Contributed by Randy Nishimura Change is a constant in architecture and construction. If anything, the pace of this change is accelerating. We all struggle to keep up with the latest developments in an effort to remain competitive. Our success is contingent upon how quickly we adapt in an environment buffeted by forces largely beyond our control. Survival of the fittest is a maxim always in play.
If there is another constant in our industry it is the importance of clear, concise, correct and complete construction documentation and communications. Architecture and construction are increasingly dependent upon the effective conveyance of design intent. They are likewise dependent upon the clear definition of project responsibilities and roles detailed by the forms of agreement most widely used in construction projects. It’s important and necessary for everyone — owners, architects, engineers, specifiers, general contractors, subcontractors, construction materials suppliers, and others — to understand project delivery options, standard forms of agreement, means for organizing drawings and specifications, etc. Change and the Four C’s of construction documentation are not incompatible. A key to managing the former and mastering the latter is knowledge, specifically fluency with the lingua franca of our industry. Knowledgeable employers highly value those who understand the language of construction, its underlying principles and terminology, and the critical relationships between all the participants in any design and construction undertaking. Employees who thoroughly understand this language not only survive but are more likely to thrive. They are the winners in today’s challenging and constantly changing environment. So, how can you demonstrate your construction knowledge and competence? How can you stand out in the crowd? One of the best ways is to achieve CSI's Construction Documents Technologist (CDT) status. The Construction Specifications Institute developed the CDT program decades ago to provide training in construction documentation for architects, contractors, contract administrators, specifiers, and manufacturers’ representatives. Since then, it has become the cornerstone for all of CSI’s certification programs, which presently include Certified Construction Specifier (CCS), Certified Construction Contract Administrator (CCCA), and Certified Construction Product Representative (CCPR). Passing the CDT examination means you have become fluent with construction project processes and communication. It means you’ve demonstrated professional commitment, credibility, and reliability to your employer, colleagues, and clients. Obtaining CDT status benefits you, your company, and your customers. Getting your CDT also means acquiring the privilege to add “CDT” after your name on your business card and resume. In some respects, I regard the value of the CDT as analogous to that of a liberal arts degree, in that both provide a foundation for more advanced learning. I became a CDT back in 1989, and subsequently achieved Certified Construction Specifier status a couple of years later. There’s no doubt in my mind that studying for and passing both examinations has served me very well professionally. What I learned provided me with a solid knowledge base I’ve relied upon throughout my career. I know I’m a much better architect than I might have been without the benefit of what I learned through those two certification programs. I truly believe this knowledge equipped me with the ability to better cope with the accelerating changes in our industry by ensuring I first thoroughly grasped the time-tested fundamentals of construction documentation and communications. I highly encourage any of you who are simply curious about CDT certification to seriously consider learning more about its value. Ask others besides me who have become CDTs. Or check out CSI’s YouTube channel for informational webinars about its certification programs. The webinars provide more information than I have shared here. Each webinar covers the requirements and resources needed for successful exam preparation and study. Many local CSI chapters also offer educational courses to help those interested prepare for the examinations. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Knowledge provides a competitive edge. Give your knowledge about construction documents and communication a boost by becoming a Construction Documents Technologist. The true value of CDT certification is beyond calculation—it’s priceless. (Editors note: the next testing window for CDT & advanced certification will be Spring of 2017)
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Contributed by Sheldon Wolfe Among the things specifiers grumble most about are the typical architect's lack of knowledge about how things work and how they go together, and the belief that "If I can draw it someone can build it!"
