Usually people on Archinect are so helpful- no advice? No one's firm has a QC or Quality Assurance process? If no, how do you train your staff to create excellent construction documents?

When I say interior architecture, these sets have stairs/mezzanines/fireplaces/ramps, etc... in hotel or apartment buildings. I am not worried about finishes-these elements need a high level of technical skill. Thank you again if you have any advice.

I’ll answer 4)

Cloud and tag with short description of changes with reference email correspondence.

That’s how we do/ keep track especially during construction phase.

happy now? 

If you aren't a part owner of the firm you work at, you need to stop giving so many fucks. Go have a beer, relax, and realize that the quality (or lack thereof) of a set of documents is but a small part of how a finished project comes out. 

Other reactions: 100-150 page interior architecture sets? They did the Sears tower, including structure and interiors, in 30 sheets. 

Any firm sending CDs to someone else for production likely has much bigger problems than missed QC.

I'll bite.

1. At our firm, where we deal primarily with high-end SFR, we're dealing with architectural sets of 20 sheets, with interiors around 8 sheets (plus schedules), then add in structural, MEP, civil, etc.... our construction sets usually sit around 50 sheets all included. Typically, whoever is assigned to the project will do their own review of the set before passing it onto someone else on the team who specifically isn't on the project. Fresh eyes and all that. It tends to work pretty well. We usually go around 3 checks before permit, and more as necessary before submitting final CDs to the contractor. But then, we're a small firm (6 of us + an intern), and we're all competent in our own right, so we don't have the same rigid hierarchy you might see at larger operations.

2. We just use two pen colors! Red for comments, and then they get yellowed over with a highlighter or (my favorite for the hand-feel) yellow crayon when they've been addressed. I also like to add in blue for questions from the "responder" to the "red-liner".

3. We do not send out CDs to an outside firm for production, although before I came on board, they would coordinate with a local Revit draftsman on some projects. He's very well known in our area, and is really good at what he does. The firm would work closely with him, treating him as a team member starting with DD and working through CDs, instead of just contracting him for CD documentation in an insular way. It helped a lot with making sure everything was communicated effectively.

4. Not sure, seeing as we're still fairly new into using Revit for our work, but I like luvu's answer above.

we expect everyone to do their own QC before passing their drawings to management. Issue is that few actually are able to identify obvious issues so it can cause several easily avoidable rounds of comments/revisions. Otherwise, we mark up what needs to be addressed in red and pass it back. We expect the staff to cross out each time they make a correction so they don’t forget anything. Success varies greatly depending on staff and we’re often forced to jump in and save the day in order to meet deadlines. Def not ideal but we’re actively trying to train and guide staff. Just a very slow process that’s only grown worse with post COVID complaceteness. 

QA is the name of the game, train up your people or else your QC process will be like bailing water from a boat made of swiss cheese.  None of the ownership will be happy, so buy-in will be difficult, but for a while you'll just have to expect a lot more senior hours spent on jobs until people are trained (maybe too many people got promoted too quickly?).  Once assured you aren't looking at complete dreck, our QC process has become a lot more iterative and procedural.  Things like code checks need to be QC'd way earlier in the game, with good notation on why decisions were made and what are the constraints.  When adjusting through DD and CD, a trained staff will be able to make changes without "breaking" things.  I'm not even looking at floor plans, ceiling plans, etc at my 90% set, only details.   Other info, we only have 2 people QCing sets but want to train 2 more.  Our training plan is they'll QC sets created by the 2 people who typically QC (as they're also responsible to PM jobs).  We use bluebeam heavily, which has a compare feature which is pretty nice.  Finally, we provide QC as a sales pitch and include the owner on the process for buy-in.  If owner changes would require us to revisit something that would systematically/holistically require us to go back to previous phases and re-QC something, we've had way more success at add-serves.  EG, once the core has been decided and stair/elevator sheets completed with QC comments, owners are way more hesitant to suggest changes that would move the core, and if they do, more willing to cough up money to redo that work.  

My take . . . 

1)   Do you have a dedicated in-house person/team who reviews the drawings and redlines the sets?

One of our seiner partners will QC any drawings on larger project.  If not, then the PA or PM will QC drawings.  I myself will make changes to made in red and comments (ie – look into this) in blue.  

2)    How does the firm check that comments were picked up?

Anyone picking up the comments highlights them when done.  The person also initials and dates the drawing sheet.  We scan in all the highlighted and initialed redlines and keep them until the project is don. 

3)    If your firm sends its construction documents to an outside firm for production, what is the process you do for quality control/redlines/checking for comment pick up?

We don’t but when commenting on consultants’ drawings we keep a copy of the redlines to make sure things have changed. 

4)    Is there a way in Revit to see if elements have changed (i.e. similar to how MS Word shows you who made an edit and on what date?)

 Yes, but it’s not very user friendly or easy to do.