SPEC WORD PLAY: WHEN IS A DRAWING NOT A DRAWING?

The answer seems to be “when it’s a sheet.”

The strangest little things irk me, and one of them is the use of the word “sheet” to refer to “drawing.”  You encounter “sheet” everywhere in AE conversation and writing.  Even the “Drawing List” on drawing cover pages is often titled “Sheet List.”

I confess that I’ve never heard of a problem arising out of the use of the word “sheet” on a construction project.  I’m probably the only person that’s ever noticed it.  I commented on this in a recent Northern Illinois CSI Specification Roundtable teleconference, and judging from the silence on the other end of the teleconference, the rest of the participants were decidedly underwhelmed by my concern.

But correct usage matters, especially in writing.  My schoolteacher mother and my attorney father convinced me of that.

In a conversational setting it’s fine to refer to drawings as sheets, but formal AE project communication should use the term “drawings.”

Why?  In AIA A201 – General Conditions of the Contract for Construction, the definition of the contract documents includes “drawings”, not “sheets.”

I just did a word search for “sheet” in A201. Result: zip.  The word “sheet” doesn’t cut any mustard with the wordsmiths at the AIA.  Searching for “drawing” resulted in many hits.  I stopped counting somewhere in the twenties.

I rest my case.

REVIEWING MY ANDROID PHONE

Aaron Chusid’s blog post a while back about the impact of smartphones in general, and his iPhone in particular, got me to thinking about my Android smartphone. It’s an HTC Desire from U. S. Cellular. I’m still learning how to use it. 

Although I’ve had cell phones for years, the HTC Desire is the first smartphone I’ve ever had. Years ago, In 2005, I opted Instead for a PDA, a Hewlett Packard iPAQ (sans phone) which has a pretty good calendar and to-do list, so-so document generation using Windows Mobile, clumsy synching with my PC, mediocre email functionality, and clunky internet access. Solitaire’s pretty good on it though. I used the PDA daily until I got the Android, and I just about wore it out.  Its screen is now as faded as a twenty-year-old TV.

I can’t tell you that I did an exhaustive analysis of features before I settled on an Android phone, but I considered all the possibilities for several months. I looked at and admired the iPhone, but I didn’t want to switch cell phone carriers. I also considered a Windows phone, but I didn’t want any of the older versions of Windows Mobile, and I didn’t want to wait several months for a phone equipped with the latest Windows Mobile. I was also pretty bummed out about the clumsiness of Windows Mobile on my PDA. I like Google products and iGoogle is my home page on my home desktop.  That tipped the balance toward a Google Android phone.

Since this is a personal phone, I rarely use it for business calls. Almost all of my phone usage is personal. Probably 95% of my overall usage is for time management, email, Internet browsing, news, weather, etc.  I have downloaded many apps, discarding some and retaining others.

So here are the strengths and weaknesses of this Android smartphone as I see them:

• Phone calls:  Works well.  No dropped calls. Speaker phone works great.  Easy, intuitive screen for dialing.   

• Email:  Excellent.  I use it to access my work email, personal gmail, and home email.  Attachments come through fine.

• Messaging:  Excellent.  Makes it easy to send and receive messages. 

• Internet:  A great experience.  Easy to navigate, fast, visually stunning screen.  HTC’s built-in bookmarks don’t work, though, so I downloaded an app called ChromeMarksLite which gathered the hundreds of bookmarks I’ve accumulated over the years.  The quality of the Internet experience on this device has made me even more of an Internet junkie than I was before.

• Calendar/Time Management:  Pretty good, but not as good as my old PDA. I’m determined to integrate my to-do lists with my Google calendar.  I just downloaded an app called Shuffle to help with this and I will learn how to use it soon.

• Typing:  Tiny keys on the HTC Desire's virtual keyboard make typing laborious.  The predictive text and my occasional failure to correct the Android when it assumes the wrong word, result in some hilariously incorrect words.  I almost wish I had waited for a device with a slide-out physical keyboard.

• File Management:  I’m still struggling to understand file management on this thing.  I downloaded Astro on the recommendation of a colleague at work, and I’ve been too busy or distracted to sit down and learn how to use it.  I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time managing the apps to “clear data” and “clear cache” so incoming messages don’t get blocked.  Maybe I’m just lazy, but it seems to me that this should be automatic. 

