"behind the times"?

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Author Message David Axt, AIA, CCS, CSI Senior Member Username: david_axt Post Number: 1119 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 12:36 pm:    Who here uses programs other than word processing to edit/write their specs? At a meeting yesterday I was told that our firm better get on board because our competitors are using "e-specs" and that we are behind the times. Lynn Javoroski CSI CCS LEEDŽ AP SCIP Affiliate Senior Member Username: lynn_javoroski Post Number: 1103 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 12:38 pm:    I guess we are, too... Dennis C. Elrod, AIA Senior Member Username: delrodtn Post Number: 18 Registered: 04-2010 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 12:45 pm:    David: Since we've been REVITized, we are moving in that same direction. I am hastily trying to update our Office Master Specifications to MF04 and to the latest MasterSpec Section Updates. As soon as we've finished that task, which I estimate to be the year's end, we will massage the Keynote List that comes with REVIT to align it with our Office Masters, then we will begin using e-specs since it links the Drawings and Specs together. But currently, we are only using WORD 2007. Dennis C. Elrod, AIA (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 12:42 pm:    e-specs has never inspired me. there is a difference between cutting edge and bleeding edge and e-specs just doesnt deliver much for the cost. Kermit Mudgeon (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 01:40 pm:    we have been trying e-Specs for about a year now, with limited, if any, benefit. The reason we chose it, was, of course, to integrate specs and drawings--it was the only game in town. This is a GREAT GOAL of the honchos, but they have NO CLUE what's involved and how limited this is in reality. e-Specs Lynx [the non-Revit version] can be made to work, but use it to maintain masters and you're in another dimension of complexity. It was developed by InterSpec as they serviced clients as spec consultants, and they have the familiarity and constant use to make it work for them. Between the frequent updates and more frequent 'patches' we've found it very difficult to keep everyone on the same version. Their marketing aside, there are very few firms that are using it as a primary tool. 'Bleeding edge?' Think 'gushing edge.' (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 01:13 pm:    Not here. We looked at e-specs but the cost is to intimidating at this time. We have offices in Seattle, NYC, Dallas, LA, Mexico City, London UK, Bangalore, Bejing, and Shanghai. We dable in Revit on some minor noncomplex projects. In NA we still do things the old fashion way. We use MSWORD 2003, but migrating to 2007. We do not compete in the same market sectors as your firm. We have found other means and methods to do more with less and work faster/smarter. Richard Howard, AIA CSI CCS SCIP LEED-AP Senior Member Username: rick_howard Post Number: 243 Registered: 07-2003 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 02:24 pm:    Is everyone so charmed by the new process that they are not looking at the quality of the documents produced? The "group think" I have witnessed among architecture department managers is that the integration of specs with BIM means that they no longer need to keep their troublesome spec writer on staff. These are people who, for the most part, never understood what spec writers actually do; thinking that any primate could perform the function. Now that they have "specs in a box", all they need to do is turn the crank, listen to "Pop Goes the Weasel", and wait for the specs to come popping out. Only after firms discover that the raw output is not adequate to build a project will they come to appreciate the value of having input by someone who understands materials and how they are used. I am not saying that these programs are flawed tools; just that they still require intelligent users to get intelligent results. It is going to take a substantial amount of prep work to get to the point where you begin to see the benefits. John Hunter Senior Member Username: johnhunter Post Number: 82 Registered: 12-2005 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 02:46 pm:    We do 100% of our projects in Revit and have done some investigation into e-Specs but have not implemented nor does that seem to be on the immediate horizon. The start-up costs are daunting, primarily on the training/ in-house side and, until the overall building technological sophistication of the staff is raised, the necessity of the dialogue between the designers and specifier to produce quality documents is understood to outweigh any perceived benefits of the "single model" theory. As I've said before, the folks who know the most about Revit tend to know the least about buildings . . . Jeffrey Wilson CSI CCS Senior Member Username: wilsonconsulting Post Number: 34 Registered: 03-2006 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 04:48 pm:    As an independent spec consultant, I have seriously investigated e-Specs products, as well as BSD SpecLink, and found them lacking the kinds of functions I need. Customization seems especially cumbersome, although this would be of particular importance to my practice since I work w/ a large number of clients & a broad variety of project types. The idea of a spec editing system that uses a database sounds great in concept, but in reality these programs seem to be in their infancy. The current versions take a "broad brush" approach -- a number of basic decisions can be addressed through checklist features, but many details still have to be handled by traditional word processing. From my discussions w/ other users, these systems may be more suited