Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT
Senior Member
Username: rliebing
Post Number: 1225
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 08, 2010 - 07:50 am: |    |
120810
THE CURIOUS STATUS OF THE “BIG THREE”
by Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT
Cincinnati, OH
Undeniably three “documents” in construction are interlinked, interrelated, and both complimentary and supplementary one to another. Yet still today, one is all but ignored by architects, one is a maze of compressed information, mixed with symbols and abbreviations to form a graphic display, while the third, while still produced, is roundly maligned, often ignored, and too often misunderstood because of the lack of will, understanding, or stubbornness!
CONTRACT-AGREEMENT; DRAWINGS; SPECIFICATIONS. The three, combined, create the “contract documents “for construction project.
Contract/Agreement: Legal document [pre-printed and standard, or specific for project] that explains all parties obligations and duties, and the amount of money to be paid by the Owner to the Contractor, for work accomplished in accord with other documents.
Drawings: Graphic drawings and depictions of portion of work to be done, and work that is applicable over large extents of project; some written material that refers to and augments or explains written material in the specifications.
Specifications [Project Manual]: Booklet[s] containing extensive amount of added or explanatory material, required to be combined with drawings to facilitate construction of the entire project; may have added information not on the drawings, (and vice versa); cannot be eliminated since it is interrelated to the other two documents, all in which act in concert to explain the work being required by the Owner [via the design professional’s documentation] for a complete and finished project ready for use and occupancy.
It is difficult to understand why, when all the project information is bundled in these three documents, various parties like to selectively choose one or two of them and rather blatantly ignore or “stumble over” the third. Granted the contract/agreement is the more complex and difficult to deal with, but then the architect and engineers usually are not involved with it, i.e., do not write or fill-in the standard version-- tasks best left for owner’s attorney, who can modify the form as desired by the owner and to the owner’s best interests. So for all intents and purposes there are really two documents left for the design professionals.
We come to the old saw that contractors are not word people [like attorneys], and that they fear that we [professionals] convolute things in the wording to confound, confuse and “trick” them into work they overlook or misconclude. Have we got time for this? Do we have an “educational moment”, here? Yes, we do!
Leaving the drawings on the side for a moment, we-- each of us and CSI collectively-- have responsibility, and golden opportunity to unravel this faux mystery and create a new litany for specs, and new information and approaches, that remove the threats [real or not] that the contracting community has. Why let the angst, that has been for years, just lump along, unchallenged, and unapproached, when in fact it is the contractors who are doing the “big stuff” with BIM, etc., and getting heavily involved with the lingering and massive minutia of construction.
Eventually we are going to have to do this too, so why not start getting our act together [and not just on BIM] to create the new horizon-- we might wind up having our horizon of tomorrow at our back! Where we are inert, our work is inert; where we do nothing others may well fill the gap [e.g., how did BIM get started; did we do it?]. The need is for creative action; to match the times; to create futuristic programs to orient, educate, and assimilate and to inform in such a way that the construction process becomes BETTER, and we are truly players at the table.
The curious status of the “big three”?
Slipping due to reclusiveness; and we very well may be losing! Then what? |
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