Seventh Final Plan Set Confirms Estimator Was Right To Trust None Of Them

SATIRE / FICTION

This is an original fictional story. The characters, organizations, events and dialogue are invented.

The arrival of a seventh final drawing set Wednesday confirmed a commercial roofing estimator’s longstanding working assumption that finality is a provisional condition lasting until the next attachment.

The latest set moved a roof drain, restored a drain moved in the previous set, and included a revision cloud around an area that appeared unchanged. The cloud’s purpose remained available for clarification.

“We needed to issue the final plans so everyone could keep moving,” the project coordinator said. “That doesn’t mean nobody would have anything else to add.”

The estimator’s folder now contains seven documents each described, at the time of transmission, as the one to use. Three accompanying emails explicitly disregard earlier emails. One asks recipients to disregard an email that had correctly disregarded a now-reinstated detail.

Version seven also changes a note from see detail to see revised detail. The revised detail refers readers to the original note.

An attempt to establish the controlling set produced a forwarded message with the subject FINAL PLANS and the body “See below.” Below it were six earlier assurances, each more definite than the last.

The coordinator said a new file name would help prevent confusion. The estimator received FINAL_v7_REVISED.pdf, followed eleven minutes later by FINAL_v7_REVISED_NEW.pdf, which the coordinator described as “the same thing, just corrected.”

The estimator has held the affected portion of the takeoff pending confirmation. This has been interpreted as reluctance to trust the process, despite being the only position the process has consistently supported.

A printed set remains on the desk, neatly clipped and carefully dated. Nobody proposes using it for the estimate. It is being preserved as a historical record of where the building’s drains used to be.