Document Standards and Design Practice

We've convened another effort on document standards in our office. I've been a part of several, over many years and at many firms. Standards committees can sometimes bring out the worst in people. Getting a group of architects to completely agree on anything, much less how to do their job is a lot like nailing jello to a wall, to quote John McCain.

This time, instead of delving into the minutiae of whether the height of a note ought to be 13/32" or merely 3/8", we decided that it might be better to begin our standards effort with a simple question:

What should a set of construction documents do and why?

It's a simple question, but I think it get's to the heart of what standards represent for an organization. Instead of answering the question, however, I'm going to try to bring the notion of standards into some context. I'd like to suggest that there are really three 'pure' models of document standards and that most firms tend to oscillate somewhere between these three. They are:

1. The Prescriptive Standard

The prescriptive standard looks at the documentation effort as a distinct and separate process from the design of the building. It attempts to codify certain specific rules that govern exactly what and how information is captured and communicated in the documents. It seeks to maximize efficiency in the creation of the documents. The process of documentation is structured in parallel; sections, for example, fit in a parallel series of slots that are organized broadly and are structured so that they are easily transferred from one part of the set to another.

Prescriptive Standards work best when you have a large organization that deals with a high volume of information that can be organized pretty much the same way. For example, imagine a multinational firm that designs hot dog stands all over the world. In order to deliver the same product, whether in China or Skokie, Illinois, the hot dog stand manufacturer sources the same parts, same machines, uniforms and so on to each site. The design firm's job wants to minimize the difference between each facility, to the greatest extent possible, and so will standardize both the form of the documents (what the set looks like) and their content. For this kind of organization, prescriptive document standards make a lot of sense.

2. The Performance Standard

The performance standard tries to codify the intent of the documents rather than its features. It is more concerned that all the documents produced by an organization perform a certain way rather than look the same. It may seek, for example, to maximize efficiency in the creation of documents or it might, alternately, develop documents that are more efficient from an ease of use standpoint.

The important thing about a per formative standard is that it lays out a way of thinking about documents. One way of thinking would be to limit the breadth of information described within the document set in way that limits the liability of a firm to the greatest extent possible. But another standard might emphasize the utility of a set on the construction site as the document metric.

Both of these extremes are worth discussing in some detail, but the main point here is that a performance standard doesn't necessarily set out how to achieve these goals, it only describes the document intent and grants the project teams the greatest amount of leeway possible to achieve them.

The performance standard would work best in a smaller, tightly integrated firm that can't really afford to spend a lot of overhead developing elaborate document standards. A firm like this might be involved in a lot of different building types which don't allow it the same economy of scale as a large organization doing a lot of repetitive work.

3. The Project Based Standard

The project based standard seeks to align the a project rather than any organization. It is attempts to tailor the set to a specific job effort that is trying to achieve specific goals, with the expectation that every job would develop its own job standard.

There isn't a lot of precedent for a pure application of this model- yet. There are two scenarios that I think might suggest an emergence of this kind of document standard into prevalence. The first is in the context of the Single Purpose Entity or SPE, which is one of the concepts utilized by the AIA's Integrated Project Delivery Contracts. SPE are basically legal entities that are created as partnerships between the owner, architect and contractor on a basis of mutual benefit and trust, whose sole purpose is to complete a building project. In this arrangement, the notion of a specifically tailored document that moves back and forth from the architect to the contractor and, ultimately, to the owner makes a great deal of sense. A deliverable in this context might look a lot like a construction set- on the other hand, it might just as easily by a Building Information Model that contains only the information that the contractor might say he needs formatted in a way to anticipate its use by the owner for her facilities management operations. All of this might be done without printing a single sheet of paper.

The other scenario (not mutually exclusive to the first) imagines building designed not by static firms but by ad-hoc teams of highly skilled freelance contractors. In this scenario, a highly dynamic services market supports a network of professionals that are convened to deliver specific projects.

The value of these three models is that they can provide some grounding for a firm undergoing a standards effort. There will probably never a 'pure' implementation of a standards model. But the models are a useful illustration of what standards might represent to firm. Ultimately, the way these three models are 'mixed' to form a working document standard within an organization says as much about a firm as the work itself.