Define the document index
Start with a structured index that lists every chapter the MDB must contain. The exact list depends on your contract and applicable codes (ASME, PED, EN 1090, NORSOK), but a typical pressure-vessel or skid MDB has 8 to 12 main chapters: project information, materials, welding, NDT, dimensional inspection, pressure / leak test, drawings, certificates, and as-built documentation. Each chapter needs sub-sections, owners and revision status. Without a clear index up front, every document review later becomes a search.
Assign chapter owners
An MDB is a multi-author document. Welding records come from the welding engineer, NDT reports from the inspection company, MTRs from the material supplier, drawings from engineering. Assigning each chapter or sub-chapter to a named owner — internal team member or external supplier — turns the MDB from a single person's burden into a coordinated workflow. This is also the moment where you decide which chapters will be filled by suppliers and what evidence each supplier needs to deliver.
Collect documents and track delivery
Each chapter owner uploads the required PDFs as the project progresses. The hardest part is tracking what has been delivered, what is missing, and which version is current. Quality teams traditionally do this with an Excel tracker plus shared folders. The result is well-known: lost emails, conflicting versions, WeTransfer links that expired, and the document controller spending the last week of the project chasing missing files.
Manage revisions: IFR, IFA, Approved
Engineering documents move through a formal revision workflow: Issued for Review (IFR), Issued for Approval (IFA) and finally Approved. Each transition is a transmittal — a formal hand-over with a document list, revision numbers and a date. In a manual workflow this is a separate Excel sheet. In a purpose-built MDB platform every upload is automatically tagged with revision status and the transmittal is generated from the live document list, with no double bookkeeping.
Compile the final bookmarked PDF
Once every chapter is complete and approved, the documents need to be assembled into one final delivery PDF. That PDF must contain a cover page with project metadata, a clickable table of contents, bookmarks for every chapter and sub-chapter, and consistent page numbering. Doing this manually with Adobe Acrobat or a PDF merger for a 300- to 1,500-page MDB typically takes several hours per project — often four to sixteen, depending on document count and revision frequency — and the work is repeated for every minor revision.
Submit for client review and approval
The final MDB goes to the client for formal approval. Traditional workflows use email and WeTransfer, with comments returned by markup or in a separate Excel sheet. In MDB Builder, clients sign in with Microsoft or Google, or create an account using their email address before reviewing the dossier. They can comment in-context per chapter and return a formal approval signal that closes the project — and unlocks the final payment milestone.