Here is a sentence we say to clients and mean: the day you sign our drawings, the risk changes desks. Before sign-off, a desk drawn in the wrong place is our error to fix. After it, the same desk is a variation order. Most buyers sign a furniture CAD pack in a day because it looks finished — clean lines, rendered finishes, a tidy title block. Looking finished is not the same as being right. These are the checks we would run on our own deliverables if we were on your side of the table.
Know what a complete pack contains
A furniture drawing set for a systems project should give you five things: the furniture plan with every position numbered; the "typicals" — a dimensioned detail of each repeated cluster, because the plan is too small to show a bench's real anatomy; elevations for anything that meets a wall, like storage runs and the executive suites; a finish schedule that maps every code on the plan to a named material; and a bill of materials that counts everything. If any of the five is missing, ask for it before you start reviewing, not after. A plan without a BOM cannot be checked; a BOM without typicals cannot be priced honestly.
Check 1: what was the plan drawn from?
The first question is not on the drawing — it is under it. Was the furniture laid onto a verified site survey or onto the lease marketing plan? The difference is columns that moved, riser doors that swing into a bench run, floor boxes 400 mm from where the cable spine wants them. Ask the question directly and get the answer in the title block. If the base is unverified, the whole pack is provisional and your sign-off should say so in writing.
Check 2: do the three counts agree?
Count the positions on the plan. Count the lines on the BOM. Count the quantities on the order. On real projects these three numbers disagree more often than anyone admits — a copied zone that doubled a pedestal run, a revision that deleted desks from the plan but not the BOM. Reconciling them is an hour with a highlighter and it is the single highest-value hour in the review, because a count error survives every later stage silently and surfaces as a shortage on site or a pallet of unneeded storage.
Check 3: clearances and the paths between things
Furniture plans fail in the gaps, not the objects. Walk the plan: main circulation routes should hold around 1,500 mm so two people pass; back-to-back desk runs need roughly 1,400 mm or more between worktop edges before chairs collide; door swings and escape routes must stay clear, because the fire officer reviews the furnished plan, not the empty one. A plan that gains four desks by pinching a gangway has not gained anything — it has deferred a failure to the site walk-through.
Check 4: finish codes, not finish adjectives
"Oak-effect" is not a specification; a code from a named library is. Every surface on the plan should resolve through the finish schedule to a code you could reorder against in three years. This matters most where two suppliers meet — your joinery contractor's "white" and our "white" are different whites under the same daylight, and the drawing review is the last cheap moment to catch it. Ask for physical samples of any finish that touches another trade's work.
Check 4½: the power and data overlay
If the set includes a services overlay — and for any bench project it should — check it against the building, not against hope. Every desk cluster needs a route from a floor box or ceiling drop to its cable spine, and the overlay is where you find the cluster that sits three metres from the nearest box with no route drawn. Look for the feed point marked on each run, the count of positions sharing each feed, and a stated handover point between the furniture supplier's wiring and the electrician's. An overlay that shows desks but no feeds is decoration. The fix at drawing stage is moving a cluster half a metre; the fix after installation is floor trunking that everyone trips over for the life of the lease.
Check 5: revision discipline
Every sheet carries a revision letter, a date and a note of what changed; changes since the last issue should be clouded. If you receive a "final" set with no revision history, you cannot know what moved since the version your team reviewed — so you are reviewing from scratch or trusting blind. Insist on the register. It is drawing-office hygiene, and a supplier who keeps it on paper usually keeps it on the factory floor too.
The trade-off: a fast signature vs a clean install
The honest tension is time. The drawing stage sits on the critical path, and every week you hold the pack is a week off production. Signing fast protects the lead time and inherits every error in the set; reviewing properly costs a week and removes the errors while they are still free. Our steer: one thorough markup round beats three hurried ones — gather every comment, return them together, sign the reissue. What does not work is the trickle of single comments that resets the drawing office daily and burns the time without the rigour.
What we put in front of you
Our packs go out with the five contents above, the survey basis stated, and the BOM cross-referenced to the plan numbering — because a reviewable drawing set is cheaper for us too. Send a plan you have been asked to sign, or start a project from a blank floor, through our contact page; if you are a dealer running this under your own brand, the OEM route works the same way with your title block.
Related reading: specifying a bench system without locking yourself in and the fit-out specification workflow.