This year was no exception. Nashville provided a beautiful
and fun back drop for all of the events that make up this great convention. The
brand-new Music City Center is a beautiful venue that provided the myriad of
spaces needed for the show floor and all the meetings and networking
opportunities. The various restaurants and bars along Broadway provided great
night time entertainment and the Cumberland River Greenway provided the perfect
path for the inaugural #RunCSI!
Social Media has become increasingly more visible and
accessible at all CSI events, but I think it reached a fever pitch this year at
CONSTRUCT. In addition to the constant tweeting and daily blogging by many
attendees and the various educational sessions offered to help make social
media accessible to all, there were TweetUps and other formal and informal
gatherings to discuss Twitter, blogging and other forms of social media that we
can use to get the word out about CSI. After CONSTRUCT was over, several CSI
staffers have put together Storify stories or recaps of the tweeting that took
place during many of the educational sessions so that those who attended can be
reminded of the session content and view the thoughts of others and those who
did not attend, can review what took place during the session. To access these
stories, log on to your Twitter account and search for the sessions number with
a hashtag: #H06 for example was one of the sessions presented by Joy Davis,
CSI’s Queen of Social Media.
When I sat down to write about a particular session that gave
me something to take back to work with me, I was fortunate enough to be able to
review the Storify recap of the session and remember what my thoughts were in
addition to reading those of others who were in the room with me. You can
follow me @BaltoCSI on Twitter. The Storify story includes tweets from
@vivianvolz, @ericdlussier, @CSICincyChapter, @specwinch and was assembled by
Joy Davis (@CSIConstruction).
The session that I’m writing about was H10 “Architect/Consulting
Engineer Coordination: Closing the Gap” and was presented by Cherise Schacter,
@cheriseschacter AKA The Kraken. I have more on that nickname later. I am an
architect and project manager for a mid-sized architecture firm in Baltimore. I
work on mostly higher education projects and in particular research and
teaching laboratories. There is an incredibly high level of coordination
between architecture and engineering systems required by laboratory projects
and while I think I’m pretty good at performing this coordination, I can always
learn more, so I chose Cherise’s session to attend.
Cherise has worked for both architecture and engineering
firms. She is currently employed by an engineering firm working on their office
master guide specifications. In preparing for her presentation, she reviewed
nearly 75 projects and in most instances, found a coordination error in less
than two minutes. I was shocked and appalled to hear that. How can intelligent
and licensed professionals leave such egregious errors that they can be found
in two minutes? Cherise knows where to look and so do those contractors that we
all know who are unscrupulous and search for change orders in our documents.
When reviewing the project documents, Cherise started by
reviewing Division 01 of the project manual and continued through the technical
sections of Divisions 21, 22, 23, 25 and into the 30’s, finding areas where the
architect wrote something in Division 01 that the engineer then contradicted in
the later technical sections. Her point being, it is difficult, boring and
time-consuming, but architects need to read the specification sections written and
edited by engineers in order to discover the areas where the engineer may
contradict or not be completely coordinated with the architect’s Division 01.
However, Cherise also told us of a better way. She has
assembled a questionnaire and checklist that can be sent to the entire design
team to make sure Division 01 meets the needs of the engineering systems and
that the engineers understand what not to put in Part 1 of their technical
sections. I was not shocked to learn that few engineering firms hire
professional specification writers, but I was shocked to learn that most
engineering firms do not have a single source for the production of their
specifications. Many engineering firms let the individual engineers or
engineering designers write and edit the specifications. This means there could
be multiple people editing mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection
specifications. With so many hands touching the project manual, no wonder it is
so easy to find coordination problems!
The central message of Cherise’s presentation was we all
need to keep communicating. Not sending emails, but actually picking up the
phone and having a personal conversation. That’s the best way to defeat the
coordination errors that lead to change orders and hard feelings on the job
site. I know this intrinsically, but it’s always nice to be reminded of it by
other construction professionals. I’m currently working on a large project with
an incredibly large and complex consultant team. As a team, we frequently fall
into the trap of firing off emails rather than using the phone. That has led to
miscommunication, inaccurate work and hard feelings and we are still in design
development!
That leads me back to “The Kraken.” Cherise and many others
are starting a movement on Twitter that they refer to as #CSIKraken. It comes
from a joke around the office where when something isn’t quite right, Cherise
says, “Don’t make me release The Kraken!” It’s the idea that “The Kraken” is
anyone dedicated to working hard, working smart and getting the job done. Isn’t
that what CSI is all about? Isn’t that what makes us and our events, like
CONSTRUCT, the best in the industry? These events are about like minded
professionals coming together to share ideas and have some fun. That’s what
keeps me returning year after year.
If the idea of “The Kraken” interests you, check it out on
Twitter under #CSIKraken. If the idea of learning how to work hard, work smart
and get your jobs done interests you, go to http://www.csinet.org/Main-Menu-Category/Communities-2109-14280/Chapter-Locator
to find a chapter near you. Go to a meeting and find The Krakens in the room.
You’ll enjoy yourself and probably learn something to take back with you to
work.
