Guide · Drawing Types
As-Built Drawings vs Permit Drawings
A commercial building collects drawings the way it collects keys. There is a design set, a permit set, a construction set, a stack of shop drawings, a marked-up record set from the contractor, and eventually a set from every renovation that followed. Each one was accurate about something, at some moment. The trouble starts when someone picks one up years later and assumes it describes the building in front of them. This guide sets out what each drawing actually records, why permit drawings and as-built drawings answer different questions, and how to tell which one you are holding.
What an as-built drawing is
An as-built drawing is a drawing of a building as it was actually built, or as it stands today: walls, doors, columns, ceilings and fixed services in their real positions, at their real dimensions. The name comes from construction. At the end of a job, the drawings are brought up to date so they show the building as built rather than as designed. The term covers a single floor plan, a reflected ceiling plan, elevations and sections, or a full set, and it applies to any building type.
What makes a drawing an as-built is not how it looks. An as-built floor plan and a design floor plan use the same symbols, the same line weights and often the same title block. The difference is what the drawing is a record of. A design or permit plan shows the building someone intended; an as-built plan shows the building someone checked. That is why the two most useful things to know about any as-built are how it was produced and when.
It also explains a question that comes up often: is an as-built plan the same as a floor plan? Not quite. A floor plan is a kind of drawing — a horizontal cut through the building, seen from above. As-built is a status. A floor plan can be a design plan, a permit plan, a leasing plan or an as-built plan. When someone asks for as-built floor plans, they mean plan views of the existing condition, drawn to scale from the building itself.
Two drawings of one building, recording two different things
Every drawing is made to answer a question, and the question decides what it is reliable for. A permit drawing answers the question a municipality asks before work starts: what do you intend to build, and does it comply? It is drawn before construction, by the design team, describing a building that does not exist yet in the form shown. When it is approved, the approval attaches to that proposal — not to whatever eventually gets built.
An as-built drawing answers a different question entirely: what is actually here? It is drawn after the fact, from the building rather than from the design, and its authority comes from measurement rather than from approval. Nobody reviews it against a code; it is checked against the walls, the columns and the ceiling it claims to describe.
Neither is more important than the other. They do different jobs, and a project goes wrong when one is used to do the other's. A permit set used as a base plan for a renovation carries every change made since it was approved, silently, into the new design. An as-built submitted as though it were a proposal says nothing about what anyone intends to do. The useful skill is knowing which question you are asking before you open the file.
The drawings a commercial building accumulates
In roughly the order a building produces them. Each row is accurate about something — the useful column is the last one, which is where it stops being accurate.
| Drawing | What it records | Usually produced by | Where it stops being reliable |
|---|---|---|---|
| DrawingDesign drawings | What it recordsWhat the owner and design team want to build, developed through schematic and design development stages. | Usually produced byArchitect and design consultants | Where it stops being reliableChanges continuously until the design is fixed. Early sets describe options, not decisions. |
| DrawingPermit drawings | What it recordsThe proposal submitted to the authority having jurisdiction for review and approval before work starts. | Usually produced byArchitect or designer, with engineers where the scope needs them | Where it stops being reliableRecords intent at the moment of approval. Says nothing about what was changed on site, or what later renovations did. |
| DrawingIssued-for-construction set | What it recordsThe drawings the contractor builds from, often revised from the permit set as coordination questions are resolved. | Usually produced byDesign team | Where it stops being reliableRevised by bulletin, change order and site instruction during construction. The printed set lags the latest revision. |
| DrawingShop drawings | What it recordsHow a particular trade or supplier will fabricate and install its piece of the work — steel, millwork, curtain wall, ductwork. | Usually produced byTrades and suppliers, reviewed by the design team | Where it stops being reliableDescribes one system, often ahead of installation. Not a record of the space as a whole. |
| DrawingContractor record set | What it recordsThe construction set with field changes marked on it as the job progresses, handed over at closeout. Often labelled "as-built". | Usually produced byGeneral contractor and trades | Where it stops being reliableOnly as good as the markup discipline on site. Changes nobody wrote down are simply absent, and nothing on the sheet says which those are. |
| DrawingMeasured as-built survey | What it recordsThe building as it physically stands on the day it was measured, drawn from the building rather than from any earlier set. | Usually produced byAn as-built surveyor, measuring on site | Where it stops being reliableAccurate to its stated tolerance on the day of capture. Stops being current the next time someone renovates. |
Names vary between firms and projects — "record drawings", "as-constructed" and "as-built" are all used for the fifth row. Ask which one you are being given.
