The Importance Of Document Control

Document Control

Introduction

When developing any product, changes always occur from customer needs, approval rectifications, human error and the expected performance of the product. Moreover, people always bring about new ways of doing things or solving a particular problem, the process of ensuring that all these changes occur successfully is known as configuration control (Crow, 2002). For configuration control to be successful, document control has to be efficiently done. Document control is a practical approach to governing the quality of documents, development of the documents, approval, forwarding, manipulation, application, maintenance, storage, safety and disposal of the documents (Baldwin, 2014). Document control is viewed as a way

For these changes to be made successfully, configuration management needs to be done efficiently. One importance of configuration management is in the correction of errors in engineering drawings or documents (Crow, 2002). Human errors easily occur in the design, bills of quantities or drawings of a building; configuration control enhances the correction of such errors by finding the concerned document and the practitioner who will correct the document. The safety of a building is of paramount concern to the users as well as the usability and reliability. If any of these does not meet the requirements of the customer or the approving bodies, it would be necessary to make changes to the documents of the building; configuration and document control come in handy at this

Duplication of supplies will occur if proper records of the construction are not kept. Reviews and changes of the bills of quantities also need to be done to ensure that there are enough materials to complete the building (Mette & Hass, 2003). In the case that there are new suppliers to the construction, the documents and terms of the construction have to be consulted to enable the new supplier work within the requirements of the building. If such documents and terms are not well stored and distributed, it would be difficult to pass such instructions. Moreover, all buildings have various professionals handling different parts; the documents and instructions of all these professionals must be kept safe for retrieval when needed. When new installations need to be done on the structure, the maintenance or mechanical engineer has to review the designs of the building to approve the new installations. Configuration control also enables the various practitioners to respond to regulatory requirements; when the approving bodies need some changes done on a building, the corrected documents are used to make new documents and the same designers or authors work on the corrections