… and I think the changeover in many parts of the country will be driven by more complicated electrical/security/telecom requirements. They were the guys behind the “Division 17” in the first place, and on large buildings with “smart” systems, it is much easier to use the 04 organization and numbers.
this obviously isn’t the case for everyone – we have a 75 story building going up in NYC, and the electrical consultant gave us one section – 280 pages long.
Anne,
Did the keep true to the 3 part format in those 280 pages?
At that point the inertia of change (motion has inertia) will ovecome the inertia of stasis. I would estimate that we will start to see this in a few years.
No doubt, but for what?
I had to go look. Yes, actually they did. Part 1 is about 70 pages, Part 2 has about 140 pages, with each item listed individually and Part 3 is the rest.
All I can say is - Absolutely Fabulous.
To work so hard and diligently to do something wrong like this requires a special dedication.
I have noticed “reluctance” by some low-voltage systems engineers to use Masterformat 2004. They insist on keeping their work specified in Division 17.
Recently, I was given specs from an MEP consultant with Sections in Division 20 - all the piping and assorted “general” stuff for MEP was written there…I see an educational opportunity.
I seldom encounter a user of MF95. One client continues to use MF95 for their proprietary database, therefore we fall in line.
Consultants I liase with use MF04 as intended. Fire protection, plumbing, HVAC, communication, and civil. Some may let a reference to division 15 or 16 slip thru the cracks now and then.
Our consultants and our projects are scatterd all across the USA and Canada and the UK, Europe, middle east, Asia, and Mexico.
Except for the USA and Canada, the other regions do not give 2/3 of a FA what format we use as long as the documents comply with the 4 Cs.
That said, NYC is another story for another posting. Go figure.
We appear to be lucky in the PNW.
Wayne
I would guess that the reason that there there is such a uniform adoption of MF04 in the Pacific Northwest is because of leadership. I recall descriptions by Anne, you, others of the promotion of the change, the setting of a date to change by, etc. that was accomplished by the leaders of the Northwest. I, for one, would be interested in hearing your and Anne’s appraisal of that effort from a couple of year’s perspective. Anne could of course provide a comparison of that situation with that in the “progressive Southern California” since since she abondoned the Northwest to relocate there.
As Peter has commented earlier, change is not easy for most people; we usually strongly resist it; we like to do what we are accustomed to. Most people have to be led to make a change and that is best done by convincing them of the virtues and benefits of the change. That is especially difficult when the change might be very good for the industry as a whole but not necessarily as great a benefit for a particular segment of the industry which is probably true for MasterFormat 2004 as it probably benefits the engineering world more than the architecture world. That is not to say that there are not benefits for architectural subjects too. The question becomes do you believe in the change and do you do your part to lead people to accept the change or do you sit back and do what is convenient and easy for you. Are you a leader in your area of expertise or are you a follower? We all face that choice. Based on what I know from the outside, I would surmise that there was a group of people in the Northwest who decided to be leaders.
I have not done a project spec in MF95 for a several years. I gave my clients (almost all architects with developer clients scattered around the country) some warning and education about the coming change and then found no resistance as the change was made. One developer expressed some concern during the spec preparation and was told by my architect client that they follow the standard of the industry and the developer had no further comment. I have also revised one developers standard Division 01 from MF95 to MF04, again with no problems. I have had one project of an expansion of a hospital built just a couple years ago where the architect client requested the specs for the expansion be in MF04 even though the construction and many of sections are very similar in content to the original which were in MF95.
Bob-
there was also a lot of promotion and buy-in of MF04 by the electrical engineers (and often those firms do mechanical work as well) which helped with the conversion. The electrical guys directly saw the benefit and were very ready to move into the new format.
The northwest offices tend to all use the same batch of consultants for structural, mechanical and electrical, and it was to their advantage that everyone switch over at the same time. In addition, some of the larger institutions were on board (the University of Washington, for example) and that helped. As convoluted as their Division 01 specs were, at least they wanted a rewrite – and again, it was partly their telecom folks who championed the idea.
my understanding is that the transition was relatively painless with the exception of the contractors who had to keep both types of estimates going for a while as things transitioned over.
As for southern California…I’m not going to say its hopeless, but its very disorganized.
I use whatever format my client needs for the project. Some jobs are continuations of previous jobs so we keep the format the same, i.e., 5 digits. I am presently doing more than half with 5 digits.
We have been using MF 04 in all disciplines for about two years (we are an A/E firm). Occasionally when using an outside consultant, we encounter MF 95. Of course, these are also specs using a single section for each discipline, resulting in an electrical section of about 200 pages. I wouldn’t use these knuckle-draggers as an example of best practice–paragraph levels get so deep that the indent is more than half the margin width.
We have a few office masters in the new SectionFormat, including Painting. We will convert along with MasterSpec’s conversion, or as we create new office masters.
Today I’m wishing that we had not converted to MF2004. With all the new and improved sections for civil, mechanical, plumbing, electrical, fire suppression, and communications our recently printed project manual for a 9th grade building totaled more than 1000 pages (duplexed). Under MF 95 this project manual would have consisted of less than 400 pages (duplexed).
Has anyone else noticed a significant increase in the number of pages required under MF 2004?
Sounds like there may have been a misunderstanding of the intent or use of MasterFormat.
There is nothing in MF '04 that would mandate or imply that one need to increase page count or section numbers; spec sections are spec sections, regardless if they are numbered with 5 digits or 6.
Our Project Manuals have not increased in size at all; same number of spec sections, same number of pages.
No.
The driving force for more sections is more materials and products on each project. Each project becomes a samples building.
When my project manuals get large I make 2 or 3 volumes. Volume 1 will end at Division 14.
I do wish some site work sections prepared by the Architect remained in Div 02. They get lost and forgotten buried near the ene of Volume 2 or 3 with civil stuff.
No noticeable increase in any division except MEP areas - and those depend on the individual consultant. We have been doing only MF2004 for the past 2 years. We use consultants for MEP and a variety of them. Of some 7 consultants, 2 of them had a page count increase. One of them had a minor page count decrease. The others seem to be about the same.
William
I think what has happened is that people are taking the individually distinct section numbering in MF2004 as gospel and not using broad scope and medium scope section numbers to combine sections - say 09-6400 rather than 09-6423.13. This may be accentuated by the engineers making more sections to “comply” with MF2004.
Quite frankly, I don’t recall ever having produced a 400 page project manual. Jeez, when we do university work and we’re required to use the Owners front-end docs, they’re usually in excess of 150 pages…and that’s before even getting to Division 02! Our project manuals typically run between 800 and 1200 pages regardless of which format we’re using.
For a public school project, two volumes of nearly 1000 pages each would not be unusual. But the switch to MF2004 had no effect on that.
I have been using MF-04 for several years and have not noticed any increase in pages. I am being forced to do a Prison project in the old, outdated format, and, sure enough, I have consultants sending me Division 17 and even a Division 18. Sections numbers overlap and it is a coordination mess. I really like MF-04 and find it MUCH easier to use.
As spec writers we should be leading the change, not digging in our heals. On one page people are griping that no one knows who CSI, but here, with MF-04, we have the chance to take charge and educate our clients and the industry and show why CSI should be well-respected. Why should we expect others to respect our organization if we, the spec writers, are not endorsing the system(s) CSI creates?