OT: Consultants and Electrical Drawings

I've had a bit of a curly one come up today and I'm not sure how best to approach it. Interested to hear if anyone else has had this experience before.

We have a maintenance contract for a water authority here, and we have previously done the majority of their upgrade, maintenance and even new capital works projects on the electrical front. Treatment Plants, Pump Stations etc. I've only been here for 5 years, but a number of my guys came over from the previous contractor... Contract generally gets renewed via tender process every 6-10 years. The client has little understanding of anything electrical and they rely heavily on the maintenance contractor for everything that has wires, code or a radio.

At the start of the contract we were issued a big ol USB of all the previous contractor's electrical drawings (which included the contractor before that too... probably around 15 years worth of .DWG files!). No problem at all, when we had to make changes we left their title block and simply marked up with revision details. If a site was significantly re-built and we had to do new drawings, only then would we "make it ours" and copy the remaining parts into our title block, logo etc. I like to think that "drawn by", "checked by" and "approved by" used to mean something on drawings, especially 10 years down the track if someone finds a problem!

So about 6 months ago, the client decides they want to engage a 3rd party electrical consultant (one of those... "Yeah I'm buddies with a guy" kind of arrangements) to come in and do some work on sorting out their electrical asset register etc. They ask for all the electrical drawings for all client assets, which we dutifully supplied.

Then today we get told that we are to use their "new" drawing register for all future work. I take a look, and lo and behold, every drawing has been rather amateurishly moved into a new title block with all our information stripped from it, and these guys initials slipped into the "Drawn by", "checked by" and "approved by" fields.

We are in that tricky position where the contract is up for re-tender in a few months. Not the best time to be making waves. But I'm just amazed that anyone who considers themselves a professional would do this on such a massive scale. I've done drawings for clients where they have wanted their own title block because the drawing is going into their drawing set with mech, civil etc, but they still respect that it's your work, and they leave you name and company details on the title block, next to theirs.

In some ways I don't really care... there's a bunch of terrible designs out there from previous contractors, and these guys have now put their names against it... but I'm just wondering if this situation has happened to anyone else, and what did you do about it? Am I over-reacting to this and letting my ego get in the way?

Most of the drawings were paid for in one way or another by the client, so they can technically do what they want with them.

I would talk to your lawyer their may be intellectual property rights and liability in play.
Your drawings are still your work product even after you hand them over to your client.
Are they willing to take responsibility for inaccurate drawings ?
Are they actually checking them ?
i always keep an original copy for my records even after i hand over the finished product
that way you have proof if they make changes

Take your emotion out of the situation.

We have often found that despite the quality of consultants clients use, you just have to bite your tongue sometimes.

You are better off them standing in your tent p!ssing out, than standing outside your tent p!ssing in.

GaryS said:

I would talk to your lawyer their may be intellectual property rights and liability in play.
Your drawings are still your work product even after you hand them over to your client.
Are they willing to take responsibility for inaccurate drawings ?
Are they actually checking them ?
i always keep an original copy for my records even after i hand over the finished product
that way you have proof if they make changes

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Yes we still have all our copies of course. I have just heard back from our legal counsel who were happy to send them a pleasant but firm letter, but the senior management don't want to make a fuss so I'll just have to go get p!ssed in a tent like janner_10 suggested!

Consultants are two a penny, they charge the earth, in many cases have no real idea etc. The company I worked for was insistent on employing so called "experts" in project management & consultancy, only two guys/companies stood out of about 30 + over the years, it to p****d me off but not much you can do about it, often found myself & others having to re-work things. In saying that being a supplier to a company I suggest you bite your lip it's not worth it as you may loose any contracts, I was in the contract game for 25 years before settling in on one manufacturing site and seen it all. Sometimes you just have to let it go even if it hurts your pride.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it since it's money coming in and you don't want to **** people off. In terms of liability, the consultancy company just took over it which isn't bad particularly if you keep records of what your company did too. They may even get on the hook for something they didn't do too.

I could go on for days on "consultants" being absolutely out of their depth, but it would fall outside of the conversation.

Two things from me:


1. All my drawings, programs, projects, etc, had a copyright notice on them. It is free and legally binding. To me that consultant stole my copyrighted material.


2. I would tell your customer that the consultant took your drawings and simply stole the credit for them, it is your work and they are now claiming they drew them. These is not the actions of a professional consultant that knows what he is doing.

Saffa - same s**t another day. Insultants I have called them since 1960 when I was an apprentice. All good - go with the flow. As long as you are getting work and making a buck. I even have insultants getting me to do design jobs for them on an hourly rate these days. Then meetings when I take great delight in making them look like what they are in front of everyone. Too old to put up with **** these days - do not care. I work for myself and do not have to worry about a boss except 'she who must be obeyed'. 76 now and powering along - lucky - do not have to put up with their **** anymore. Bit hard when you are working for a boss though.

I don't know about Australia, but in the US those drawings would be considered work product of work for hire. Therefore they are client property and they can do what they choose with them.

I do a lot of work as a subconsultant to large firms. It isn't uncommon, as part of an upgrade project, to cut and paste old as-builts into a new drawing set with new title block and indicate them as "Existing Sytems". The upgraded design is then shown on separate drawings.

What the client hoped to gain by merely creating a carbon copy of all the old stuff on a new title block is beyond me.

What the client hoped to gain by merely creating a carbon copy of all the old stuff on a new title block is beyond me.

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It's a form of advertising. A few years down the road, there will be a need for service on the system and right there on the schematics will be the name and telephone number of a potential provider.
And talk about a win-win. They got paid to put up their ad.

BobB said:

...76 now and powering along - lucky -

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+1. Dang, I get people giving me weird looks when I tell them I'm still working at 69. Good on ya!! Wish you the best! I tried staying home at 60 after retiring early from a utility, lasted 16 months.
I've worked with "insultants" and most of them didn't do anything except get in the way.

In my experience having your name and phone number in the panels is better than on the drawings.

BryanG said:

In my experience having your name and phone number in the panels is better than on the drawings.

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Along with that is naming the panels you make.

When building a new panel for a line or machine the name of the line or machine will stay what it was, but you can give the control panel its own name and model #.

One example - I built a panel for an old TMP press and it is the "Ivanova 726" and the drawings show "Ivanova 726 Control For TMP Press (serial #)"

Big sign on the front, graphics in the HMI, and a "Custom Built for xxx By me" sign on the side of the panel.

Steve Bailey said:

It's a form of advertising. A few years down the road, there will be a need for service on the system and right there on the schematics will be the name and telephone number of a potential provider.
And talk about a win-win. They got paid to put up their ad.

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That is certainly what the consultant gained. As far as I can see the client, who paid for it, got no value for his money.

Thanks for everyone's replies. Yes, our drawings did have all the usual boilerplate legal stuff on them around copyright.

The comment about name on the panel is a good one. Yes, ours will be there. It will also be on all the laminated site drawings, whilst they've re-branded their electronic copies i doubt they've thought about getting them out to 120+ remote sites. That's way too much work and requires safety boots!

I mulled it all over last night with a good whiskey, and I think all we can do is take it on the chin and keep doing what we're doing. Another 12 months and a big stuff up, the Consultant will hurry away to the next sucker and we can carry on as normal.