As-Built

A drawing recording where infrastructure was actually installed, as opposed to where it was designed to go. As-builts are the starting point for records research, and their unreliability is the reason field locating exists.

As-built quality varies enormously. Some are surveyed records captured before backfill and good enough to build to; many are a red-lined design drawing that nobody walked, and some are missing entirely. Field routing changes around obstructions, later repairs reroute segments, and additions get made by whoever was on site. Under ASCE 38-22 a utility shown only on records is Quality Level D — the lowest confidence in the standard — precisely because a record is a claim about the past, not an observation of the present.