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The Follow-Through

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Yale University New Haven Connecticut July 2018 Liz OSullivanLearning isn’t always comfortable.

Some of the lessons we learn most thoroughly come from mistakes we’ve made, or from finding out the consequences of actions we never considered before acting. For a specifier, these lessons hit hardest any time after bid opening, through the first few years of occupancy. (Anytime after pricing is set, or worse, after the building is built.) Sure, we research the things we specify, during the construction documents phase, but unless we’ve been given specific direction, we do our best, trying to keep in mind a general sense of the owner’s need for durability balanced with budget, and go with industry standards that align with those goals.

Discomfort sets in when we realize we need to research something further during construction, or after occupancy, because of a question from the architect. It means our work wasn’t quite right, or wasn’t written clearly enough. We need to follow through, follow up on the work we did, and make sure it was right, so the architect can defend it, or figure out what needs to change in order to make it right. Knowing exactly where and how something is being installed or used (once we’re in the construction phase) sure can illuminate the picture brightly, and let us know in which areas to focus our research. We often end up digging more deeply, because of the specific, now-more-clearly-defined, and now-critical, situation, and we end up learning stuff we’ll never forget.

In the last week I’ve had some good questions from some architect-clients: two questions about submittals. Nothing was wrong with the specified products, nothing was wrong with the specs, but there were some complicating factors that could have led to incorrect products being installed. These issues didn’t show up until the submittals came in during construction.

The most recent question came from the architect because the substrate indicated on the submittal for a type of coating was incorrectly listed. This raised some flags, so I looked into it deeply and realized that the manufacturer’s submittal sheet includes 2 different types of coatings, with very similar names, for various different types of substrates, on the same data sheet. The info I got from the architect indicated that the submittal didn’t use the full name of the product – just the words that were common to both of the different products on the datasheet! The incorrect product would have ended up on the building, if the contractor supplied the product most appropriate for the incorrectly-listed substrate. Lesson learned – I plan to always specify using the full name of a product to reduce the chances of a mistake such as could have happened on this project. The name of this product came from the owner and I didn’t change the way it was written. It was clear, but it could have been spelled out, to make it even more clear.

Another recent submittal question came about the specified thickness of sheet metal for a parapet coping. When I wrote the spec, I selected the default in the specification software I use. It turns out that the color of sheet metal we need isn’t available as standard in the thickness specified for the coping, although it is available as standard in all the other thicknesses of sheet metal specified for other uses. The architect asked why this sheet metal for coping was thicker. I wasn’t exactly sure… dug deep… and am now pretty sure that if this wide coping on this very visible sloped parapet were to be made of a thinner metal than specified, we’d see waviness, oil canning, sagging ugliness. Phew – a good lesson to learn, and just in time. Again, there was nothing wrong with the spec, but if I hadn’t been able to give the architect a good reason to ensure that the spec was complied with, it would have been much easier for the architect to allow thinner metal for the coping, and then we would have had a problem.

The chill that goes through me when I realize that I can’t answer a question about my work product immediately upon being asked is humbling. But no one, no one, could ever know enough about specs to know it all perfectly and thoroughly before ever starting out on the path of writing specs. And yes, the follow-through takes time. Following up on something that is brought to our attention well after we issued our documents requires shifting gears, jumping back to something we thought we were finished with, but we belatedly realize we weren’t. Specifiers must be lifelong learners, no matter how uncomfortable that is. 

Venice Italy September 2019 Liz OSullivan

Guidelines: Grocery Lists & Specs

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ginger-rootSometimes when we send construction documents out into cyberspace, we don’t know what we’re going to get back. We look at submittals during construction and wonder how in the world someone could think that a particular item would be an appropriate product to use on the project.

Sometimes I read non-work things and wonder if their writers knew that bear and bare have different meanings, peak is not the same as peek, and to and too are two different words. My default assumption is that people write what they mean, and when things are written properly, I am a quick reader. When things are not written properly, I am a slow reader. (If something doesn’t make sense the way it’s written, I tend to reread it with all the possible misspelled homonyms and autocorrect blunders and alternate punctuation in mind. Some people do not bother to take this extra time, and just go with their first impression.)

I know that we can’t, with our written communications, enforce someone else’s compliance with construction contract documents. But we can make those documents easier to read, and, perhaps then, easier to follow.

The other night, my kids suggested stir-fried tofu for dinner. My husband offered to buy ingredients. The grocery list I texted to him included the following:

1 bunch broccoli (1-1/2 lb)
2″ piece fresh ginger root
1 bunch scallions

When I took the produce out of the bag, I found the items pictured above – 2 large knobs of ginger root.

That’s my hand in the photo – my female, normal-sized hand. So the picture clearly shows a lot more ginger root than the one 2-inch piece I’d asked for. I got almost 10 times what I needed.

While cooking that stir-fry, I realized that maybe if I had described the ginger differently, I might have had better results. (I wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to use up some ginger root tonight.) I could have written:

1 bunch broccoli (1-1/2 lb)
1 2-inch piece fresh ginger root
1 bunch scallions

I could have been more parallel and consistent in my writing, and could have used the number of units I wanted for the ginger the way I had for the broccoli and scallion. Maybe then I’d have just gotten one piece, as I’d wanted.

Or, maybe the inch symbol seemed to be a typo. If I’d spelled out “inch,” instead of using the inch symbol, it would have been obvious that I actually meant to write inch, and maybe I’d have gotten ginger root in the size I’d wanted.

There are some good guidelines for specifications writing that I usually try to use in all my writing (even my grocery list text messages). I try to use parallel construction – I write sentences using the same grammatical pattern of words. I use words instead of symbols for “degree,” “percent,” “plus,” “minus,” and “at.” I use full size numbers for fractions, instead of superscript and subscript fractions.

There are good reasons for these, and other, guidelines. If instructions in Part 3 of the spec section are not written in a parallel way, they could be mixed up or overlooked. (“Examine products before installation. Reject damaged materials.” reads better than “Examine products before installation. Damaged materials shall be rejected.”)  If the specs get printed on paper, and subsequently photocopied, symbols and small characters can become illegible. If the specs get converted from one font to another in a word processing program, or converted from one digital program to another, some symbols might actually get generated as different symbols, or could be lost completely.

Someone’s made these mistakes before, and people have created guidelines to prevent others from having to learn through their own experiences. These guidelines and others exist to help us write more clearly, in ways that are less likely to be misinterpreted. Sometimes I encounter specifications that run the risk of being misinterpreted, or are actually incorrect, due to the use of symbols or superscript or subscript characters that have become illegible or are conveying a different meaning that intended. These are usually manufacturers’ guide specifications and documents from building owners.

Everyone who writes specifications or other construction communication could benefit from learning some of these writing guidelines. Check out Construction Specifications Writing: Principles and Procedures by Harold J. Rosen, Mark Kalin, Robert S. Weygant, and John R. Regener, Jr., published by Wiley, and The CSI Construction Specifications Practice Guide, published by The Construction Specifications Institute.