Catching up on post-sick leave work, hence the relative silence from this source.
Firstly let me clarify the ownership of designers' drawings; in general, ownership and copyright remain with the originator and the commissioning client is licenced to use it for purposes resonably connected thereto. This would include, in my professional opinion, an investigation into structural failure but might not necessarily extend to publication of (say) the detailed drawings or specifications themselves.
In the UK, drawings submitted for statutory consents (notably planning permission and building warrant) will be held on file for a considerable period. Planning drawings are subject to public consultation and hence accessible to all and sundry, however they also tend to be rather outline (RIBA stage C or D normally) and hence of little relevance here.
There is something of a debate regarding access to Building Warrant here under the terms of the various UK FoI legislation and which has yet to be resolved, a process I am involved with on behalf of my professional institute, and for what it's worth I believe local authorities will eventually be obliged to provide public access saving for where there are security considerations. Nevertheless it is important for those of you outwith the construction industry to understand that even Warrant drawings contain less detail than you would expect (RIBA stage D or E, depending upon project type).
In fact there are two sets of drawings which we would have to examine; what's called "Production Information" in the UK (RIBA stage F/G/H) and the "As Built" (stage K/L) drawings as an earlier poster noted. Even on a small project (say £5m) these will run into hundreds covering everything from general arrangement of steelwork, steelwork fabrication, firework, servicing, linings and partitions, and servicing. Do not underestimate their complexity. Our ISO 9001 QA system has an entire manual devoted to how we manage such information amongst a multi-disciplinary design team, never mind how they are developed.
This is before we even get to the specifcation and other contract documents, or performance specification/contractor-designed items.
It would be surprising in the extreme if an archive set of this information was not available to the architects, etc. today. I am mindful, however, that there may be questions over the extent of material archived (in the UK we generally prune files heavily after 10 or 12 years, depending upon legislative regime and liability periods) and longevity of storage medium (microfiche was, of course, popular in the 60s and 70s but has marked shortcomings). Therefore the question as to what Robertson might have been able to make available is more difficult than might be thought.
Now consider a scenario where the drawings are released. We might have the architect's general arragement (GA) drawings, which are no more than a broad schematic. For steelwork we'll have to trawls through hundreds of structural drawings (and calcs). But fireproofing will be dealt with seperately, either by the architect or more probably a specialist sub-consultant. Then suppose that we want to look at how ventilation ducts might have served as a fire path. Out with the mech-eng drawings. But the fire proofing for this may be somewhere else........etc etc.
In short, forensic analysis of construction drawings is hard. Ask any solicitor who's been involved in a professional liability claim for a complex large-scale problem. Conclusions can only be drawn after rigorous expert scrutiny.
As for CAD conversion of drawings, the simple answer is that we'd only do it where we strictly needed to, for example if further work was being carried out and even then only to the location required. Like other posters, we still use hand-drawings rather a lot (ahh, the joy of watching your last Rotring Isograph 0.18 nib break at 7pm on a Sunday night.......)
