A fireproof vault is always a part of the equipment of every well-equipped drafting office. In it arc kept the notebooks in which the computations necessary for the design and detailing of the structures are kept, and also the tracings which have been made in the drafting room. In case the drawing of any particular structure is required, the tracing is taken out of the vault, blue prints are made, and the tracing returned as soon as possible. The vault should be so equipped that whenever the door is opened the interior becomes lighted. Aside from the mechanical convenience of this arrange ment, it avoids the possibility of any person being accidentally locked in, since the rule is that in case of fire the vault should be immediately closed by the one nearest to it.
Assignment of Work. When the engineer of the plant received a stress sheet from his head officer or from the designing depart ment in his own work, he hands it to the chief draftsman. The chief draftsman makes a record of it and gives it to the squad boss who is most accustomed to that class of work. The squad boss in turn hands it to the checker or checkers and these men make details for the various parts of the structure and make layouts for the various joints. The engineer now orders the material which will be required to build the structure or assigns a checker to do so and then returns the stress sheet to the squad boss who assigns certain draftsmen to prepare the shop drawings for the structure. Draftsmen make the drawings and turn them over to the tracers to trace them.
After the tracer has finished the tracings of the sheets, he passes them to the checker who in the first place made out the details and layout and ordered the material. The checker goes over these trac ings very carefully and sees that all dimensions are correct, that all material used is that which he ordered, and if the drawings are correct he signs his name to the sheet. If the dimensions or any other matter upon the drawing is found to be incorrect, the checker places a ring around it with his blue pencil which is used in check ing and off to one side places the correct value. After all the apparent errors have been corrected in this manner, a consultation between the checker and the draftsman who made the drawing is held. The errors are pointed out to the draftsman who in turn checks the work to prove the checker's results. The draftsman then takes the drawing and makes the necessary changes and returns it to the checker.
Great care should be taken in making the changes that no dimensions or other notations written upon the drawing by the checker are rubbed off. The checker then examines the drawing carefully to see that all the errors which he has pointed out have been corrected. He then cleans the tracing, signs his name to it,
and returns it to the squad boss. The squad boss in turn has the necessary blue prints made and turns the tracing together with the prints over to the chief draftsman, who in turn files the tracing in its proper place and gives the blue prints to the engineer of the plant who sees that they are distributed to the foremen of the various shops where they are required.
Records. A job is known by the order number which is given it when it comes into the hands of the engineer of the plant. This order number should go on all papers upon which anything con cerning that structure is placed. Failure to do this will result in great confusion and much time will be lost. The penalty for persist ent failure to comply with this very important method of procedure is usually dismissal.
Since the draftsman, or in fact any of the office force, may work upon more than one order during the clay or week, and since it is important that the cost of the drafting or engineering work for any particular order should be known, it is essential that the men keep time cards upon which the order and the time placed upon that order is noted. Usually fractions of an hour less than one-fourth are not reported. Fig. 1 shows one of these time cards upon which is noted the work of a checker for one week. It shows that he has worked upon several orders and also shows the exact amount of time he has placed upon each one and also the rate per hour which he received. In this way it is possible to obtain the cost of engineer ing of any particular order when it has finally been finished.
An orderly record of the passage of the work from the time the stress sheet enters the engineer's office until the material has been shipped, and also a record of the progress cf the work during erection, should be kept. This is usually kept on 3X5 cards in the engineer's office. In addition to this card-index record, a monthly report in blue print form is kept showing the progress of the various orders. For instance, the progress report would contain such items as these: Order received, layouts made, material ordered, detailed sheets finished, shop bills made, templet work finished, work fabricated, work shipped; and in addition to this progress report, which is made cut in the office, is the report of the erector on a job in the field. The erector's form of report contains such headings as tend to indicate the progress in the false work; the erection of the trusses and floor system; and the amount of field riveting and painting completed.