set reads as one document instead of a bid set with a stack of amendments clipped to it. Each folded-in addendum usually shows as a revision row and a cloud. On many projects the conformed set is the construction set.

Issued for construction (IFC). The set the contract says you build from. On some projects it is the conformed set under another name; on others it is a separate issue that also answers the plan reviewer's comments. After it, changes arrive as numbered revisions, bulletins or ASIs (architect's supplemental instructions) rather than new issue letters. See related: The Paper That Changes a Job: RFI to Change Order.

Record set. Issued at closeout, it shows what was built, drawn by the design team from the contractors' marked-up field sets. It is only as good as those markups. See As-Builts and What Happens When Nobody Updates Them.

Why a bid or permit set is not a build set

The changes between the bid set and the construction set are not random. They are, almost by definition, the places where somebody found a problem: a bidder's question that exposed a conflict, a plan reviewer's comment that the floor drain needs a trap primer or the backflow preventer is missing, an owner's change made once real prices came in. A crew building from the bid or permit set is building the exact version of the job that has already been found wrong in specific places.

There is also the approved permit set, the copy the building department stamps when it issues the permit. Under the IRC and IBC as adopted by your jurisdiction (R106.3.1 and 107.3.1 in the 2021 editions), one approved set goes back to the applicant and must be kept at the work site, open to the inspector. The inspector checks your work against it. That makes two documents on site with different jobs: the approved set is what the inspector holds you to, and the construction set is what you build from. When a later revision changes permitted work, the approved documents may need a revision filed with the building department too. That is the GC's or the designer's job to file, but it is your problem if the inspector finds work that matches neither.

Stamps that look like an issue and are not

A few other words show up in the same place on a sheet and get mistaken for a construction issue:

• "Pricing set" or "budget set." An informal issue so trades can price a change or a value-engineering option. Same status as a progress set: price from it, never build from it, and say on your number which set it came from.
• "For coordination only" or "reference only." Usually on drawing files the architect hands out as backgrounds, or on another trade's drawings sent so you can see what is near your work. They are accurate enough to plan around and not authority for anything you install.
• "Issued for review" or "issued for owner review." A set going to the owner or a consultant for comment. Treat it as a progress set.
• A shop drawing or submittal review stamp. That stamp belongs to a different document, a contractor's drawing returned by the engineer, and it has its own meaning. See What a Submittal Review Stamp Means and What It Does Not.

The one question to ask before the crew opens a set

Before anybody lays out, cuts or orders from a set, ask the GC this, in writing:

Is this the current set for construction, by date, and has anything been issued since it: revisions, bulletins, ASIs, or a permit-comment response?

Two parts, both necessary. "Is this current" alone gets a yes from somebody who is thinking of the set they sent last month. "What has been issued since" is the half that surfaces the bulletin sitting in somebody's inbox. Write down the answer with the date and the name of the person who gave it.

A worked case: the floor sinks under the ice machine

A plumbing shop priced a coffee-shop fit-out from the bid set and Addendum 1. Addendum 1 added a third floor sink, FS-3, under the ice machine. The shop won the job.

On 03/08 the GC's project coordinator emailed "the drawings" so the crew could start underground rough before the slab pour. The PDF was the permit set from 02/12, issue mark C. The permit set had been drawn from the pre-addendum design, so it showed two floor sinks, FS-1 and FS-2, and no FS-3.

The crew roughed in from it on 03/10: building sewer connection, FS-1, FS-2 and the lavatory and mop sink branches. Meanwhile two things existed that the crew did not have. The conformed set of 03/01, mark D, already showed FS-3. And the plan reviewer had commented that FS-2 sat too close to a wall for its required cleanout access, so the IFC set due 03/14, mark E, moved FS-2 four feet east.

The underground inspection on 03/15 was called against the approved documents and the IFC set. Result: one branch, FS-2, roughed in the wrong place, and one, FS-3, missing entirely. The slab was not poured, so the fix was digging, cutting and relaying two branches and calling a reinspection, rather than saw-cutting a finished floor. Of the five runs roughed, four were right and one was in the wrong place, and a sixth had never been roughed at all.

What the one question would have produced on 03/08. "The conformed set from 03/01 is current, and an IFC with plan-review changes is coming 03/14." With that answer the crew could rough the sewer connection, FS-1, the lavatory and the mop sink, the four runs nothing touched, and hold FS-2 and FS-3 until the IFC landed. Four days of waiting on two branches against a day of rework and a reinspection.

What would change it. If the GC had answered "build from the permit set, the changes will be minor", that is the GC's call to make, and the shop's job is to get it in writing with the date before the crew digs. Whether that writing shifts the cost of the rework is a contract question for your own attorney, not something this card settles. The operational value is simpler: a written direction is a record of who decided, made at the time, instead of two memories argued over later.

Verifying you have the right issue

• The issue purpose printed on every sheet in your scope says construction, or whatever the contract names as the construction issue.
• The latest issue mark or revision on each sheet matches the GC's current sheet log.
• No sheet in the stack carries a "NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION" or "PRELIMINARY" stamp, including a single reprinted sheet mixed into a good set.
• The answer to the one question is written in the job record with a date and a name.

Acceptance is all four, or, where one fails, the failing sheet is off the table and a written question is out to the GC.

References

• International Residential Code and International Building Code, sections on approval of construction documents and retention on site (R106.3.1 and 107.3.1 in the 2021 editions), as adopted by your jurisdiction
• See related: The Revision Block and Why It Decides Everything; As-Builts and What Happens When Nobody Updates Them
• See related: The Title Block Field by Field; How to Check an Addendum Against Your Bid
• See related: How to Confirm the Truck Set Is Current; The Crew That Built Off a Superseded Sheet