The building plans for a project are designed to provide the trades and services with general information relating to the design, structure and dimensions of the building.

But they don't provide sufficient details for the specialist installers to carry out their own work on the project.

Electricians, plumbers, kitchen and bathroom installers, tilers, floor layers and various other trades still need to have their own specialised plans.

These indicate the client's selection of products to be installed and the positioning of service outlets, trims and other features.

In the case of floor layers, these sorts of details are shown on a floor covering plan.

Parts of a floor covering plan

A floor covering plan consists of a proportional sketch or scale drawing of the floor area, together with information on:

• subfloor preparations and underlays required
  
  
• floor coverings to be installed, including product names, patterns and colours
  
  
• positioning of seams and joins
  
  
• direction of the pile
  
  
• types of accessories used
  
  
• any special features of the job.

At right is a simple example of a floor covering plan, showing the seams, pile direction and measurements in millimetres.

The abbreviation 'w/w' refers to the overall 'wall to wall' dimensions of the room.

You can see that the dimensions are written on the inside, directly beside the wall they refer to.

This is because a floor layer needs to know all measurements of a room when they're working out the best fit for a covering material, including the dimensions of any recesses, projections, and returns.

For more information on floor covering plans, see the Planning and costing unit. You'll find various lessons relating to the different components of a floor covering plan and details on how to produce them.