Industry Drawing Insight Initiative

Architectural design is complex. Assessing the true volume of work required shouldn’t be.

We’re inviting the profession to join a new, national data initiative to understand how drawings are produced across real projects — stage by stage.

Architects routinely deliver far more design output than fee structures reflect.

Yet as a profession, we have no shared, reliable dataset that captures the volume and type of drawings issued at each RIBA stage — or how this varies by project type, size, or procurement route.

Without this data, practices cannot benchmark themselves.

Clients cannot understand what they’re commissioning.

And the industry cannot meaningfully discuss fee erosion or workload expectations.

This project aims to change this by collecting drawing issue sheets from practices across the UK and building the first evidence-based model of design output.

Supporting this initiative will help inform research and analysis to create transparent, data-driven fee structures based on real architectural outputs.

This is what we need.

Close-up of a technical drawing with a wooden pencil resting on it and a metal ruler in the foreground, showing measurements and detailed engineering sketches.

How this helps.

We want to help the profession:

  • Strengthen fee negotiation

  • Demonstrate value

  • Support better brief development

  • Inform resourcing and programme planning

  • Evidence the true scale of design work

  • Benchmark drawing output realistically

  • Provide clients with transparent, data-driven explanations of workload

  • Feed directly into the digital tools we are building

Most importantly, it will give architects something they’ve never had:

a shared, empirical understanding of their own output.

We’re inviting UK architectural practices — large and small — to anonymously share drawing issue sheets from past or current projects.

These could include:

  • Drawing lists from all RIBA Stages

  • Planning issue sheets

  • Tender drawing packages

  • Construction drawings and revisions

  • Final as-built or record drawing schedules

All data will be anonymised and used solely to map drawing volumes and patterns across project types.

You do not need to provide drawings themselves — just the issue sheets or lists.

Questions we’re trying to answer.

We’ll be analysing submissions to answer the big questions the profession rarely has data for:

1. How many drawings are typically produced at each RIBA stage?

And how does this shift based on procurement, complexity, or client type?

2. What is the true ratio of output between planning, tender, and construction stages?

Is construction documentation really 3× planning — or more?

3. How much revision work is typical on UK projects?

Version control and re-issue cycles tell us a lot about hidden workload.

4. How does design output change between housing, commercial, education, and retrofit?

We suspect variation is significant — but we need to measure it.

5. Where are the systemic pinch points that drive workload and fee stress?

This data will reveal patterns that the profession feels anecdotally but never quantifies.

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How the Process Works

  • Please use the contact form below and let us know that your practice would like to contribute drawing issue sheets to the initiative.

    You don’t need to prepare anything at this stage — a short message expressing interest is enough.

  • Once we receive your details, we’ll reply with a unique, secure upload link to our encrypted Google Workspace portal.

    This upload portal is designed so contributors can only upload files — they cannot view, edit, or access submissions from other practices.

    All uploads go directly into a protected research folder managed by Enframe.

  • You can upload issue sheets from any stage of a project (PDF, Excel, screenshots, images, or ZIP files).

    We don’t need the drawings themselves — just the sheet or list.

    You may contribute:

    • One project, or many

    • Historic or current work

    • Any sector or scale

    Every contribution helps build a more accurate picture of industry-wide drawing production.

    Many drawings are in the public domain. However, you may wish to review and remove any sensitive data as per your business policy before proceeding.

  • Before any analysis begins, all information is anonymised.

    We remove practice names, project names, client details, and any other identifiable information.

    We never share documents or raw data outside Enframe.

  • Your issue sheets become part of our analysis and dataset mapping design output across the RIBA Plan of Work.

    This research directly supports the creation of a fairer, more transparent, evidence-based approach to architectural fees.

If your practice is willing to contribute drawing issue sheets, even from just one project, it will make a meaningful difference to this industry-wide effort. We’ve designed a simple, secure process that allows architectural practices to contribute drawing issue sheets while maintaining full confidentiality.

Participation takes just a few minutes.

How to Take Part in the Industry Drawing Insight Initiative

  1. Use the form below to express interest.

  2. We send you a secure upload link.

  3. You upload your issue sheet(s).

  4. We anonymise everything.

  5. Data contributes to an industry-wide insight project.