Lift Drawings For Starting Construction

Why You Need Lift Drawings to Start Construction the Right Way

No matter what type of project you’re working on — whether it’s a hospital, lab, airport, steel or concrete structure, or even a wood-framed multifamily building — lift drawings are essential for starting construction effectively.

In this blog, I’m breaking down what lift drawings are, why you need them, and how we’re using them on our current $120 million Lean Built multifamily project to set ourselves up for success.

What Are Lift Drawings?

A lift drawing is a coordination tool that pulls information from multiple drawing sets into one unified document. These drawings allow your team to see how all the pieces fit together — from structural to architectural to civil — so you can build with confidence.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be self-performing the work or have field engineers on staff to benefit from lift drawings. These are just as critical for GCs managing subcontractors as they are for self-performers.

Real Examples from the Field:

Let’s take a closer look at how we’re implementing lift drawings at our West Fillmore project.

• Dimensional Coordination Drawing: Our team literally drew every wall from the plans (not CAD or Bluebeam) to verify dimensions, anchor bolt locations, hold-downs, and edge of slab details. We uncovered 45+ issues that would’ve become RFIs later — all caught during this drawing process. Now, when we’re out in the field, we can QC the edge of slab, bolt locations, and more with precision using total station layouts.
• Primary Control Plan: We created a site-wide lift drawing including basis of bearings, property corners, and northing/easting coordinates for each of the 9 buildings. This ensures our hired surveyors can tie everything back to known coordinates and establish reliable control for layout.
• Structural QC Modeling: Because wood framing can be ambiguous and dependent on the framer’s experience, we built lift drawings and models of two full units to ensure accurate QC. We know exactly how hold-downs, post-tension slab, and anchor bolts should look — and can confirm it during inspections.
• Additional Lift Drawings: Beyond structure, we’re also doing lift drawings for roof slopes, ceiling heights, MEP coordination, utility cut sections, and site flatwork — especially to ensure slopes don’t exceed tolerances.

Why Lift Drawings Matter:

Lift drawings do three things:

1. Help you learn the building: You can’t build what you don’t understand.
2. Reveal problems early: Issues get surfaced before construction, not during.
3. Provide trades with buildable visuals: When everything’s clearly shown, your team knows what to do.

Whether you’re on a remodel, data center, or residential project — lift drawings are a must-have in pre-construction. They’re how you prevent quality issues, go faster, and create a strong foundation for success.