Some architecture schools do include courses about the practical aspects of architecture, but those courses are often optional, so most architects graduate with a lot of knowledge about visual design, planning, and presentation, but little understanding of materials or construction. It's fine to have a presentation about masonry, but so much more could be learned from participants getting their hands dirty. It's easy to draw a 4 x 4 x 8 brick, but what does it feel like? It takes no more effort to draw a 3-5/8 x 2-1/4 x 11-5/8 brick or a 3-5/8 x 3-5/8 x 15-5/8 brick, or, for that matter, a 12 x 8 x 16 concrete masonry unit, but what difference does it make to the mason? It doesn't take any longer to draw a large masonry unit, but does the size affect installation time? Until you pick up a brick, mix the mortar, and try to build a wall, you simply cannot appreciate what your details mean in the real world. This shortcoming presents a tremendous opportunity for continuing education programs. In June of 2000, twenty-five architects from my office went to the masonry apprentice school in St. Paul for an afternoon of fun, down-and-dirty continuing education. The program was set up by Olene Bigelow, our local International Masonry Institute (IMI) rep, and contact for the Brick Industry Association (BIA). The apprentices set up a series of stations, each showing a specific part of the job. Demonstrations included reading drawings and specifications, estimating, mixing mortar, laying brick and CMU of various sizes, installing door frames, and more. After the book learnin' discussions, the architects got their hands dirty at each station and learned how their decisions affected construction and schedule. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of CSI visited the school and followed the same program. It's easy to complain about what architects don't know, but they are not alone. Specifiers may know more of the technical properties of materials, but many have had no more practical experience in construction than architects. I used masonry as an example, but similar programs could be done for everything that goes into a building. ALL of us can us do better if we know more about how other team members do their jobs. Contributed by Elias Saltz In my earlier post here on Let’s Fix Construction, I listed a number of ways in which architects contribute to problems that lead us to the project of looking for ways we can fix construction. Among that list, I posited “Architects, and humans in general, to be fair, have a overly optimistic view of their own knowledge and competence. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. As a result, they forcefully promote making decisions based on faulty information that they have high levels of confidence in.” I thought it might be fun to look at this a little deeper because having (and living by) an honest assessment of our own competence is really challenging. Dunning-Kruger Effect The Dunning-Kruger Effect is named after a paper published in 1999 by psychologist David Dunning and his graduate student, Justin Kruger. The effect has been substantiated in subsequent studies and is generally accepted to be a “hard-wired” part of human psychology. In their original study, they asked subjects to take tests in a variety of subjects and before learning the results were asked to estimate their abilities in the subject area and their performance on the tests. They found that other than the top few percent of test-takers, subjects grossly overestimated their competence. The chart above illustrates the results. The striking part: everyone believes they’re above average. Of course, the very definition of “average” makes that impossible.
In a later article, Dunning makes some additional observations about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, including this: “An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.” The longer we live and the more things we experience, the more what-we-take-to-be-knowledge we have in our heads. We take a lifetime’s worth of useless clutter in our heads and it makes us feel like we know more than we do. While the Dunning-Kruger Effect may be built into our brains, that doesn’t mean we need to be driven by it. The main way to combat its effects are through careful self-reflection and metacognition. A good place to start is the moment when you realize you’re judging someone else for their apparent idiocy. Consider how it would feel to be judged in the same way the next time you are wrong about something. Rather than being tempted to believe that any particular idiocy doesn’t apply to you, ask yourself what you think you know about that topic, how confident you are in that knowledge, and, most importantly, how you think you know it. Your mental litany should go, “what do I think I know and how do I think I know it?” Instead of feeling defensive about being wrong and making up excuses for maintaining an erroneous belief, (which is our default stance - this is part of another powerful metal effect called cognitive dissonance), train yourself to get pleasure when you update your beliefs when presented with compelling evidence that you were wrong. The reason I think it’s useful to discuss Dunning-Kruger in this series of posts is that I think architecture is probably more rife with it than other learned professions. That begins in our education, in which for most schools training architecture students how much they don’t know simply isn’t part of the curriculum. Instead, in architecture school, ideas (“concepts”) stand in for knowledge and learning how to draw is given heavier weight than learning the profession. Architecture students are taught a lot about design but next to nothing about building technology, specifications, or practice. [Aside -- Speaking of weight, back when I was in school we used Sweets™ Catalogs as ballast for models, but it was also enlightening to page through them just to see the myriad building products that exist in the world of which I had so little knowledge. Also, Sweets ™ was the first place I encountered MasterFormat divisions. Now, I don’t think the paper version of Sweets™ even exists.] Contrast architectural with medical school: there the knowledge gap between the students and practitioners is constantly being emphasized and made clear through verbal and written assessments. Medical students are reminded over and over that they have massive amounts to learn, and taught to be humble. Maybe it’s a status thing; architects tend to believe architecture is a high status profession. Most architects believe that having more completed projects in the world gives them higher status and more knowledge and the right to claim to be wise and espouse ‘deep thoughts’. However, we’d be more wise to understand and remember that Dunning-Kruger shows that what feels like knowledge often isn’t anything more than mind clutter. Skeptical blogger and podcaster Steve Novella wrote this when offering advice on how to combat Dunning-Kruger in yourself: Think about some area in which you have a great deal of knowledge in the expert to mastery level (or maybe just a special interest with above average knowledge). Now, think about how much the average person knows about your area of specialty. Not only do they know comparatively very little, they likely have no idea how little they know, and how much specialized knowledge even exists. Here comes the critical part – now realize that you are as ignorant as the average person is every other area of knowledge in which you are not expert. Assume you know less than you think you know. Assume that stuff you believe now is wrong (and be ready to change your mind). Contributed by Cherise Lakeside With the ever increasing speed and change in projects and products every day, this blog could have been about anything. I chose to write about something that I am not hearing much about but that I am seeing with increased frequency. Something that really concerns me:
