DS1140 templates: what can you use yourself?

A good template gives an overview of what information a B2, B3 or A5 document needs to contain, and ensures you don't miss a whole field or a whole type of documentation. That's useful, especially if you've never prepared this documentation before and need to understand the structure before getting started.

A template can also work as a checklist along the way - a quick glance at whether every expected field is filled in before the document is sent to the structural engineer.

The template doesn't know which structural class your building falls under, or which control points are actually relevant for your specific structure. Nor can it assess whether the control scope is sufficient - that requires professional judgement, not just a filled-in form.

This is exactly where many self-prepared control plans fall short: the structure is fine, but the content is either too generic to use in practice, or doesn't match the building's actual structural class.

A common situation is that a building owner or smaller contractor finds a free template online, fills it in as best they can, and sends it to the structural engineer - only to get it back with comments that the control scope doesn't match the structural class, or that several control points are described too loosely.

From there, just as much time is often spent fixing the template as it would have taken to get it done correctly from the start - plus the extra delay it's cost waiting for the structural engineer's response along the way.

If you're unsure of the structural class, if an earlier draft has already been rejected, or if the building is approaching handover without a coherent plan, it's usually faster to have the documentation prepared by someone who knows the requirements, than to fix a self-prepared plan multiple times.

That's also true if you have several buildings underway at once and don't have the capacity to follow the control plan closely along the way - here, a dedicated advisor can often save more time than a template ever can.

A smaller contractor used a free online template for the B2 plan of an extension in structural class KK3. The template had the right headings and fields, but described the control scope generically - "spot-check control" - which didn't meet the requirement for systematic control in that class.

The structural engineer sent the plan back with a specific comment about the scope, and the contractor had to revise the entire control-scope section before the plan could be approved - a process that took longer than it would have taken to get the scope right from the start.

If the building is simple and falls under a low structural class, a template can be a sensible starting point - provided the content is still reviewed by someone experienced in what the structural engineer typically looks for. The template doesn't replace professional judgement, but it can structure the work around it.

Before sending a B2, B3 or A5 document based on a template, it makes sense to check three things: whether the structural class is correctly stated, whether each control point is described specifically enough to be carried out without further questions, and whether responsibility for each point is named. These three are the most common reasons template-based documents get sent back.

If you're unsure about one or more of these, it's often faster to get a short professional review before sending the document, than to wait for the structural engineer's response and fix it afterwards.

The most robust approach is to see a template as one tool among several - useful for structuring the work, but not sufficient on its own to ensure the documentation meets the requirements. Combined with a short professional review before the document is sent to the structural engineer, a template can still save time without compromising quality.

For buildings in higher structural classes, or wherever you're unsure of anything in the process, the time a template saves at the start is often spent again if the plan is sent back and needs fixing.

If your organisation repeatedly works with the same type of building - for example always single-family homes in the same structural class - it can be a good investment to have a custom template built once, rather than adapting a generic, free template from scratch every time. The investment typically pays off from as early as the second or third project.

If several partners - for example a main contractor and several regular subcontractors - share the same template across projects, it pays to agree a shared process for how the template is updated when one of the parties finds an improvement. Without that agreement, the parties risk each working with their own, gradually diverging version of what was originally a shared template.

A template that has previously been approved without comment by a structural engineer is a valuable reference point for future projects of a similar type. It makes sense to actively keep that version, rather than only retaining the template in its original, unapproved form - it's the approved version that actually shows what works in practice.

If you're working with a structural type not covered by the most common free templates - unusual steel structures or non-standard foundation solutions, for instance - a generic template may need significant adaptation rather than simply being filled in as-is. Here it helps to involve the design engineer early in the adaptation, so the template actually covers the control points relevant to that particular structure.

Before adopting a free, generic template, it helps to check it against the specific structural class and complexity of your project, rather than assuming it will fit without adjustment. A template built for a simpler structure will often be missing control points that matter for a more complex one, and the gap isn't always obvious until the structural engineer reviews the plan.

When the same template is used by several site teams on different projects, small local edits tend to accumulate over time, until no single version can really be called the master copy. Keeping one clearly labelled master template, updated centrally, avoids this drift and makes sure every team is working from the same, current version.

After a project closes, a short review of how well the template held up in practice pays off - which sections needed frequent adjustment, and which worked as intended. Feeding that review back into the master template keeps it improving project over project, rather than staying frozen in its original form indefinitely.

When several people edit the same template over the life of a project, you'll want to keep a simple version log - who changed what, and when - rather than relying on file names alone to track which copy is current. A missing version log is a common reason two team members end up working from slightly different versions without realising it. It's good practice to store that version log alongside the template itself, so anyone opening the file later can immediately see which revision they are looking at and why it changed.