| Author |
Message |
Chris Grimm, CSI, CCS, SCIP, LEED AP BD+C
Senior Member
Username: chris_grimm_ccs_scip
Post Number: 332
Registered: 02-2014
| | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 10:04 am: |    |
What do other specifiers think about it when invited to attend weekly team meetings for a project? |
Lynn Javoroski FCSI CCS LEEDŽ AP SCIP Affiliate
Senior Member
Username: lynn_javoroski
Post Number: 2044
Registered: 07-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 10:34 am: | |
I'm of two minds about this. On the one side, knowledge gained from seemingly casual comments can be valuable. Depending on the complexity of the project (of course), many decisions can be made by the design team and no one thinks to communicate it to the spec writer (I know, you're all shocked, but it does happen). These decisions are often discussed in team meetings.
It's also a way to establish contact with consultants, either face-to-face or via teleconference, so you "know" them, making communication easier.
On the other hand, they can be a waste of time, with endless discussion and no decisions or useful information.
Much depends on who's in charge of the meeting(s) and how good they are at conducting meetings.
Definitely attend the first one and decide the frequency of your attendance at subsequent meetings. It's a good thing that the team leader even thought to invite you! |
Steven Bruneel, AIA, CSI-CDT, LEED-AP, EDAC
Senior Member
Username: redseca2
Post Number: 516
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 12:39 pm: | |
As Lynn states, attending project team meetings can have lots of good, but usually secondary, results.
What outweighs that in my mind is how much time you can waste (in pure hours) and how many dead ends you may inadvertently go down as the team considers and rejects various options.
Also, if you attend them only off and on, you may have things that stay stuck in your mind that the team long ago rejected.
I thinks its better to directly work with the project architect leading the shell and core design effort and/or the interior architect who is leading the tenant improvement effort. I ask them to provide me their finish schedules and we review their ideas together.
If we do it right, the core and shell project architect's finish schedule becomes the material key bullet points on their elevation drawings and I paste them into the spec as the Part 1.1 Summary bullet points in each Section.
The Interior Architect's finish schedule for our work starts as a spreadsheet and then its turned in to finish schedule drawings.
I find it very helpful to push the exterior building envelope design team to think in terms of creating and maintaining a schedule of their exterior finish materials. It can quickly identify conflicts and parts that haven't been thought out.
One thing I find interesting is the huge difference in the length of the exterior finish schedules I get from some of our project designers. I regularly work with one who I know will have one skin material, usually metal in one color, one curtain wall aluminum type in on ecolor, one vision glass, one spandrel glass, the minimum of sealant and joint products also in one color, sometime for roof EQ screens and railings and that is it.
The guy that runs the next studio over will have 4 architectural concretes, 8 brick types, and we are barely out of DIV 04. Literally pages of distinct items.
They both turn out great work in their own unique ways. I just need to remember to multiply my time estimate by 1.5 for the second guy. |
Scott McIntosh-Mize
Senior Member
Username: scott_mize_ccs_csi
Post Number: 103
Registered: 02-2009
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 10:41 am: | |
Chris,
In a large(ish) firm, attending all the team meetings can be an impossibility for the specification writer. When I did so, I easily lost anywhere from a half-day to a full day out of the five-day week just attending meetings.
While the meetings were informative, I estimate that 5 minutes out of an hour might be spent talking about items that affected the project manual.
As the firm grew and the workload increased, I stopped attending meetings in person. I resorted to having the project managers copy me on all meeting minutes.
If a decision or piece of information was important, it was usually recorded. Plus, it only took minutes to read the meeting minutes AND I had a written record of directions given by management. (Came in handy when the occasional PM decided to play 'pin the blame on the spec writer'.)
Of course, that assumes that anyone keeps meeting minutes any more. |
Sheldon Wolfe
Senior Member
Username: sheldon_wolfe
Post Number: 881
Registered: 01-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 11:27 am: | |
Amen to all of the above. When I do attend, I ask that specification-related items be addressed first so I don't waste two hours listening to arguments about space planning, circulation, etc. To head off the obvious question - "Doesn't everything affect specifications?" - it's not a perfect approach, but it seems to work fairly well. Unless you have the luxury of working on one project at a time, you will always have to rely on the team giving you the information you need.