Why "as-built" is used for two different documents
The most expensive confusion in this area is not between permit drawings and as-builts. It is between the two different documents that both get called as-builts.
The first is the contractor's record set: the construction drawings, marked up during the job to show where the work departed from the design, and handed to the owner at the end. It is a genuinely useful document, and on a well-run job it is a good one. But it is a record of the changes somebody noticed and wrote down, applied to a drawing that was produced before construction started. A duct rerouted around a beam that nobody redlined is not on it, and nothing on the sheet tells you which changes are missing. Its dimensions are the design dimensions, not measured ones.
The second is a measured as-built survey: the building visited after the fact, measured, and drawn from what was captured. It owes nothing to the design set and inherits none of its assumptions. Where a wall is 90mm from where the design put it, the survey shows the wall where it is, because nobody consulted the design to draw it.
Both are legitimately called as-builts, and a property file will often contain one labelled as the other. When someone hands you an "as-built", the first question worth asking is how it was produced. If the answer is that it is the construction set with markups, treat it as a well-informed reference and verify anything a decision depends on. If it was measured, ask when, and whether anything has been built since.
Record drawings vs a measured as-built survey
Both documents are handed over as "as-builts". Asked the same questions, they give different answers, and the answers decide what each one can be trusted for.
| Question | Contractor record drawings | Measured as-built survey |
|---|---|---|
| When is it made? | Contractor record drawingsDuring construction, marked up as the job goes, and handed to the owner at closeout. | Measured as-built surveyAfter the fact — at any point in the building's life, often years later, on a visit made for the purpose. |
| What does it start from? | Contractor record drawingsThe issued-for-construction drawings. | Measured as-built surveyNothing on paper. It starts from the building, measured on site. |
| Where do its dimensions come from? | Contractor record drawingsThe design, except where someone wrote a field change onto the sheet. | Measured as-built surveyMeasurement of the building as it stands on the day of capture. |
| What can be missing? | Contractor record drawingsAny change nobody redlined, and every change made after handover. | Measured as-built surveyWhatever was hidden when it was captured — inside walls, above closed ceilings — unless it was opened up or scoped separately. |
| Who produces it? | Contractor record drawingsThe general contractor and the trades. | Measured as-built surveyAn as-built surveyor, working independently of the original design. |
| How should you check it? | Contractor record drawingsWalk the space with it, and verify any dimension a decision depends on. | Measured as-built surveyAsk when it was captured, to what tolerance, and whether anything has been built since. |
Neither column is a criticism of the other. A careful record set is a genuinely valuable document; it is simply a different one.
Where a permit set and the building part ways
A permit drawing can be perfectly accurate about the proposal and still be a poor guide to the building. These are the usual reasons, and none of them requires anyone to have done anything wrong.
Changes made during construction
Coordination problems get solved on site. A column is found where a door was drawn, a duct cannot pass where it was shown, a wall moves to clear a service. The building absorbs the fix; the permit set, which recorded the proposal, does not.
Every later renovation
Each tenant improvement is reviewed on its own scope, so each permit set describes the work in that one suite at that one time. Twenty years of fit-outs produce twenty partial pictures, none of which shows the floor as it now stands.
Work that never produced a drawing
Minor changes — a partition added, a door blocked, a bulkhead built around new ductwork — often happen without a drawing anyone kept. They are in the building and nowhere else.
Drafting conventions
Design drawings dimension to gridlines and nominal sizes because that is what a builder needs. A 100mm wall on a drawing is rarely 100mm finished, and small differences compound across a long run of rooms.
Drawings that were never kept
Sets get lost when a building changes hands, when a property manager changes, or simply because nobody knew they would be needed again. The permit record may still exist somewhere; the owner's copy often does not.
Paper that no longer scales
Older sets survive as prints or scans of prints. Copying distorts scale, and a scanned sheet traced into CAD inherits every millimetre of that distortion along with the original drawing's assumptions.
Where each one enters a renovation
On a commercial tenant improvement, both kinds of drawing turn up, and they sit at different points in the sequence. Understanding where helps make sense of why the distinction matters in practice.
The existing drawings — whatever the landlord, the previous tenant or the municipal archive can produce — are usually the first thing gathered. They are valuable as evidence: they show what was intended, what was approved, and often what the structure and base building services were designed to be. A careful design team reads them closely. What they do not reliably show is the current condition of the space, for all the reasons above.
The design team then needs a base to design on — a drawing of the existing condition that the proposal can be drawn over. Municipal permit applications for renovation work commonly ask for existing conditions as well as the proposed work, so the proposal can be read against what is already there. The base drawing therefore does double duty: it is the design team's starting point and part of how the proposal is explained to the reviewer. That is where a measured as-built usually enters, because it is the version of the existing condition that was checked against the building rather than inherited from a drawing.