Where are the trained Specifiers? Am I the only one noticing a major shortage? Please understand that when I say “trained” specifier, I am referring to the folks that have had contract document, project delivery and specifications education. I am talking about the folks who are well versed in the latest and greatest in the products worlds and know exactly how to incorporate that information into the Contract Documents for the best possible project outcome. I am not talking about all the folks out there who write specs but do not have this very special and specific training. I am aware of a number of firms, in different locations around the country, who are having a very difficult time finding a specifier with this kind of training. Why is that? I will tell you what I think (which anyone who knows me would expect). Please note that there is no scientific research or analytics behind this blog. It is merely my observations in my local area and other parts of the country as a result of my involvement and connections in CSI. I think we dropped the ball and I think two recessions have taken a huge toll on Generation X. Trained specifiers are a rare breed as it is. I see tons of (untrained) people in our industry writing or editing specs and creating risk and potential conflicts in the process because they do not know what they are doing. The hard cold truth is that it is common in our industry to discriminate against the specs. It is common to treat them as less important than the drawings. It is common to see only cursory attention given to this CONTRACT document. This document that carries equal weight with the drawings in the eyes of the law. As a result, many firms will let anyone in the office dump information into the specs. That is a critical mistake and I have seen the fallout of this decision first hand. More than once. On the flip side of that coin, the firms that are smart enough to hire trained spec writers can’t find them. Finding a trained spec writer to hire these days is like looking for Bigfoot. Why are we so short in this valuable, absolutely necessary resource in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC)? Here is my take:
So where does that leave us? That leaves us without qualified, trained spec writers to fill the shoes of the exiting Baby Boomer spec writers (which, honestly, is the majority of them). What is the consequence? Firms are letting anybody with a pen in their hand write specs and the conflicts on projects are increasing. Contributed by Elias Saltz Continuing education for architects is a necessary component of the profession. It is the main vehicle by which we are able to keep up to date with developments in material science, construction methods, business procedures, document creation, et cetera. All licensed architects are required to attend a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) to maintain their licenses and the AIA requires continuing education of its members to maintain membership.
All programs put on by my CSI chapter of Chicago offer CEUs and the chapter pays AIA every year to maintain its status as an education provider, and we offer far more units than architects are required to obtain. Typically, though, most architects will obtain a majority of their CEU hours by attending “lunch and learn” sessions arranged by an education coordinator at their firm, and at my company I fill that role. My firm is not a registered CEU provider, so our lunch and learn programs are provided by product reps whose programs have been registered and approved by AIA through its Continuing Education System (CES) to provide learning units. AIA-approved courses are also accepted by other organizations as well, such as GBCI and CSI, which require continuing education to maintain their advanced certifications. Over time, I’ve become more conscious of trying to be skeptical of claims being made as part of CES lunch and learn courses, and also evaluating whether I feel like I’ve gotten any value (other than lunch) for my time and attention. Most CES programs have some nuggets of useful information, and I don’t feel any qualms about accepting the credit for attending. On rare occasions a CES program is complete baloney; I refuse the credit (and maybe even leave the room - taking my lunch with me as compensation for my wasted time) and one time I even began wondering how the AIA decides what qualifies for an approved CES course in the first place. I started by reviewing the AIA CES Provider Manual Policies and Resources booklet and the Provider Manual Resources Toolkit. The bulk of the information in these documents is procedural and administrative: how to write high quality learning objectives, how to get your course approved and listed by AIA, how to register attendees, what introductory slides are required, and when you can and cannot discuss proprietary information. There is very little guidance about what the course content may or may not cover. Out of 34 pages in the “Policies and Resources” document, only one page - page 15 - talks about Health, Safety, Welfare (HSW) content (though to be fair, the “Resources Toolkit” talks more about HSW). Another few sentences provide the following minimal guidelines for content:
The existence of useless courses is a potential black eye for the AIA as the administrator of the CES system, and something they should really care about, in my opinion. However, there’s no evidence that the AIA intends to do anything about this in the near term. To compensate for this deficit, my firm has begun requiring that all CEU presenters agree to a set of rules that go above and beyond those required by the AIA as a condition for our agreeing to let them present. If rules like these were widely adopted, this could go toward fixing continuing education.
Architects should be able to rely on the continuing education they receive to actually improve their knowledge and abilities. Until we improve how we validate what we’re being taught, the CES and CEU programs it offers should be considered to be of questionable value. |
AboutLet's Fix Construction is an avenue to offer creative solutions, separate myths from facts and erase misconceptions about the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Check out Cherise's latest podcast
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