SpecWords

Floor Slab Flatness and Levelness

2010-07-27T10:00:00Z

Flatness, Levelness, F-Numbers, Straightedge: What do the numbers mean? Recent changes to ACI 117 provide new procedures for straightedge measurements for floor slab flatness. Under the revised standard, 1/8 inch in 10 feet is not a standard option. Learn what each term means and how to specify floor slab tolerances in accordance with industry standards for each floor surface classification.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download A1030-Floor Slab Flatness & Levelness 10.07.01.

Share your opinions and comments about this month's Tech Tips, by leaving a comment, here.

July News Bulletin

2010-07-14T10:00:00Z

This month Conspectus' News Bulletin highlights news about:

Modification of Contract Documents - methods and terms matter.
IBC 2009 Code Changes - selected highlights with substantial impact.
Electronic Construction Submittals - web-based project management advantages.
Submittal Lists - quickly checking the contractor's list.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download the July News Bulletin.

Share your opinion about this month's News Bulletin, by leaving a comment, here.

Collecting Project Spec Data - What Works?

2010-07-05T15:04:54Z

The July 1st CSI Specifying Practice Group meeting focused on how to collect project data required to write specifications. Group members Louis Medcalf, FCSI, CCS of Gresham, Smith & Partners and Patricia Gallup, RA, CSI, CCS of PSA-Dewberry, and group leader David Stutzman all shared examples of tools they have used and discussed the benefits of each. The sample documents will be available for download at the CSI blog. Here is a summary.

Louis Medcalf showed a table of Project Decisions by Phase. The table includes a column for pre-design, and each design phase for a construction project. Most interesting is the row in the table titled "Design Purpose." Each of the table entries relates directly to the phase purpose. And a goal is stated for some table entries at various design phases. Imagine the cost management goal for DD phase is to have sufficient information to establish a GMP. The corresponding construction information goal is to complete all product decisions affecting cost.

Noble goals, indeed! And consistent with the AIA Owner-Architect Agreement documents. Medcalf noted the table is used to help manage projects and the information that is created and documented at each phase. Stutzman interjected that recently it seemed that CD phase definition has changed. Instead of Construction Documents, it seems to be Continue Designing. Medcalf indicated delayed design decisions can be costly especially when significant design revisions are required as projects near completion.

Stutzman demonstrated a project table of contents in Microsoft Excel format that Conspectus creates when proposals are issued and then refines as projects progress through design. The table of contents includes a description of what is believed to be included in each spec section. Additional information, such as that found in basis of design documents, is included in separate columns as it become available. The file is distributed to the architects with notes about what data they must furnish. The architects use a separate column to respond to comments and questions and to add product selection data. The contents is a master document that uses Excel's auto filter function to quickly "edit" the file to show only the subject that are appropriate, without deleting any information.

Patricia Gallup showed a checklist in Microsoft Excel format that she uses with PSA-Dewberry's project architects. She explained the form is 21 pages long, and there are many selections to be made to complete the form. She has used the form successfully as a starting point to begin drafting the specifications. However, Patricia did report there is some reluctance to completing the form. Patricia is considering revising the form so it can be completed more efficiently as an electronic document.

Stutzman demonstrated a second checklist using Microsoft Word. The checklist was created for a client that builds a single building type at many locations. The file is actually a form using checkboxes, fill-in-the-blanks and drop-down menus added to the file using the Forms toolbar. The owner required the project architects to complete the checklist electronically. Having the owner make the demand of the architects ensured the form was completed for every project. Once completed, a macro is used to compare the form to the default status. Changes the architects make are displayed as red text to ensure the changes are easily found. This allows the client's standard specifications to be edited quickly to mach the checklist.

There seems to be no single answer to the question of how to collect project data or what tools to use. There are multiple approaches and various degrees of success. The right approach seems to depend on project circumstances, the people involved, and how much influence the specifier can exert.

Join your colleagues in discussing current issues by joining the Specifying Practice Group. The group meets the first Thursday of each month from 3:00 - 4:00 PM eastern time. The group meeting topics are for everyone who must read or write construction specifications.

Dimpled Metal Studs

2010-06-16T07:30:00Z

Metal Studs: Smooth, Dimpled, and High Performance. Must you choose? Recent innovations in the design and manufacturing of steel studs have produced studs that use less steel yet perform as well and better than traditional smooth-faced studs. Learn how to specify these new studs because minimum metal thickness is no longer a valid measure.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download C1010-Dimpled Studs 10.06.01.

Share your opinions and comments about this month's Tech Tips, by leaving a comment, here.

