For updating drawings with redlines on a school project, which candidate is most appropriate?

• A. Senior project manager with decades of experience
• B. Lower-level intern with 1 year experience and low hourly wage
• C. External consultant with no prior knowledge
• D. Part-time admin

Answer: (B)

Matching the task to someone who has enough drawing literacy to interpret plans and apply markups, while keeping costs reasonable, is the key idea. The intern with about a year of experience has demonstrated enough familiarity with drawings to understand what needs to change and how to annotate redlines correctly. They can follow standard redline procedures and CAD or PDF markups, and their work can be supervised by a more experienced team member to ensure accuracy. This makes them capable of producing timely, consistent updates without the higher cost and potential bottlenecks that come with relying on a senior project manager for routine edits or bringing in someone with no project context.

The senior project manager, while highly skilled, isn’t the best fit for this routine task because it’s not the kind of work that requires their level of oversight, and delegating to them would add unnecessary cost and could slow progress. An external consultant with no prior knowledge would face a steep onboarding curve and higher risk of missteps due to a lack of project-specific context. A part-time admin typically lacks the technical ability to accurately read and modify drawings, which increases the chance of errors and coordination problems.

So, the intern strikes the right balance: capable enough to update drawings accurately, cost-effective, and workable under supervision to maintain project progress.