to firms with repetitive or similar project types. They will have to become considerably more robust (yet with simpler interfaces) to be worthwhile for my practice -- and I hope they will eventually. For now, I continue with separate checklists & word processed master specs. I also continue to report to my clients the dozens or sometimes hundreds of conflicts & errors found in the Dwgs during reviews for spec development. The linked/automated systems certainly can't offer this "second set of eyes". Margaret G. Chewning FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: presbspec Post Number: 193 Registered: 01-2003 Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 05:46 pm:    Jeffrey, Well said. I too prefer spec masters using good old word processing. Thanks Lisa Goodwin Robbins, RA, CCS, LEED ap Senior Member Username: lgoodrob Post Number: 89 Registered: 08-2004 Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 - 08:56 am:    I agree with Jeffrey too. As independent spec consultants, we also took a trial run with e-Specs, including several training days in our office, and came to the same conclusions. I am interested in hearing from some in-house specifiers about how this is working for them. I would love to work with one of our A/E firms to customize their data sets and make BIM work for specs, but it seems no one is ready for this yet. David Axt, AIA, CCS, CSI Senior Member Username: david_axt Post Number: 1120 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 - 01:02 pm:    My office has recently obtained SpecLink-E. I have worked on only 1 project with this program as a beta test case. I am not convinced that there are advantages to this program. I had to put together the table of contents "manually" because of consultants specs and owners documents. I had to edit some of the owner's Division 01 documents. I had to import some of our specs because SpecLink did not have sections. Lastly, I sometimes had to fight with the program itself because it would not allow me to do certain things. It is interesting that the people in my office who are pushing for SpecLink have never used the program. Richard A. Rosen, CSI, CCS, AIA Senior Member Username: rarosen Post Number: 78 Registered: 08-2006 Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 - 01:24 pm:    And I'm sure they never will. Oh well nothing is difficult for the person who doesn't have to do it. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 - 03:04 pm:    Somehow I can't log in as my usual identity... I use the SpecLink-E and have been doing so for the last few months. I'm quite happy with and prefer it's, more direct, simple language. Are there obstacles, yes. I feel the benefits of the structured system is a net benefit. It is much easier for me to move from project to project only making the changes without losing the original text. The PDF production phase alone is so much easier with a system like this. Then when they change the project name...again, you know what I mean. Some of my client architects have changed the same section mulitple times. Many times they end up back where I started with them. It is easier for me to check / uncheck the changes than re-writing everything. With Owner provided Division 0 & 1 docs, I usually will take them as a Word file and save as PDFs. The same goes for engineer provided sections in divisions 21-33. (They still haven't completely caught up with the MF04 numbers.) Specialty consultants fall in the same category. Either way I have to manually modify the Table of Contents anyway. Then I use SpecLink-E to generate the PDFs in the correct division folder. This allows me to sort ALL the PDFs in order (based on the section number/file name). Then combine them into a new Division PDF. Any system is not perfect or complete. It believe it was Rene Descartes who said; "The fastest way to become a fool is to devise a system." Rich Gonser Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 1022 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 08:02 pm:    I interviewed at one firm that was quite pleased with the "idea" of e-specs, but they admitted that they had spent a fortune cusomizing it, and were still having bugs and problems with it. The supporters of the software admit that "its not there yet" but since there seems to be so much market interest, everyone keeps saying "its just around the corner. " I expect that in the next 5 years there might be a viable product. I don't see one yet. And keep in mind -- even e-specs can't coordinate with something that hasn't shown up on the drawings yet. Sheldon Wolfe Senior Member Username: sheldon_wolfe Post Number: 432 Registered: 01-2003 Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:32 pm:    About twenty-five years ago, I sold - excuse me, tried to sell - AutoCAD (1.2?), PCs, printers, and plotters. At the time, AutoDesk was saying, "pretty soon you'll finish the drawings, push a button, and you'll get specifications, quantities, and cost estimates." Well, it's almost thirty years later, and we've been hearing the same thing ever since. Someday soon - and I believe that - what they have been saying will be true, and the specifier we know today will be extinct. But as Anne notes, we're not quite there. Even if SpecLink or e-Specs or SpecText can somehow ferret out the information contained in the model, that information must be complete and reliable or we'll still need someone to know what is (or often isn't) on the drawings, and write specifications. We're close... (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:30 pm:    About twenty-five years ago, I sold - excuse me, tried to sell - AutoCAD (1.2?), PCs, printers, and plotters. At the time, AutoDesk was saying, "pretty soon you'll finish the drawings, push a button, and you'll get specifications, quantities, and