PPD: Deliverable Document and Powerful Design Tool

2010-06-07T10:30:00Z

What do you use to describe your design projects? Will owners, lenders, estimators and others understand the design intent? Traditional methods rely on design narratives and outline specs to supplement drawings. Each design team develops their own method for presenting the written information. As a result, sharing the information among various teams and building a library of design descriptions for use with future work is difficult.

Louis Medcalf, FCSI, CCS and Chair of the CSI PPDFormat Task Team explained to the CSI Specifying Practice Group how Preliminary Project Descriptions (PPD) can simplify collecting and sharing information for the benefit of current and future project teams.

The CSI Specifying Practice Group meets the first Thursday each month. Everyone that reads or writes specifications is welcome to join the group and share ideas.

PPDs are not widely known nor widely used even though the concept first appeared in the CSI Manual of Practice in 1989. CSI created the PPD Task Team in 2009 to write a new publication to describe how to prepare PPDs. As a result, PPDFormat was published in May 2010 and is available from CSI. Now the industry has a guideline to help structure PPDs and the information they contain.

The PPD structure provides a systematic checklist to help ensure all the appropriate subjects are discussed. The checklist is UniFormat, the construction classification system for building systems and assemblies. UniFormat was designed for cost estimating. So, PPDs are coordinated with published cost estimating systems, allowing parallel presentation of design data and cost data.

The PPD structure allows each system and assembly to be discussed by description, function, and component. This structure enables analysis and effective comparison of various building systems used to perform the same function. Multiple solutions may be presented as potential design options without the need to show each system graphically. This approach allows options to be analyzed for aesthetics, life-cycle costs, durability, and other factors without investing significant time to document each option.

Documenting all information in a building model is not practical. PPDs provide the opportunity to describe what is required for each assembly that is represented by a model object without inserting the data into the model. Model the major building elements and rely on PPDs to describe the secondary and accessory components that complete the major assembly.

PPDs are useful at every project design phase. They can serve as the Schematic Design project report, the Design Development outline spec, and the Construction Documents quality control tool. They can record the decisions, the rationale, and the design at each step during the process. PPDs are a valuable resource throughout all stages of the design process.

Read the meeting notes and view the PowerPoint presentation slides at the CSI Blog.

CSI Blog >> The Code Corner No. 31 (Spring 2010) - Portable Fire Extinguishers

2010-05-27T12:19:35Z

http://blog.csinet.org/default.asp?Display=216

Here is an excellent resource article for architects and specifiers that explains the IBC 2009 code requirements for fire extinguishers - how to select, how to locate, and how many are required. Thanks to CSI for posting this thorough document.

Exterior Window Ratings

2010-05-25T04:01:00Z

What is an AW60 window and how will it perform? The window performance classes and performance grades set by the North American Fenestration Standard provide a simplified method for specifying the minimum performance for air infiltration, water penetration, and structural capacity. Learn what the ratings mean to specify the correct window performance for projects.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download B2020-Exterior Window Ratings 10.05.01.

Share your opinions and comments about this month's Tech Tips, by leaving a comment, here.

Interior Spray Foam Insulation

2010-05-24T17:32:15Z

Chapter 26 of the IBC 2006 building code requires foam insulations used inside the building weather barrier to be protected by a thermal barrier. The code defines thermal barriers as 1/2 inch thick gypsum wallboard or equivalent to limit the temperature rise to prevent ignition of the foam insulation for 15 minutes. Providing a continuous thermal barrier is sometimes difficult. The plane of the interior face of exterior walls is often interrupted by columns, beams, girts, and other obstacles.

Recently a contractor, through a substitution process, introduced us to Staycell 255 manufactured by Preferred Solutions, Inc. This polyurethane spray foam product can be installed on the building interior and left exposed. No need for a thermal barrier. The product was tested according to UL 1715 full-scale room fire test to meet an alternative compliance permitted by the IBC. The product can be applied up to 4 inches thick on walls and 8 inches thick on ceilings.

This product will provide an efficient solution for insulating the inside face of precast concrete exterior wall panels. The closed cell foam insulation will also serve as an air barrier and will serve as a vapor retarder when installed at least 2.5 inches thick.

Air Barriers

2010-04-27T10:00:00Z

What functions must an air barrier perform? It may be more than the obvious. Learn about the types, functions, performance, difficulties, and details for air barriers to be effective. Air barriers must be carefully selected to provide the correct expected performance. Carefully crafted details and specifications are required to ensure expectations are met by the installed assembly.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download B2010-Air Barriers 10.04.01. Each Tech Tips file is titled using the UniFormat system and assembly designation to facilitate filing and future reference.

Share your opinion about this month's Tech Tips, by leaving a comment, here.

