Practice Management Member Conversations

I'm semi-retired now but when I was head of specs at Freeman-White, I created a Specs Start Sheet for every project. It was basically a list of questions to be answered by the project PM and those assigned to that project. It contained questions about the project starting with basic stuff; i.e, schedule, project name, official address, who is on the team, consultants contact info, etc. to more technical info specific to the project. Included as part of the start sheet was a MasterSpec table of contents with a short description of what each section contained. The PM, et al, would answer the questions and select the sections they thought the project needed. Specs were not started until this document was completed. It also contained a statement similar to the following "Failure to complete and submit this document on time does not constitute an emergency in the spec dept.". It usually worked very well. Most appreciated it. Especially the younger staff as it gave them more insight into the project and acted as a reminder of things they needed to address. Once the document was completed and submitted, an appointment with the specs dept. was scheduled to review the submitted information and begin the spec writing process. Worked well for us. Remember, upper management support is critical to making this work and the staff soon learns to plan ahead for specs and learns something about specifying in the process.

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John Fendley AIA, CCS
Owner/Principal
ArchWorks, inc.
Fort Mill SC
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I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my question - both directly via email and through this forum.  

From the responses I should clarify that we have sent some employees through the CDT course - and I think it would be very beneficial for our younger staff in order to get "SPECS" more firmly embedded in their consciousness.  It's unfortunate that with around 30 production staff that our firm wanted to limit the participation to a handful, so it would take a few years to get everyone through.

I should also state that we have a pretty good system mapped out for starting a project, which includes most of the process you describe below. We're working on creating the checklist of questions you reference in BSD, which should be very helpful as well.  I'm also trying to develop (in my SPARE time - HA!) a coordination document for each section of specs that we normally use, that both explains the nuances of the Basis of Design product and standards for use are, and has a checklist of Verification, Production, Coordination, and Review tasks, so our different staff know the questions they have to ask the owner, the production staff know what has to be drawn or annotated and coordinated with other consultants, and CA staff know what to look for in submittals.  With 60 - 70 sections to write, I'm only about 15% done, and it usually gets put off when a check set is waiting for review.  Fortunately we're a busy office...how I crave a one or two month sabbatical to just FINISH those.  Then the only challenge would be making sure everyone READS them.  Those, combined with a questionnaire should be useful.

John F it's funny - we have a pretty direct translation of your disclaimer - "A failure to anticipate on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part".

Thanks again for your input everyone.

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John Thompson Assoc. AIA
Production Coordinator
Dore & Whittier Architects, Inc.
Burlington VT
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