The need to improve processes, gain organizational efficiencies and control costs has never been more critical than it is now. This new era—that came upon the entire world swiftly and at high intensity—has provided a major opportunity for project teams to collaborate at warp speed.
First, managing specifications is crucial for everything from documenting design decisions to ensuring budget compliance and stripping hidden risk. Contractors, subcontractors, estimators, insurers, owners and product manufacturers depend on specifications to deliver a project efficiently.
However, specifications must be removed from the black box and become part of a transparent and cooperative process. When begun early in the project, specifications can manage and document the owner’s project requirements (OPR) and track design decisions. Maintaining a decision record permits continuous comparison and validation that the owner’s needs are met.
As design documentation progresses in an orderly fashion, rework is minimized, costs are controlled and the owner’s informed consent is enabled. After construction, the data may be delivered for building commissioning operation and maintenance.
The Secret in Documentation
A powerful tool, Uniformat (UF), already exists to capture the origin of the documentation process used throughout the project lifespan. It is at the hub of the fundamental relationship between the estimator and the specifier.
Here is how it works: Uniformat is an elemental classification system developed by estimators for cost analysis of building systems and assemblies. It allows for performance and design criteria to be documented as the OPR before any systems are actually designed. The requirements can be used as the project progresses to test the design and construction for compliance with the OPR. If non-compliant, the design, the criteria or both can be evaluated and adjusted to satisfy the owner and prevent proceeding with an unacceptable solution.
As the project develops, the format of specifications changes. Construction specifications are written in MasterFormat (MF). UF is best for exploring options and selecting best solutions, while MF permits validation of performance and value.
What would it look like to merge Uniformat with MasterFormat on a single platform by linking them together? This would result in coordinated and integrated project information, offering the best of both systems.
Continuous Estimating Leads to Transformation
Through a new cloud-based integrated building information tool, estimators, construction managers and owners are simultaneously armed with knowledge from the decisions made by team members throughout each phase. The information is available in total or in part, specific to users’ project roles.
Estimators can quickly access the UF systems and components that must be priced to guide design decisions. Construction managers can view the MF specifications to understand the products needed to schedule the work. Owners can view the UF system descriptions to verify that the designers responded correctly to the OPR. All participants can see all the data at any point in time to understand the synecdochal relationship to the entire project.
Cost estimates occur quickly and more accurately due to the input coordination between the project descriptions and estimates. The preconstruction team can then easily confirm that the estimate accurately reflects the scope of the project.
In UF, prices are based on entire assemblies, and comparing assemblies that perform the same function becomes vastly simplified. When presented with assembly cost comparisons, the owner and design team make more informed decisions when choosing one system over another, providing a path for the design.
System descriptions permit comparison more quickly using historical data, creating a roadmap for cost control on new projects. By using legacy information of a particular building type, building elements can be figured into new projects. When the range is exceeded, a trigger for analysis of these systems directs the architecture, engineering and preconstruction teams to review and ensure the design and the cost accurately reflect the design intent and process, as well as to determine what may have caused the overrun.
This continuous estimating can have a tremendous positive impact on the project cost and schedule by using market trends and labor availability to inform design decisions.
Coordination, Collaboration, Risk Reduction
One of a construction manager’s most challenging tasks is handling logistics and monitoring scheduled production to complete construction. UF assembly descriptions lend themselves to crew coordination. Each system can be subdivided by floor, quadrant and any number of other factors to create a production scope within the optimal management timeframe, helping manage production rate and provide feedback for process improvements.
Another challenge faced by the construction manager is applying site, historical and other knowledge to a project early in the process. The construction team can provide tremendous insight to specifications that can significantly improve ease of scheduling, sequencing and coordination. Encouraging collaboration throughout the process, on a platform accessed by the CM, specifier, owner and A/E team, enables every member’s experience to be capitalized.
When the construction team participates more fully, ambiguity can be eliminated. Plus, the need for RFIs and change orders and resulting scheduling disruptions can be vastly reduced—eliminating hidden risks.
The Revolution Has Begun
Target value design, integrated project delivery, modular offsite construction and other forms of collaboration and efficiency gains are moving an industry that is traditionally siloed toward one more akin to a linear assembly line. Through UF and MF integration and universal stakeholder participation, all project requirements are incorporated in one platform that enables continuous estimating and design validation that will serve the life of the project from day one through commissioning and building operations.
