How to prepare the formwork plan before starting to work on the reinforcement plan?

One of the main stages in drawing reinforcement plans is the preparation of the reinforcement background plan on which we will work.

This is actually the formwork plan of the element of which we will prepare the reinforcement plan.

It is not appropriate to draw the reinforcement directly on the formwork plan. Why? Because in the formwork plan there is a lot of information – dimensions, levels, hatching, explanatory texts. All this is useful for the people who will control the formwork plans, as well as for those who will perform the formwork on the site. On the other hand, for the people who will control the reinforcement plan and who will perform the reinforcement of the site, it is most important to see clearly the information about the reinforcement itself. If this information is superimposed on another, it will be extremely difficult for them to read it. That is why it is important to prepare a background for the reinforcement plan so that the reinforcement plan itself is clear to all who will read it at one time or another of the project.

In our team we always use several stages in the preparation of the reinforcement plans we are working on. In this way we are confident that we will receive a reinforcement plan that will be easy to read and clear to all participants in the project.

• Are we working with the last version of the formwork plan?

Very often there are changes in the formwork plan even before we start preparing the reinforcement. That is why it is essential to make sure that we use the latest formwork plan before starting work on the reinforcement plan, so that it does not turn out that our whole drawing is wrong just because we did not use the right formwork.

• Let’s clean our working plot!

We are preparing the background for the reinforcement plan. We delete all hatches, dimensions, inscriptions on openings, edge elevations, inscriptions on stairs and other information that is not necessary for drawing or placing the reinforcement of the object. Usually we leave levels for the various structural elements in order to be able to locate the level of the slab in plan, lower / upper edge of the beam, wall, column, the level of the foundations. If we do not have enough clear sections on which we can draw the reinforcement, we create specific ones for this purpose.

• How to draw the reinforcement?

For the different structural elements we need different views and sections where to present the reinforcement so that it is clear and comprehensible for all participants in the project. In the table below we will briefly show what is the practice in our office.

These are the three main steps in preparing the background for the reinforcement plans.Having already taken these steps, we can start with the construction of the reinforcement. However, it is good to apply one or two more steps that will make it easier to work with the drawings later.

 Here are some good practices we follow in our team in our daily work:

• If there are many blocks in the original .dwg, it is necessary to explode them so that errors do not accumulate in the file. If we don’t do this the file itself will crash and we could lose valuable information.
• We use thinner line thicknesses for the structure elements compared to those for the reinforcing bars. We often use gray for the formwork underlay so that the reinforcement can be seen more clearly.
• To facilitate the processing of the drawings, we place the formwork background in a block. In this way, if there is a change in the formwork, we will make the change only in one place. For example, if we have several plan views of a slab with different reinforcement drawn on them and change the formwork element, instead of changing it several times, we will change it in the block of the formwork background and so the information will be updated everywhere.

In Кreyo we follow the stages in the preparation of the formwork background for reinforcement plans, as well as the good practice, in our daily work. This way we guarantee that our drawings are easy to read, to review and to implement on the construction site.

If for you it is important that your reinforcement plans are correct, made according to the project schedule and easily readable for people on site, contact us so that we can discuss with you what your situation is and how we can help you. 

You can check some of our projects here: https://kreyo.bg/projects/