As-built reconciliation.

Today's as-built reconciliation workflow

The standard manual process:

1. 01During construction — field changes are redlined on printed copies of the current design drawings. Each redline is traceable (in theory) back to an RFI, a field change notice, or a design change document.
2. 02At project closeout — the accumulated redlines are collected, and a drafting team re-creates each affected drawing to incorporate the field changes.
3. 03Quality control — each redrawn drawing is reviewed against the source redlines and against the RFI and field change log to confirm completeness.
4. 04Owner delivery — the final as-built drawings are delivered as part of the closeout package.

Each of these steps is labor-intensive. A major EPC project can have hundreds of affected drawings, each requiring redrafting and QC. The closeout phase commonly consumes months of drafting time and is a frequent source of owner-contractor dispute.

The specific failures that trigger disputes

Three categories of failure dominate as-built dispute:

• Missed redlines. A field change was made but never redlined, or the redline was lost before it reached the drafting team. The as-built drawing doesn't reflect the field installation, and the gap is discovered later — often during operations, during MOC, or during a regulatory audit.
• Miscommunicated redlines. The redline was captured but was interpreted incorrectly by the drafter, producing an as-built drawing that differs from what the redline intended.
• Incomplete RFI tracing. The drawing was updated, but the connection back to the specific RFI or field change document was not preserved, making it impossible to audit the change later.

How Armeta transforms as-built reconciliation

Armeta's compare stage produces a structured delta between any two revisions of the same drawing. For as-built reconciliation, this enables:

• Comparison of the construction-phase drawing against the redlined-and-redrafted as-built, with every difference flagged.
• Verification that each redlined change appears in the final as-built.
• Structured export of the change log tying each delta to its source RFI or field change document.
• Audit-defensible as-built delivery with drawing-traceable change history.

The engineering outcome

For a typical EPC project with 400 affected drawings at closeout:

• Manual as-built drafting: 3–6 months of drafting team effort.
• Manual as-built QC: additional weeks of engineering review.
• Armeta-supported as-built reconciliation: weeks rather than months, with structured change log.
• Owner delivery quality: drawing-traceable, defensible, auditable.
• Dispute exposure: materially reduced.

The value for operators receiving as-built handover

The as-built drawing package is the operator's starting PSI baseline. Every subsequent MOC, every HAZOP cycle, every LDAR survey over the next five, ten, or twenty years of operation traces back to the quality of the handover. A defensible as-built delivery reduces compliance exposure for decades.