Technical Director Opinion Poll

DRU

Active Member
I have a couple questions for fellow technical directors and/or shop managers and/or those with similar positions:

1. To what degree, after you receive designer drawings from the designer, do you allow your carpenters to offer opinions on how to build a show, before you start drafting and budgeting? Whom do you consult before and during budgeting and drafting concerning how to build a show?

2. Do your carpenters build from designer drawings, or does everything in a show have to be drafted by the TD before going out on the floor?

3. If a problem comes up on the floor with how something is to be built in your shop, is the carpenter allowed to make changes without checking with the TD, or is checking with the TD required? Is there a middle ground?

4. Does the TD have the final say in how scenery is to be built? Does a carpenter have any say in how scenery is to be built? If yes, to what degree?

5. Do you consider your scenic artist and the paint shop a separate shop that you work with, with the scenic artist as the head of that department, or is the paint shop a sub-section of the scene shop, and you oversee both? Are there pros and cons for each setup?

6. Before a show is budgeted and drafted, how much interaction do you have with your scenic artist? Do you talk about scheduling before, during, or after a show is budgeted in the red and drafted?

Thanks in advance.
 
note on all the budgeting questions, I don't touch the numbers. Our sales guy and my boss work out the numbers long before I see the design.


1. Carps don't see the design until I hand them a drawing, we're usually too busy to have a pow wow about the new drawings that just came in. Once I've got stuff drafted, I do a little presentation to whomever will be building it, to make sure they get how it all works together with other scenic elements.

2. Building from designer drawings leaves too much room for error, because designers aren't generating construction drawings, they're generating renderings to convey what they want it to look like, not how its built. I've seen some really bizarre "build it like this" notes from designers that I usually black out with a sharpie. Even overall dimensions like a wall that's 97" wide. Designers who went to Yale also seem to think plywood is 5' wide. Giant flying walls built in multiples of five. Its pretty weird.

3. Carps have to check with me before making a change. Too often a change on the fly will affect the fit and finish of the unit, and we have to go back and redo something.

4. In my company's structure, my boss (the owner) has final say in how its built. I've been here long enough that I know how he prefers things, so its usually a smooth process. Of course there are times where I send a shiny new drawing to the floor and a carp will come back with an incredulous look on his face and say something like, "its ridiculous to build it this way", and I look at the drawing and go, "yep, I'll redraw that".

5/6. In my company's structure, the paint dept is equal to, rather than under, the fabrication dept. They do a lot of stuff I never touch (painted drops, treatments on bought items like chairs/tables). I usually head over and talk to the charge about a new job and get a rough order of events for the different elements in it. Like, unit x has a heavy treatment, build that first so we can get paint on it earlier. Or build these three things all at once cause they all the get the same treatment...
 
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I come from the land of software development, where Agile, devops, and breaking down walls between departments is the big culture shift happening right now. I see few reasons to run the show any differently.

1. This is a high school shop, so carps don't have the expertise to give much input. When we do have experienced kids who we think are capable, we might delegate the design of a component to them as a learning opportunity.

2. The role of "Designer" isn't one person for us, both the TD and the Director collaborate, but the TD is ultimately the one providing the drawings. The level of detail could be anywhere from a rough sketch to a detailed plan.

3. Case-by-case. I'd rather work with carps capable of solving their own problems than ones who are constantly bugging me. I encourage people to come bug me, but they need to understand that my answer might be "IDK you figure it out, I trust you".

4. Everyone's always encouraged to offer their opinions, but for the sake of getting things done on time, what the TD says trumps all. Ideally the TD doesn't have to be a dictator though.

5. Scenic artist is the TD in our case, so they oversee both. It's all in the same shop, and pieces are passing back and forth between carps and painters all the time.

6. Not a lot of intense budgeting going on here. Things change, set pieces get added, and set pieces get dropped. We're a school, so there's also the 'mistake factor' which adds a lot of variability to the cost.
 
I run a commercial shop, with 4 full-time staff and overhire as needed. We don't exactly have a TD, but ultimately I'm responsible for the product, and am hands-on for the higher-order technical stuff. We've really been working on refining our process from bid through engineering and build. When we receive plans to bid, the account rep breaks them down into units and identifies the big-picture materials and tasks needed to make each unit, and estimates the cost of those. We then have a bid meeting with the rep, shop foreman, sometimes charge artist, and myself to review and refine into a bid. We don't have to solve all the engineering, just allow enough time and materials to give us room to solve it if we get the job.

Once contracted, the same team plus the ATD/draftsman meet to more carefully plan how to build each unit: materials, methods, solving problems. We produce sketches that the ATD will then take and integrate with the design drawings to produce shop drawings. When those drawings come out, they are reviewed by all parties and then go to the floor to build.

The foreman makes most of the day-to-day choices on build details and exerts a high level of supervision over the carpenters. Only big problems or questions would get kicked back "upstairs." The account rep keeps an eye on the project from the client's point of view, and has to make the cost/quality judgement calls.

The question of building from design drawings is one I've wrestled with for a long time. It's a "back-in-my-day" situation. As a carp, I always built from design drawings, with some sketching from the TD. I've come around to the fact that in our situation, it pays to invest in drafting very carefully, at least to the level of framing. I think scenic design has evolved to be more engineering-heavy and just more complicated. At this same time, the people with the skills to figure out how to build things are more likely to go into CAD than carpentry, so I think you just have to solve the problems on the computer. What's frustrating is our deadlines are so often so tight, and when we get a contract I always want to get it right onto the floor. Waiting for drawings is the biggest choke point in the process. I suppose more draftsmen would be the answer there.
 
so I think you just have to solve the problems on the computer. What's frustrating is our deadlines are so often so tight, and when we get a contract I always want to get it right onto the floor. Waiting for drawings is the biggest choke point in the process. I suppose more draftsmen would be the answer there.

Solving problems on the computer is the way to go imo. A screwup can be fixed with a few keystrokes, rather than 2 hours of fabrication time. Having every piece of material drawn out eliminates a great deal of guesswork or on the fly decisions on the floor. I think it's been about year since I taught myself 3d cad, and my turnaround time has dropped significantly. The benefit of drawing the unit once, then blowing out ortho views that are all accurate to each other is enormous.

Of course, doing work with cruise lines, we build a lot of the same stuff over and over for all the different ships, so having a huge level of detail in the drawings keeps things consistent when you have to built that thing again 2 years later.... For one off productions or events, building from designer drawings isn't a bad idea.
 

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