Specifying Process

2010-04-04T17:27:18Z

Who is involved? What roles do they play? What contributions do they make? And when do each contribute? The CSI Specifying Practice Group explored these and other questions about the specifying process at the April 1, 2010 meeting.

If you have an opinion, join the group. Everyone that reads or writes specs is welcome and it is FREE. Participation, controversy, and disagreement are encouraged so we can learn from one another. The group meets for one hour the first Thursday of every month.

The perception is that architects and engineers make the product selections. Is the perception reality? Perhaps. But there are thousands of choices to make, and many factors influencing those choices. Architects tend to focus on products affecting the visual and spatial experience of the project. Mundane and commodity products receive scarce attention, if any. So, who makes those decisions?

Explore the meeting discussion presentation. Add your own opinions by leaving a comment at the end of this posting.

The Specifying Process on Prezi

Owners may have significant influence on product selections and what is ultimately specified. Because of other facilities and maintenance experiences, owners tend to have strong opinions, especially about products that have not performed well. Poor performance and failures tend to generate design standards that must be met for future construction projects.

Specifiers, whether independent or in-house, exert a great deal of influence on product specifications. Specifiers usually keep the corporate memory of what works and what does not. The specifications reflect the memory and the designers' selections. The mundane products, ignored by the designers, are relegated to the specifier.

Contractors and subcontractors buy the products. Forcing builders to buy outside their normal supply chain will exert pressure on the designers to review substitution requests. And when builders can show owners significant first cost savings, those pressures mount.

Manufacturers, Distributors, and Product Representatives can play a significant role in influencing product specifications for construction project. This group works with the designers during the early stages of the project showing potential product applications and offering advice on product selections. The same group also influences the builders' product selection process during bidding and construction, especially when delivery times become critical.

So there are many players with changing roles depending on where the project is in the design and construction process.

Read additional notes about the meeting and listen to the meeting recording at the CSI Blog.

Product Highlight - High Speed Roll-Up Doors

2010-03-19T19:26:37Z

In doing various product research for our clients, we come across some products that immediately grab our attention, at least that was the case for Rytec's Spiral Doors.

The Spiral door is a high speed, roll-up door made of rigid double-walled aluminum slat construction, that coil within a spiral top-mounted track allowing no metal to metal contact and a whisper-quiet operation. The anodized aluminum slats are separated by replaceable integral weather seals. The doors open at a rate of up to 60 inches per second which is controlled by a variable speed AC drive system for soft acceleration and breaking.

For those who may be looking for other options such as glazed lights, Spiral doors are also available in partially glazed to fully glazed configurations.

These doors offer high security and high speed with an architectural style. You can see these and other doors by Rytec here.

Acoustic Ratings for Partitions and Floors

2010-03-14T22:29:18Z

Improving acoustic ratings for partitions and floors depends on increasing sound transmission losses to minimize unwanted air borne and structure borne sounds between adjacent spaces. Effective noise control improves functionality of building spaces.

Visit our website at http://www.conspectusinc.com/publications.htm to view or download C1010-Acoustic Ratings 10.03.01. Each Tech Tips file is titled using the UniFormat system and assembly designation to facilitate filing and future reference.

Share your opinion about this month's Tech Tips, by leaving a comment, here.

Outline Specs - Useful or Not?

2010-03-12T00:07:28Z

CSI's specifying practice group discussed the concept of outline specs and came to the conclusion that traditional outline specs will be replaced. Most of the group members admitted they seldom produced or used outline specs. When they do write outline specs, most are not using traditional methods. Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority favored replacing outline specs with preliminary project descriptions. So what do you think? Leave a comment by signing in at the end of this posting.

So what do you think? Leave a comment by signing in at the end of this posting. Then join the group to receive notices of future meetings. It is FREE and it is not just for specifiers! Visit the CSI blog for more information on this and previous practice group discussions.

Here is the presentation that prompted the discussion. The rationale for the poll results follows. Scroll through the presentation using the arrow button below.

Outline Specs - Useful or Not? on Prezi

It is often difficult to produce outline specifications that are consistent. All design team members do not use outlines based on the same system and engineers prefer to use narratives rather than outlines to describe the building systems. Tom Gilmore of Torti Gallas and Partners, Inc. in Denver, CO, has solved this problem by creating a single spreadsheet with all the standard text for all disciplines. Each paragraph is a separate row. The text is selected for the particular project by using Excel's Auto Filter function and then the text is modified as needed.

Beware that your design contract may require outline specs as a Design Development deliverable. AIA B101 - Owner Architect Agreement §3.3.1 explicitly requires outline specs as one of the phase services. B101 does not define what constitutes an outline spec. So there may be some latitude for architects within the bounds of accepted practice.

