Document Control

Document Control tracks controlled documents — drawings, specifications, method statements and quality plans — by document number and revision, so it's always possible to tell which revision is the current one and where it's been distributed.

Working from the wrong revision of a drawing or specification is a common and entirely preventable source of quality failures on site. A document register that records revision, status and distribution explicitly means "is this the right version?" has a definite answer, rather than depending on whoever printed the copy in someone's hand having remembered to check.

Each record is one document at one revision: its title, document number, revision identifier, document type, and status. Status moves through draft → for-construction → superseded — for-construction marking the point at which a document is released as the current, authoritative version to work from, and superseded marking that a later revision has replaced it.

The list page shows every controlled document with its status, and can be filtered and sorted by title, status, issue date, or when the record was created or updated. The detail page shows the full record, including who it was distributed to; create and edit forms share the same fields.

• Document title — required. What the document is (e.g. "Foundation Layout — Block C").
• Document number — required. The organisation's own document numbering, distinct from the title.
• Revision — required. The revision identifier for this specific version (e.g. "Rev B").
• Document type — required. One of Drawing, Specification, Method Statement, Quality Plan.
• Status — one of draft, for-construction, superseded. New documents default to draft.
• Issue date — optional. When this revision was issued.
• Distributed to — optional, free text. Who this revision was distributed to.

Creating a new revision of an existing document is done by creating a new record with the same document number and a new revision identifier, then marking the previous revision superseded — the register doesn't automatically supersede an earlier revision when a new one is created for the same document number.

There's no distribution notification sent when a document's status changes to for-construction in the current version of the product — "Distributed to" is a record of who received it, entered manually, not a triggered action.

Does the register prevent two records sharing the same document number and revision? No — document number and revision are both plain text fields with no uniqueness check, so keeping them consistent (one for-construction revision per document number at a time) is a matter of register discipline, not something the system enforces.