Audacity!

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Author Message Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT Senior Member Username: rliebing Post Number: 1144 Registered: 02-2003 Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 08:30 am:    100217 AUDACITY by Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT Cincinnati, OH You have to deal with, among other things, audacity? I realize many of you are the first-responder spec writers who directly produce the products, either as in-house or consultant entities. But many of us have the distinct “privilege“ to deal with staff! That is those wonderful, renegades who stumble along trying to be wanna-be spec writers [note that remote relationship here]. In our practice, due to the high degree of similarity in our work, we “re-use” specifications, mainly through our system of office masters, edited to each project. These have been carved out from MasterSpec or have been ”home written” to meet some very peculiar circumstance that even Arcom won’t touch! Often, we get into dealing with various consultants, hired by us or the owner, and who produce, in their strident manner, specifications for their portions of our project. They are perceived [and often are] experts, but not the best of spec writers! So we come to the “process of red-lining”-- that mysterious hokum of making changes to previously valid information. Oh, the specs often refer to state DOT standards for paving materials [which must change with jurisdictions] to the attempts to pilfer, reuse and OK, steal, specs from “other sources” and giving them our quirky twists to “make them fit”.’ Such audacity!!! First, we are not all that certain on where the copyrights lie, often times, and what reaction[s] might get conjured up, by staff, “adopting” some goodies from other source specs. So, we come to contend with .pdf’s and the mess format converting them by hand. We, in our shop, continually try to convince those “others" to quit that stuff-- we can write what we need, and indeed spend more time unraveling usually illegible red-lines, and the scavenger hunts for out-of-date [but “preferred”, as in easy way out!] text from projects long since archived. They really want the identical product they bought 23 years ago-- and the company went under? Such audacity! The really “good" part is when we call someone on their mis-deeds and their expression becomes priceless. Some are contrite; pretend innocence; some amazed [at what they did or didn’t do!]; and more often than not, conveying simple acquiescence, “Oh, OK, I ‘guess’ that really is better” [but with glazed eye and no real acceptance or understanding of what happened]. Hey, we’re spec writers, no butt-savers-- do we resemble whoopee cushions??? The audacity of you to even think that way! We [ i.e., I] "own" the specs in our office-- meaning only that anything wrong is “belongs to me”! Oh, sure! All that indicates is that every project lead will want a different format for some unknown reason, or will excuse the request for the “sake of the client”. When we change things we often encounter attempts to undercut the effort with baseless reasoning which luckily the department head tends to scotch! Some people love to “design” or “redesign” the specs when there is absolutely no reason to do so. Such audacity!-- to think that some think we should have 15 sets of specs to match the specific whims of the 15 leads! And the height of audacity when specifications are issued-- errr, “given out”; “transmitted”; “sent to”; shared”; “given over for review by…”, or otherwise “leaked” from the office with the spec writer later standing with thumb in ear, saying, ”I didn’t know anything about that. Why did they do that that way-- and against our SOP/policy?” Pure audacity!!!!! Trouble is, it is symptomatic of the prevailing thought process [if you let it get out of hand] where everybody wants to “piddle around” [since they know better than any one!] with the specs, but no one wants to ”do” the specs!! Everybody wants “write-access”, but then have absolutely no idea what to do and why! “Course, audacity is also wearing a tie; shining your shoes; coordinating the colors/patterns of your outfit or asking a really dumb [specs?] question in a team meeting!!!! Audacity, by Mother Nature, is having us shovel, plow, blow load, scrape, chop, cube, implode, explode, pay for removal or otherwise dispose of the damned snow!!!! Chris Grimm, CSI, CCS, LEED-AP, MAI, RLA Senior Member Username: tsugaguy Post Number: 240 Registered: 06-2005 Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 05:40 pm:    How about when someone in marketing decides to overhaul the JOBSITE signage design without recognizing the resulting conflicts with requirements in the temporary facilities spec on all the projects from then on until somebody can absorb what has happened and reconcile the two, and in the meantime causing questions from numerous contractors? Or a department head reworking a "standard form" resulting in similar inconsistencies, without talking to the specifiers, and without listening to the specifiers about it once we find out. Is this the kind of audacity you mean? My favorite kind of Audacity is the free audio editing program!