The group explored several examples of outline specs. CSI's Project Resource Manual provides guidance on the format for producing the outlines and shows an example illustrating some of the concepts. Masterspec and SPECTEXT, two of the commercial spec systems available do not follow the same format of the PRM example. This has caused confusion about what form an outline spec should take.

Steve Lawrey of Vitetta in Philadelphia, PA reported that outline specs are normally throw-away documents. After they are produced, they are little used and the content must be recreated when the construction specifications are written. Creating information once and sharing the result should be the goal rather than duplicating efforts.

Two alternatives to traditional outline specifications were discussed: Multi-Purposed Specifications and Preliminary Project Descriptions (PPD). Multi-purposed specifications rely on using a single document to produce outline specifications and construction specifications. For outlines, most of the document text is hidden, showing only text that is relevant to the current design stage. As more information is developed, more of the specification text is revealed, until the final construction spec is issued.

Preliminary project descriptions offer an entirely different approach. Using UniFormat, the project description is arranged by system and assembly instead of the MasterFormat divisions and sections used for construction specifications. PPDs offer flexibility to describe multiple options for the same assembly and the ability to document the reason for selecting one of the options as the design solution. PPDs can be used throughout the entire design process to capture the result of the process. Then they can be used as a quality control checklist against the resulting construction documents.

The consensus was clear. The group favored PPDs as the preferred method to document projects during the early design stages. Clifford Marvin of KPB Architects in Anchorage, AK, a member of CSI's PPD Task Team pointed out that a PPD Guideline is in progress and wholeheartedly recommended PPDs in place of outline specs. Download the draft guideline from the CSI website.

Air and Moisture Barrier Applications

2010-03-04T19:01:21Z

Yesterday we had the pleasure of hosting Bill Murphy from Parksite for a lunch & learn seminar about Air and Moisture Barriers for Commercial Buildings. Waiting for the last slide of the presentation made the presentation worth more than advertised.

The slide contained this photo showing an installation with Tyvek Commercial Wrap. The program discussion was diverted by the fastener used to secure Tyvek to the substrate. The photo shows an installation over a framed wall with gypsum board sheathing. Tyvek requires mechanical fasteners with washers to be used with gypsum sheathing. This detail prompted a question about being able to use Tyvek over masonry and concrete with similar mechanical fastening.

For past projects, we struggled to find a simple solution for multi-story residential continuing care and multifamily housing projects where the lower floors were masonry veneer over masonry backup and the upper floors were siding over framed backup. This condition typically required two different air barrier materials and a transition detail to maintain the integrity of the barrier. The air barrier at the lower floors often transitioned to a waterproofing membrane which required another product and another transition.

We learned that Tyvek is capable of solving the problem and eliminating the transitions. Tyvek can be installed over gypsum sheathing and over masonry or concrete, the only difference being the fastener. In addition, Tyvek accessories include flashings to make transitions to waterproofing membranes.

None of this discussion was part of the prepared presentation. The photo provided a valuable opportunity that will help our clients solve a persistent problem. Our staff and friends learned something new that will have immediate and practical use.

If you wish to learn more about Tyvek applications, you may contact Bill at bmurphy@parksite.com or visit Parksite at http://parksite.com.

Conspectus shares lunch & learn presentations with our clients and friends that are interested in joining the discussion via our WebEx account. We have a limit on the number of participants that we can accommodate so reservations are required. If you wish to receive notices about the lunch & learn programs we host, please send an email to bbushay@conspectusinc.com and ask to be added to our notification list.

WATG-Designed Bardessono Achieves LEED Platinum Certification | WATG

2010-02-20T16:21:23Z

Conspectus wishes to congratulate our client, WATG, and the entire project team for achieving LEED Platinum Certification for the Bardessono Inn and Spa in Yountville, California. Bardessono is one of only two hotels in the world to achieve LEED Platinum, issued by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), recognizing the highest level in sustainable design. We are proud to have written the architectural specifications to document the sustainable design requirements to help ensure the project would meet the intended goal.

This award marks the ultimate achievement under the LEED certification program and recognizes the design team, contractor, and owner's commitment to sustainable design. Conspectus is proud to to support sustainable design and has written specifications for more than 120 projects designed to LEED certification requirements since 2001.

See WATG's full press release and project photos at:
http://www.watg.com/?pageID=B3B0D546-1372-6883-16EB8BC5754BF736

WATG is an internationally recognized, full service, architectural design firm specializing in luxury destination resorts, world-wide. Conspectus is a specifications and quality assurance consulting firm providing services to architects, engineers, and building owners throughout the United States. Conspectus has enjoyed working with WATG since 2000, contributing to their success and creating environmentally responsive architecture.