What any particular application needs to contain is a question for the architect or designer preparing it and for the authority reviewing it. In the City of Vancouver the governing code is the city's own Building By-law; elsewhere in British Columbia it is the BC Building Code, and each municipality sets out its own submission requirements. Those requirements change, and they depend on the scope of work, the occupancy and the building. We do not interpret them, and this page does not attempt to.
Working with the drawings that already exist
Old drawings are worth finding and worth reading. They are just not worth trusting unchecked. A sensible order of work:
Collect everything, and date it
Ask the landlord or property manager, the previous tenant and anyone who worked on the space. Metro Vancouver municipalities hold building permit records, and each has its own process for requesting them — access rules vary, and some require the owner's authorization. Note the date and the scope of every set you find.
Work out what each one is
Design set, permit set, construction set, contractor record set or measured survey. The title block, the revision history and any stamps usually tell you. A set that describes one suite's fit-out is not a drawing of the floor.
Walk the space with the newest set in hand
Door positions, partitions, bulkheads, column enclosures. Differences visible from the floor are a reliable sign of differences that are not, above the ceiling and inside walls.
Measure where decisions depend on it
Anything that will be fabricated, priced tightly, or shown to a reviewer as the existing condition is worth measuring rather than inheriting. On a small space that might be a few dimensions; on a floor that has been through several tenancies it is usually a full survey.
What we produce, and what we do not
PlanBase 360 produces the second kind of as-built: a measured survey of the building as it stands. The space is captured with LiDAR to ±10mm and the drawings are drafted from that capture rather than traced from an earlier set, so an existing drawing is something we check against, not something we copy. Floor plans and an iGUIDE 3D tour follow the site visit in one to two business days, with CAD and BIM deliverables within about a week, in DWG, RVT and PDF.
We do not prepare permit drawings, we do not seal drawings, and we do not advise on what a permit application needs to include or whether a design complies with the code. That is the architect's work and the reviewer's decision. What we supply is the measured existing condition they build the submission on — the part of the drawing set that describes what is already there.
Keeping to that line is deliberate. A survey firm that also tells you what your permit requires is offering an opinion it is not qualified to give, and a design team is better served by a base drawing it can rely on than by advice it would have to check anyway.
See what a measured set looks like
The quickest way to tell a measured as-built from a marked-up construction set is to open one. The sample page has floor plans, measured areas and the 3D tour from a delivered project.
Opens the sample page — floor plans, an iGUIDE tour and measured output from real work.
Common questions
An as-built drawing shows a building as it was actually built, or as it stands now, rather than as it was designed. It can be a floor plan, a reflected ceiling plan, elevations, sections or a full set. What matters most about any as-built is how it was produced — marked up from the construction drawings, or measured from the building — and when.
A floor plan is a type of drawing: a horizontal cut through the building, viewed from above. As-built describes what the drawing records. A floor plan can be a design, permit, leasing or as-built plan; an as-built floor plan is one drawn to show the existing condition.
Permit drawings show what was proposed to the municipality and approved before construction. As-built drawings show what physically exists at the time they were produced. A permit drawing is a statement of intent reviewed against a code; an as-built is a record checked against the building. After construction changes and later renovations, the two usually diverge.
They are valuable as a reference — they show intent, structure and the base building as designed — but they describe the building at the time of approval, not as it stands now. Field changes during construction and every tenant improvement since are not on them. Anything a decision depends on is worth verifying against the space, and your architect or designer is the right person to judge how far the existing drawings can be relied on for your project.
The terms overlap. "Record drawings" usually means the contractor's construction set marked up with field changes and handed over at closeout, and it is often labelled "as-built". A measured as-built survey is a different document, drawn from the building after the fact. Both are useful; they are produced differently and are reliable for different things, so it is worth asking which one you have.
Renovation permit applications commonly ask for existing conditions as well as the proposed work, and the existing-conditions drawings need to describe the space accurately whatever their source. Whether your application needs a measured survey, and what it has to contain, depends on the scope, the building and the municipality. That is a question for your architect or designer and the authority having jurisdiction.
Start with the landlord or property manager, who may hold the base building and previous tenant sets. Beyond that, municipalities in Metro Vancouver keep building permit records and each has its own request process; access rules vary, and some records need the owner's authorization. The municipality itself is the right place to confirm how its process works.
No. We produce measured existing-conditions drawings — the as-built survey that an architect or designer designs and permits from. We do not prepare, seal or submit permit drawings, and we do not advise on what an application needs to include.
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