• Battery Usage:  The Achilles heel of the Android. I use this thing constantly, and it will rarely go more than 14 or 16 hours without a charge even when most of that time is just standby. I downloaded and use an “app-killer” to turn off the apps when the phone is on standby, but even so, I’m constantly checking to see how much juice is left.  Blog commenters seem to be saying that some of the battery use problem is also due to Google and the app developers constantly turning apps on to data-mine users’ location and Internet activity for purposes of targeting advertising.

• Document Generation (Writing):  Decidedly worse on the Android than the HP iPAQ, which has a virtual keyboard and a stylus.  I had hoped that the Android would work well with Google Docs, but alas, it doesn’t.  I’m using Google Docs and QuickOffice, which are both clumsy, and together with file management issues, have me rather frustrated.

• Camera:  Still camera is excellent, and works well with Google’s Picasa.  Video recorder is mediocre.

• Blogging:  Haven’t tried posting to my blog with the Android yet, but that’s on my to-do list. 

• GPS Navigation:  I attach the phone to a cell phone mount on the car’s dashboard. Maps, graphics and directions are crystal clear for a driver’s viewing, but the audio directions are kind of wimpy and hard to hear even with the audio all the way up.  Directions are pretty reliable except when the destination is in a strip mall or on a side street the GPS doesn’t recognize.

Bottom Line:  I’ve had the HTC Desire Android phone for about five months now and I give it a B-.

LINKS EVERYWHERE

When the Northern Illinois Chapter of CSI was founded 28 years ago, the Chapter newsletter was named the CSI LINK.

Richard Ray, one of the founding members of the Chapter, said in a talk with Chapter members last May that the newsletter name was chosen to reflect the links between professional and industry members, i.e. members working as design professionals, and members working on the industry or product side of the business.

Rich and his colleagues really got the name right. Their objective of emphasizing the links between professional and industry members was laudable. (For a view of how the professional/industry dialogue is playing out now, click here to read Sheldon Wolfe’s articles about the upcoming ballot proposition dealing with CSI membership classifications.)

In addition to the links the Chapter founders had in mind 28 years ago, other links abound in the AE business.
• Drawings are inextricably linked to specifications to form construction contract documents.
• Soon it will be common for information in project spec files to be linked to project drawing files with interoperable software, and combined in the Building Information Model (BIM).
• Integrated Project Delivery contract arrangements seek to deal with the age-old adversarial relationships between Owners, Contractors and Design Professionals by linking the principals together in a cooperative agreement.
• The CSI LINK newsletter itself is now distributed primarily as a PDF document. When each issue is ready, our electronic document Chair Pete Dinschel sends out an email message with a link to the newsletter.
• Many industry magazines and newsletters keep us informed by sending out emails with headlines and brief synopses of articles which the reader can fully access by clicking a link.
• Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as Yul Brynner’s character the King of Siam said in The King and I.

Searching for an appropriate metaphor for these links, I first thought of a chain with links. Linear, simple, one link fastened to the next.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that the linkage we’re dealing with now is multi-dimensional, sort of like the structural members of a geodesic dome or a space frame of some kind.

MEANINGLESS FILE NAMES: DON’T GET ME STARTED…

How many times have you received a file with a nonsensical name?  It’s usually sent to you by someone who doesn’t take the time to put much information in the email subject line, either.

Something like:

• digitalimager@xyzncdksjhuhg.com_20101110_1030745*
• or supercallifragillisticpro.doc

 What can it possibly be? 

• A spec section from a consulting engineering firm?
• A PDF including several spec sections?
• A PDF including several drawings of the food service equipment for that cafeteria remodeling you’ve been working on?
• The geotechnical report for your new hospital addition?
• A manufacturer’s guide spec for a product you want to specify?
• Meeting minutes for an upcoming project?
• The Magna Carta?

Please have a little consideration for future users/readers of the document.  Choose a file name that reflects the contents of the document.  It’s not hard to rename a document, I promise.

If you don’t, I probably will, especially if the document is to become part of one of our Project Manuals.  Most of our Project Manuals are now being distributed in combined PDF form as well as hard copy.  We enable bookmarks in the combined PDF to make it easy to navigate through the document, so it’s important that each document have a name that makes sense, and that enables it to be put in proper order corresponding to the Table of Contents.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

As a colleague and I at the office were discussing the trials and tribulations of being architects, he reminded me about the Monty Python architect sketch. 

Whatever you do, don’t view this just before an important presentation to a potential client.