Existing conditions: everything deserves a second look

When there's work to be done verifying existing conditions of something--say a couple of rooms or even an entire building that you'll be remodeling or adding onto--most firms send interns, and for obvious reasons. You're cheap, so you bill less to the client and use up less fee, and you're young, so you should be able to crawl over desks and plumbing pipes to take measurements and pictures without slipping a disk. Verifying existing conditions can feel like a thankless task, but it's a great opportunity to learn more about buildings and especially about how complex and difficult renovation projects can be.

The best things to take on a site visit for verifying existing conditions are at least two copies of the plans of the building in question (you'll have a spare if you totally mess up the dimensions you write down, drop it in the mud, or have so many notes written on it that you can't see what you've written), a 25' tape measure (for measuring most interior distances), a 100' tape measure (for measuring exterior distances and some large interior distances), and a digital camera with a backup battery and a backup memory card (you never know). And if you can, bring a colleague--not only can they help you hold the tape measure, but two heads are just better than one when taking field measurements.I find that it's helpful to measure each room, then take a picture of each wall in the room. If the room has a door sign with a room name on it, take a picture of that first so that you know what room you're about to see the walls of. Later, as you're going through your plans and trying to figure out what that window sill is made of or is there exposed electrical conduit in that room, you'll be able to see it. Also, taking that many photos of a room should give you some decent shots of the ceiling and floor. This will help if you have to indicate existing materials in a plan or if you have to draw existing ceiling tile, lights, and diffusers in a ceiling plan.

Thoroughness also comes into play when looking at or using old drawings for an existing building. First of all, you might marvel at how few sheets it took in 1970 to get a building built, and yet they managed to build a three-story hospital with fifty sheets instead of 200, like today. But don't let the thinness of that set fool you--there's a lot of information packed into those old sets. When hand drawing on vellum or mylar (which was and is a lot more expensive than printing or drawing on plain old bond paper), draftsmen and architects wanted to make sure they used every bit of a sheet that they could, so you'll find useful details and tidbits on every sheet. That can make it hard to sift through and find what you need ("just tell me how you built the parapet already!"), but more often than not, the info is there. If at first you don't find the detail you want, keep digging and looking. Scour the plans as well as the roof plans and the exterior elevations for a section marker that's near the area you're trying to understand. Is it on an enlarged plan or elevation instead? Take a breath and take your time. Old drawings will reveal their secrets to those who are patient and careful. If all else fails, ask someone to look at the set with you and see if they can find the detail you're looking for. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh eye on the set, or maybe someone old enough to know where the draftsmen of yore hid the detail you need.