If you really want to build good buildings, you owe it to yourself to get involved with both Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) and United States Green Building Council (USGBC). (Full disclosure: I belong to both Northern Illinois CSI and the Rockford/Northern Illinois Branch of USGBC-Illinois.)
Why both organizations? Because there are at least two critical aspects of conceiving good buildings:
- Knowing what a good building is - the case for USGBC membership. Good building goes way beyond the minimum requirements of building codes and regulations. A really good building is a high performance building. USGBC with its LEED Green Building Rating System is the most important player in the constantly evolving ideal of high performance buildings.
- Creating good, biddable, buildable, change order-resistant construction documents for that building - the case for CSI membership. CSI’s four C’s (clear, concise, correct, and complete) aren’t just a cliche. The four C’s pervade every aspect of CSI’s educational and certification efforts. As a CSI member, you’ll benefit enormously from CSI’s educational programs about construction documentation, their professional certification programs, and the camaraderie of contract-document geeks. If you’re in the AEC business,and you’re an i-dotting and t-crossing kind of person, CSI is the place for you.
What you’ll find at CSI and USGBC: Committed, opinionated, talented, AEC participants who live and breathe the building design and construction business. They’re generous with their time and advice. They’re compulsive communicators, especially the CSI blogging and tweeting community. Want to be plugged in to what’s happening in this business? Get involved with CSI and USGBC. Then start blogging and tweeting about your particular part of the AEC industry and you’ll get all the communication and involvement you can handle.
What you won’t find at CSI and USGBC: Easy answers. Nothing’s ever simple in building design and construction, and if you ask a question of a CSI member and/or a USGBC member, you’re likely to get a complicated, nuanced answer that requires you to think pretty hard about how to apply the advice. But that’s why you got involved in this business after all, isn’t it? You want to use your head.
Here’s an upcoming opportunity to see both organizations at work, and meet practitioners from both organizations. Put GREENER BY DESIGN Conference and EXPO on your calendar:
- Who: Sponsored by CSI Chicago and USGBC-Illinois.
- What: Continuing education seminars, product show, all the networking and benchmarking you can handle, and a happy hour.
- If you’re a construction product rep, you can exhibit your products.
- If you’re a designer or builder of the built environment, you can learn about the latest products, and get continuing education credits.
- When: October 4, 2012, 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM.
- Where: Northwest suburbs of Chicago, at the Carpenter Training Center in Elk Grove Village, IL.
- Why: Because you will benefit from the education and networking. And because the other attendees will benefit from your participation at the event.
- Registration: http://www.greener-by-design.org/
The other day I was indulging my Internet addiction when I came across a link to a new document about a topic I’ve been ignoring for years, COBie.
COBie is an acronym for Construction Operations Building information exchange.
The new document, a draft of The COBie Guide, 2012-06-07 is available for download at http://www.wbdg.org/news/news.php?a=cobie-guide-released. It’s free, so naturally I couldn’t resist it.
For those of you who have ignored COBie as I had, the document’s executive summary characterizes COBie as “...the United States standard for the exchange of information related to manage (should be managing, I think) building assets.” They also say “COBie and this Guide may be thought of as a performance-based specification for the delivery of building information.”
COBie data spreadsheet files, after being fleshed out with detailed product information developed during the design and construction process, become information deliverables to the proud owner of the new building. COBie data files start out as spreadsheets of project information in the early phases of design, then progress through Design Development, Construction Documents, then to what the report calls Beneficial Occupancy, culminating in what the report calls As-Built files. Spec writers have long since deep-sixed "As-Built" and switched to the term "Field Record" to describe the final annotated specs and drawings.
So these COBie "deliverables" are sort of like electronic field record documents combined with O&M data files, I guess.
I figured I’d have to learn about this subject sooner or later, so I might as well delve into it now.
Since I’m a spec writer, the first question that occurred to me was “Where do I specify COBie deliverables?” I figured the Specorati had already worked it out and I could just look up the answer.
So I looked in my usual places:
- MasterFormat 2011 Update: No mention of COBie; it's not even listed in the key word index.
- CSI Practice Guide Glossary of Terms: Ditto.
- AIA MasterSpec: I did a word search for COBie in what seemed to me to be the most likely places, Sections 017823 - OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE DATA, and 017839 - PROJECT RECORD DOCUMENTS. No luck.
- Then I looked at similar Division 01 spec sections in the Unified Facilities Guide Spec (UFGS) on WBDG.org, figuring that since the GSA is in the forefront of BIM, BIM-related standards, and interoperability in general, I’d find something there. Same result.
I guess specifying COBie deliverables is such a new topic that the Specorati haven’t had a chance to formalize a niche in MasterFormat yet.
My money’s on Section 017823 - OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE DATA. Your thoughts?
In any case, I recommend you download and read The COBie Guide. COBie is part of your future in the AEC industry.
PS: Since my firm has had some difficulty getting contractors to be diligent about other non-traditional but still contractual tasks such as LEED submittals, I’d suggest requiring an up-to-date log of the contractor's COBie data with each month’s pay request.
Now I think I’ll review The COBie Guide and send the authors my comments.
If you're still unclear about the big-picture value of BIM, its value as a planning tool, and its attractiveness to building owners, you owe it to yourself to check out some of Kimon Onuma's crystal-clear, fast-paced presentations on BIMStorm.com.
Here's a particularly good one: http://vimeo.com/album/1482178/video/21787645 It's about 90 minutes long, so settle in with an open mind and a cool drink of some sort, and be prepared to learn something.
Then, just for fun, as sort of an intellectual dessert, click on this video , accessible from the blog on BIMStorm.com, of views of the earth from the International Space Station.
Now if I could just figure out how construction specifications fit into the big picture....
In architecture, engineering, and construction, “spec” is a slangy, informal word that is completely understandable in spoken language, but sometimes muddles meaning when used in business writing.
In a construction project context such as a meeting or a phone call, it’s easily understood when you say “I’ll spec a coiling steel door”, or “Include an allowance for face brick in the spec”.
In the first case, it’s clear that spec means specify. In the second case, it’s clear that spec means specifications.
But things get clumsy when you try to use “spec”, and variations of it, in writing.
When you write “specs” in a sentence, the reader may have to pause to figure out whether the intended meaning is “specifies” or the plural of “specifications”.
And it gets even odder with the use of past tense. Instead of saying “specified” writers will sometimes resort to “specd”, “spec’d”, “speced”, or funniest of all “specked.” In each case, the reader has to pause to figure out what the writer means.
Do yourself and your readers a favor: In written communication, use the full words “specify” and “specifications.”