As Scott said, getting meeting minutes can provide most of the needed information, but are subject to the abilities of the person who writes the minutes. What we sorely need is the Vulcan mind-meld. |
Ellis C. Whitby, PE, CSI, AIA, LEEDŽ AP
Senior Member
Username: ecwhitby
Post Number: 261
Registered: 03-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 11:47 am: | |
Sheldon;
Inevitably, the of the Vulcan mind-meld will have unintended consequences: do you really want to "relive" the designer's angst from the unsuccessful family dinner last night when all you wanted was the flooring selection for the lobby? |
David G. Axt, CCS, CSI ,SCIP
Senior Member
Username: david_axt
Post Number: 1426
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 12:46 pm: | |
Team meetings are a double edged sword. I agree with the above comments that they can waste a lot of your time. But if you are not at the meeting, the team can make material selections then forget to inform you.
Back when I was working at an architecture firm, I would ask the project manager to bring me into the meeting at some point, then excuse me when the team started talking about CAD related issues.
David G. Axt, CCS, CSI, SCIP
Specifications Consultant/Web Publisher
www.localproductreps.com |
Lynn Javoroski FCSI CCS LEEDŽ AP SCIP Affiliate
Senior Member
Username: lynn_javoroski
Post Number: 2045
Registered: 07-2002
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 01:22 pm: | |
An agenda can help a lot. You can jump into the meeting when applicable and leave when that part is done. |
Chris Grimm, CSI, CCS, SCIP, LEED AP BD+C
Senior Member
Username: chris_grimm_ccs_scip
Post Number: 333
Registered: 02-2014
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 01:52 pm: | |
A double-edged sword is a great way to put it. When asked to be at such meetings I do not promise to be at every meeting because very likely I will be working feverishly on their deadlines during some of the meetings, and they typically agree to that. I am usually OK with attending in spite of the time loss, because I know otherwise they will forget to tell me some things - but it can suck a lot of time away, and every time we begin to touch on specs they just say "we'll have to set up a separate meeting for that type of discussion". So why not do that in the first place then? I think the reason is people do not know when something affects the Project Manual and when it doesn't. At least by inviting us to the meetings, perhaps they are inherently recognizing their limitations.
But it would be so much more efficient if they could jot notes down for when those separate meetings are needed. How can we briefly categorize what goes in the Project Manual? -- If it is about quality and type of materials we need to know (vs. if it is about locations and extents we might be curious but it should not need to impact the Project Manual), if it is about installation methods, or if it is about procurement, contracting, or general requirements, we need to know.
Maybe a much shorter way to put it is, if it affects the construction contract but is not efficiently and fully conveyed on the drawings, we need to know, especially when it is a new type of material (not a new color usually but a whole different type of product) other than we have gone over so far for this project.
The time is not as much of an issue with virtual meetings for which I request permission to multitask if it goes on about non-spec items for a while. I try to always be ready for that to change in a moment's time too.
I will try the suggestion about asking them to put specs first on the agenda. Wondering how to put it so it does not seem like I think we're high and mighty.
There are rarely meeting minutes from design team discussions. But when a contractor is involved there are definitely meeting minutes. The times I have attended, I find that they are sometimes grossly incorrect in what they write about specs so I have to propose amendment to the minutes - things like we did not get your responses -- oh yes you did, I sent it on x date & time which was hours after I got the markup, and I copied everyone who was on the original email. Even though we talked about this during the meeting, it was still wrong in the minutes. During the meeting they had said "Oh, OK, uhhh, please re-send, and let's have a separate meeting about that"! Doh! |
David J. Wyatt, CDT
Senior Member
Username: david_j_wyatt_cdt
Post Number: 127
Registered: 03-2011
| | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2015 - 02:18 pm: | |
http://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/meetings |
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