^{Dale C. Moll Award Recipient Focused on
Design and Construction Documents' Development}

October 2001 CSI NewsDigest Article

Dennis Bland, CSI, student member from Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute, was awarded the 2001 Dale C. Moll Student Activity Fund at the CSI Convention and Exhibit in Dallas this past June. Bland is studying Architectural Engineering Drafting Technology and is scheduled to earn an Associate’s degree in June 2002. He then plans to attend the University of New Mexico to study Civil Engineering. He has been a student member of the Albuquerque Chapter since September 2000.

 The purpose of the Dale C. Moll Student Activity Fund is twofold: to promote aware­ness among college students of construction documents’ vital role in building design and construction and to encourage student involvement in CSI. The deadline for 2002 submis­sions to the Institute is February 1, 2002.

 This year’s essay topics include:

 •   Design as it relates to the development of construction documents,

•   How the quality of construction documents relates to the constructor or the construction process, and

•   The role of construction documents, as defined in the Manual of Practice, in improving the quality of the construction process.

 Bland’s winning essay:

Design As It Relates to the Development of Construction Documents

Specifications are an integral part of any designed project. Specifications need simple clarification and more detail to reduce costs, delays, and problems caused by any misunder­standing of them. The intent of specifications is to ensure a trouble-free project that can proceed at a standard pace without problems. Specifica­tions that don’t have clarity, detail, or depth do not help projects, but end up hindering them.

Specifications can be and usually are taken many different ways by many different people. Specifications, in the past, have been written in a way that almost made it mandatory for the architect to either be present at the job site dur­ing every stage of the project, or to hire some­one to take his place. Even with someone else at the project, it did not ensure that the architect received what he specified. Specification writ­ing is getting more and more detailed, remov­ing the burden of “babysitting” the project and allowing the architect more freedom to concen­trate on other designs.

The need for detail on a specification for a project is best presented by an example of an architecture firm in Boston, Massachusetts, and a project here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The firm from Boston wrote a particular speci­fication for masonry work, calling out for a “smooth finish” on the stonework for the project. Due to the loose interpretation of the type of finish desired, a relatively large and costly mistake was made. The general contractor and subcontractor both interpreted the wording of “smooth finish” to indicate a perfectly smooth finish with no blemishes or marks. The general contractor and subcontractor went to very expensive lengths to provide the best possible “smooth finish” as requested and started installing the stonework on the project. Upon reviewing installation of the masonry on the project, the architect rejected the complete installation. The reason for the rejection was due to the fact that the architect was looking for a “smooth finish” as performed by masons in Boston, Massachusetts, and not as previously constructed by the general contractor and sub­contractor. The particular “smooth finish” that the architect was looking for is a sand-blasted, “worn” look that creates a smooth appearance. Unfortunately, due to the broad scope of the words “smooth finish” and the way that they were interpreted in this case, it caused a long delay and very large costs to be accrued to the project. If more details were provided in the specification (i.e., calling out the meaning of “smooth finish”), problems like this could have been avoided.

As indicated by the above example, clear specifications can provide a better building environment, reducing costs, delays, and tensions.

I have been a student member in the Albuquerque, New Mexico chapter for a few short months. I am very impressed with the dedication that the involved CSI members have concerning the issues with the specification writing process and possible improvements