THE "OTHER" SPEC CURMUDGEON

From the archives...

This is from an article I wrote for the Northern Illinois CSI LINK newsletter in 2004.

Let me be the first to admit that the AEC business's finest curmudgeon is Sheldon Wolfe, who writes about architects, the built environment, and CSI, with unusual clarity and vision, and one of whose series of articles is called, I think, "Curmudgeon's Corner". Visit his blogs at swconstructivethoughts.blogspot.com and swspecificthoughts.blogspot.com.

But before Sheldon defined curmudgeonliness as a brand, yours truly tried to have a little fun with the word.

Every once in a while, NPR's morning show features Sports Illustrated's Frank DeFord as the Sports Curmudgeon, a gravelly voiced, more irascible version of Andy Rooney. The Sports Curmudgeon rants in the third person about things that irritate him in the world of sports. I couldn't resist the temptation to create and assume the persona of the Spec Curmudgeon.

PROJECT MANUAL SIZE: The Spec Curmudgeon is fed up with people in the construction industry who whine that Project Manuals are too big.  Too many pages, they say. Nobody will ever read it all, they say. The bidders will be scared away from the job by the thick spec book. Bids won't be competitive because we're too bureaucratic, we specify too much detail, and we're asking contractors for too many submittals. Smart aleck critics convey their opinions about the usefulness of specifications to the Spec Curmudgeon by trotting out a tenth-generation photocopy of that time-worn cartoon showing a construction site outhouse with the words "Damn, we're out of specs" in a speech balloon over the outhouse.

To this, the Spec Curmudgeon respectfully says: HORSEFEATHERS! When, during construction of a project, the drawings are found to be hopelessly inconsistent and don't agree with the spec, the Spec Curmudgeon is asked: "Hey, where did you spec that provision about the greatest quantity or highest quality of products in the event of a contradiction in the construction documents?" When jobsite workmanship is questionable, the Spec Curmudgeon is asked to comb the Project Manual and dredge

up relevant industry standards to which the contractor may be held. To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen's remark about budgets: "A word here, a provision there, and pretty soon you're talking a pretty big book." The Spec Curmudgeon thinks that a construction project is a crapshoot and you never know when you're going to need a particular combination of words. The Spec Curmudgeon says: "Better safe than sorry when editing the Project Manual."

THE LACK OF A CONSISTENT FORMAT FOR CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS: It's hard to get the specs right when every AE firm (and sometimes every architect within a firm) organizes drawings differently.

The Spec Curmudgeon thinks this problem is the bane of the architectural business, causing many mistakes and hurting AE firm profitability.  Specifiers have to interface their specifications with the work of outside consultants of all types, tenant architects, associated firms, and corporate clients, among others.  When trying to coordinate with another firm's drawings, you never know whether they're going to show some particular type of information on elevations, or schedules, or abbreviations, or in notes of some sort. What the Spec Curmudgeon finds even worse is the use of so-called "keyed notes". This method serially numbers products or finishes and shows the numbers on an elevation or plan. The Spec Curmudgeon's problem is that the numbers usually bear no relation to the objects or actions they describe. What's even worse, some firms use separate lists for each drawing in a project, so that for example Keynote 15 on a floor plan may refer to a dock seal, while on a sheet of interior elevations, Keynote 15 may be a dishwasher.

This lack of drawing consistency has to be as big a problem for construction contractors and subcontractors as it is for specifiers. Cost estimators in particular must be driven to distraction by the lack of consistency in organization of construction drawings.  The Spec Curmudgeon thinks  the solution to this sorry state of affairs is for everybody in the design professions to finally get on the bandwagon and use the National CAD Standard and other drawing formats promoted by CSI. Specifications long ago benefited from wide acceptance and use of CSI organizational formats. It's time for people who produce drawings to adopt the same degree of self-discipline and use the industry's common standards.

OBSOLETE MANUFACTURERS AND PRODUCTS: Construction product manufacturers never tell the Spec Curmudgeon or other specifiers when they're going out of business, and rarely tell us when they're discontinuing a product line.  They just abandon their obsolete catalogs, leaving them to mislead our professional staff and clutter our already overcrowded library shelves. The Spec Curmudgeon thinks that the industry's magazines should include in every issue a corporate obituary page to alert the industry to the passing of obsolete manufacturers and brands.

OTHER ISSUES: With any encouragement at all, the Spec Curmudgeon may at some time in the future rant about other irritants such as the abominable state of the news industry's coverage of construction issues, or the tendency of architectural magazines to focus on the most impractical designs and to use trendy, twitchy, hard-to read graphic styles.

BORROWING TROUBLE

Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble but I can't help wondering whether the data portions of BIM deliverables will present yet another opportunity for contradictions to sneak into contract documents.  That is, will it be possible for data in the model or links to contradict information in specifications or drawings?

It's already a significant challenge to coordinate drawings and specifications.