cost estimates." Well, it's almost thirty years later, and we've been hearing the same thing ever since. Someday soon - and I believe that - what they have been saying will be true, and the specifier we know today will be extinct. But as Anne notes, we're not quite there. Even if SpecLink or e-Specs or SpecText can somehow ferret out the information contained in the model, that information must be complete and reliable or we'll still need someone to know what is (or often isn't) on the drawings, and write specifications. We're close... Tracy Van Niel, FCSI, CCS Senior Member Username: tracy_van_niel Post Number: 310 Registered: 04-2002 Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 11:06 am:    We are using Speclink-E and plan to purchase Linkman when it comes time for our renewal. I really like Speclink-E as it uses ribbons across the top of the page, similar to Word 2007. Tracy L. Van Niel, FCSI, CCS Scott Mize Senior Member Username: scott_mize_ccs_csi Post Number: 21 Registered: 02-2009 Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 03:30 pm:    David: I am sorry to hear that your experience with SpecLink-E is not to your satisfaction. I also understand the agony of dealing with a software change imposed by those who do not have to use it. (Anyone else here ever had to transition from WordPerfect to Word and convert all their masters, rename all their files, rewrite all their macros in the process?) Honestly, I think the biggest obstacle to the adaptation of SpecLink - especially if the practice already has a dedicated specification writer - it that adopting the software will almost always require that the practice change some aspect of the way specifications are produced. If I may indulge in a broad analogy: A power driver drives screws much faster and with less effort than a manual screwdriver, but will also change many other things about the way the worker drives screws. It may change larger aspects of the work, like the type of materials selected. There are definite disadvantages: the power tool is heavier, it requires electricity, it must be recharged, etc., etc. Still, no one will suggest that a manual screwdriver is "better" than the power driver, which is faster but can also drill, grind, burnish, etc., etc. with the right attachment. You may not agree that SpecLink's advantages outweigh the perceived disadvantage of having to make changes in your internal specifying procedures, but I don't think it can be denied that SpecLink is a more powerful tool - especially in the hands of a knowledgeable specifier - than any word-processing-based system out there. My case was the opposite of yours; I was sold on SpecLink, but could not convince management to get behind it. (Plus, the guy who'd been there even longer than I had and had written the office masters 'from scratch' a decade earlier was ready to defend his 'babies' to the death.) The change might've been painful, but as the guy that did the vast majority of their spec production work for 15 years - using MasterSpec, in WordPerfect and Word - all I can say is I wish I'd had SpecLink a decade or more ago. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 05:49 pm:    The screw driver analogy is a few generations off, I'd say, a more appropriate equivalent would be the improvement spec writing enjoyed when going from typewriter/mimeograph to a word processor on a computer. What hasn't really been brought up in this discussion is that there are 2 separate and distinct issues that are being lumped together as if singular. The first issue is the editing tool - BSD and Interspec both offer editing tools that are, in many ways, much better than simply pounding out specs using word processing software. I have used both SpecLink and eSpecs for Revit and both are great for making rough edits, pulling content in and eliminating content - with ease. Refining those edits, I have found, is still much easier to do in a Word environment. The SECOND issue, the one that is far less developed, and the one that most of the negative comments are directed toward (I think) is the link between the specs and the BIM. Neither of the above mentioned products offers much to be excited about in that regard. We have not been able to get either to work well in my office. If we ever are able to get this to work, then it MIGHT be really great, but it also might be more of a novelty than anything else, not really making projects better, or spec writers any more efficient (or any more obsolete). Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 1023 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Friday, October 01, 2010 - 06:13 pm:    A big part of the issue, I fear, is that the e-specs products (e-specs/ spec-link e) are sold as though they can do the SECOND issue. Practicing specifiers can see through that canard quickly -- but practicing specifiers are not always the ones making production decisions in their offices. E-specs claims that it can "produce a 70% spec" right off the bat. It can't. The other products claim that they can do "most" of the coordination between the BIM and the specs. Well.... if every time we used a product, we all used it in the same way (or, maybe a couple of variations), and if on one job we used each material in only one way, then an "automated spec" might be achieveable. However, how many times has one written a -- masonry spec -- let's say -- and it was all pretty much the same except where something was arched, and something else corbeled, and in another place its load bearing and in another place its not? The old saw about the first 90% of the spec taking half the time and the last 10% takes the other half of the time is pretty much correct -- and its that last 10% that isn't very effectively covered in the BIM models or the "automatic" specs. J. Peter Jordan, CSI, CCS, AIA, LEED AP (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Saturday, October 02, 2010 - 12:02 pm:    Nomenclature is a big problem; is it gypsum wallboard, gypsum board, drywall, or sheetrock (argh!). There may be a number of firms that have resolved this issue, but I have never worked in or with one. And when one or two new people get hired, they bring in fresh expertise which may or may not be compatible with the general firm expertise. Unless carefully trained in some detail, their expertise will creep into the carefully crafted systems established and maintained by the firm. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what generic term you develop and use for plasterboard as long as it is used consistently and then defined in the specifications. Ah, that's the rub, coordination with the specifications. Wayne Yancey Senior Member Username: wayne_yancey Post Number: 363 Registered: 01-2008 Posted on Monday, October 04, 2010 - 10:59 am:    Nomemclature is a BIG problem with or without e-specs and spec-link. The trend lately has been for the color selections to move to the top of the selection process list long before the actual product or system has been selected. We have office standard "type designators" for all interior and exterior products/systems but they get trumped by the "color desingator." These are invented on the fly and take on a life of their own at the expence of office standards. He/she who picks the colors has the gold. Multiple types of one product category are labelled by their color. A recent example is louvers. My project has two types of louvers. Sand-trap intake louvers and standard exhaust louvers. They are both noted as MT-04 because that is their color. Which one is exhaust and which one is intake is a RFI question. As soon as I am assigned a project I issue the tables with the office approved "type designators? for interior and exterior products. To late. To much water under the bridge to change now is the usual excuse. Anne Whitacre, FCSI CCS Senior Member Username: awhitacre Post Number: 1025 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Monday, October 04, 2010 - 11:39 am:    yes, and just try putting the colors into the BIM. tghat will definitely work. Marc C Chavez Senior Member Username: mchavez Post Number: 391 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Monday, October 04, 2010 - 11:51 am:    that last post was from me but I was not logged in Marc C Chavez Senior Member Username: mchavez Post Number: 392 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Monday, October 04, 2010 - 11:52 am:    Not Anne's post (obviously)but one coming up. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Monday, October 04, 2010 - 11:47 am:    actually colors are not a problem, you can place them in the properties dialog box (in Revit) as a comment or mark, you can add it to all of one type of object via another dialog box and last but not least you can add it to schedules. so it's easy - but do you really want to? - That is the question. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted on Friday, October 15, 2010 - 04:22 pm:    David, lets take the topic a little different path and approach it differently. Maybe specifications have become user unfriendly? eSpecs and Speclink are just process tools. What they try to do is engage the project team into the specification process. That really is not a bad thing. That said, they do mean that you may need to adjust your process. Something that typically tough for an individual to do. It also might mean that your fee structure and methods may need to change. Most of the time I hear the argument that specifications out of the box (Masterspec and Speclink) require much modification therefore many stick with their custom modified or originally authored specifications. That actually has led many to stick with old methods. Again, not necessarily bad, however, it may be costing you more effort than different approaches. The different path I wanted to take was due to a presentation I did to a company concerning documentation. During that presentation, I asked the question, has anyone reviewed their specifications? Silence was the answer. That was the entire company including the PMs. In fact the only person that said that they had read a specification said they did it once in their career. I find that true now with companies since most on working on their margins and have inexperienced staff running projects and/or eliminated QA/QC staff. PMs and PAs both do not have time to read 2-4 volumes of specs to see if they are coordinated. Today's client typically will not even read a 10 page proposal or report. They go straight to the bottom line, cost. Today, the people involved do not have the time of make the effort in coordinating the specification. So, maybe the title of this post should also include the specification itself and not just the tool. The iPod became a hit due to research into the target market. That market was Gen Y and Gen X people (it grew later) and what their traits were. I even have to admit, I long for the days that a spec was 1 volume and not even an inch thick. With that said, should specifiers look into alternative ways of producing the spec? Has the path taken the product to where the construction team ignores it? Has it become nothing more than a CYA tool? BIM is changing how architects work and what they deliver. Should specifiers look at their target market and change their spec? Food for thought... David Axt, AIA, CCS, CSI Senior Member Username: david_axt Post Number: 1135 Registered: 03-2002 Posted on Friday, October 15, 2010 - 04:55 pm:    Heck, Call me old school, but I am still waiting for the paperless office! I am currently moving my office and filling recycle bin after recycle bin.