When AE deliverables include things like COBie data, will there be new opportunities to inadvertently introduce contradictions?

I recognize that BIM, and BIM/spec integration, are inevitable. I'm even convinced it's a good thing.

It's just been my experience that every solution carries with it the seed of a new problem.

CHANNELING ANDY ROONEY

As an occasional watcher of the CBS TV news magazine 60 Minutes, I always enjoyed listening to Andy Rooney’s commentaries.  Andy would grumble about something or other that irked him at the end of the show in A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney.    

As a wordsmith specializing in construction documents, I see things that annoy me in the writing I review and edit.  Here are a few of my pet peeves:

Using the word luminaries (plural of luminary) when you mean luminaires (plural of luminaire). People mistake “luminaries” for the plural form of the word “luminaire”. When writing about lighting in the built environment, you need to use “luminaire” and “luminaires”, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a complete lighting unit.”  By contrast, a “luminary”, Merriam-Webster says, is “a person of prominence or brilliant achievement, or a body that gives light; especially : one of the celestial bodies.”

Leaving parentheses in text makes it look as though the text hasn't been edited or is still tentative. As in:

• “This Addendum consists of (2) pages (plus materials itemized herein).”
• “Provide (3) hard copies and (1) PDF copy.”

text in all lower case:  i see this a lot in blog posts and in comments to blog posts or news articles on the internet. i get the impression that the author feels it’s so critically important to get the ideas out of his head and into pixels that he just doesn’t have time to press the shift key to capitalize a word. i suppose this worked for e. e. cummings’ poetry.  i never understood poetry, anyway.  but it doesn’t cut the mustard for me.  see what i mean?

Cross-referenced specification sections that don’t exist in the project. Seek these references out and kill them.  All they do is confuse everybody.

“Do not use explosives”. A provision occasionally left in project earthwork specifications.  I’ve taken this out of our office master specifications. It’s totally unnecessary to say it, because almost no building projects have circumstances where anyone would even consider using explosives.  Leaving this requirement in a project specification is like admitting “I really didn’t read this spec, much less edit it.” Kablooie!

WATER TABLES

Architectural lingo is full of wonderfully colorful terms.

One of these is water table, which, if you recall, can have two completely different meanings.

If you’re talking about a water table in the sense of ground water, Wikipedia says:

The water table is the surface where the water pressure head is equal to the atmospheric pressure (where gauge pressure = 0). It may be conveniently visualized as the 'surface' of the subsurface materials that are saturated with groundwater in a given vicinity. However, saturated conditions may extend above the water table as surface tension holds water in some pores below atmospheric pressure. Individual points on the water table are typically measured as the elevation that the water rises to in a well screened in the shallow groundwater.

If you’re talking about a water table as an architectural element, Wikipedia says:

A water table is a masonry architectural feature that consists of a projecting course that deflects water running down the face of a building away from lower courses or the foundation. A water table may be found near the base of a wall or at a transition between materials, such as from stone to brick.

I love the english language. And architecture. And specification writing. No other profession offers entertainment like this without having to pay for it.

USE GOOGLE EARTH TO HELP EDIT SITE CLEARING SPECIFICATIONS

Time schedules for production of construction documents seem to be getting less generous with each passing year. It’s often necessary to start project specifications before the rest of the design team has resolved the design, let alone committed the design to paper.  Or to pixels.

A prime example of the challenges a spec writer faces in writing about things that haven’t been drawn yet is specifying site clearing (Section 31 10 00 - SITE CLEARING).  

Since site clearing, as a work result, is just the absence of site improvements that formerly occupied the building site, even a pretty decent set of site drawings of the new site improvement construction may not show all of what has to be cleared from the site.

Talk to the project design team, you say.  Well, sometimes team members are available to help scope out what’s required to be cleared from the site.  But not always.  They take vacations or spend hours in high-level do-not-interrupt meetings.  Or they may not know much about the existing site, especially if the client isn’t conscientious about keeping multiple design consultants fully informed about project requirements.

So what to do?

Google Earth may be of some assistance. Type in the project address and Google Earth will fly you to your site.

On a recent project, I got some assistance in editing Section 31 10 00 by viewing images of the site on Google Earth.  Here’s part of what I found:

• The existing site has trees that are in the footprint of the new building and must be removed.  There are no existing trees outside of the new building footprint.  So I don’t have to specify tree protection during building construction.
• There are existing sidewalks and asphalt paving which must be removed because they’re in the footprint of the new building.
• Ditto for an existing monument sign and parking lot lighting.

Google Earth isn’t perfect.  Buildings, trees, and vehicles are weirdly flattened in the aerial view, and sometimes the aerial view doesn’t agree with the associated street view.  But it’s one more tool spec writers can use to determine what to specify.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO BUILD GOOD BUILDINGS...

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/

WHERE TO SPECIFY CONSTRUCTORS' CONTRIBUTION TO COBie DELIVERABLES?

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.