Well written, Robin. The use of MF04 is a golden opportunity to demonstrate the organization so badly needed. (of course, on a recent MF04 project, I had MEP submitting Section 20 documents; I will be having a discussion with them).
We have been fully converted to MF04 since the beginning of 2006. A project with a consulting engineer who was already converted to MF04 was what got us going to make the change.
We have one local engineer who also uses Division 20 for the general MEP ‘stuff’. They are the only ones though.
ok, since I started this thread, I have a question, of those of you using MF04 are you also preparing work for the public sector. Our firm prepares specs only for the private sector, and for that sector 99% of our clients remain steadfast opposed to MF04 and prefer MF95…in these touch economic times, I’m not about to argue with them.
We do both public and private sector work. Most of the clients in the public sector work have at least some front-end documentation that we are required to use. This will determine which MF version we will use…some are still on 95, others have converted to 04.
I can’t think of ANY private sector work that we’ve done where the client has cared one way or the other what format we use.
We have a couple public sector projects.
But it would come to about 99 percent of our work over the past 4 years is private sector.
We made the switch official January 31, 2006.
We never had a complaint or even a question from any of our owners. More than half of them are long time clients that own/manage their facilities over the long term. Of the newer clients, the majority of them also own/manage their facilities over the long term.
The only question complaints have come from 2 different MEP consultants. One stated it was a liability issue that they were still investigating and would not make the change. But 3 weeks later their documents arrived in one of the better transitions to MF2004 by MEP consultants to date. The other had made the conversion, but lumps all of the plumbing into the mechanical division. They made some minor fixes.
Both of them in turn had complained to the owners on these projects but the owners were unsympathetic.
This is in multiple area - Washington, DC Metropolitan Region, Florida with a current project, and the areas of Austin, Houston and Dallas in Texas.
William
Our public sector clients don’t care. Occasionally we are not the lead designer on a private project, and that’s only time we get any push back on the use of MF04. Since we don’t maintain masters in MF95, we advise that there is additional fee for a backwards conversion.
One public project in 4 years - rest for architects with private developer clients with projects in New Jersey, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, Utah, & New Mexico.
Like, William made the switch about 2-1/2 years ago with bascially no major problems. This was done with old-time and new clients. It included some warning and education of old-time clients and agreeing on what project to make the change so everyone on the team was properly prepared. One developer made a complaint and my architect client told them that we follow the standard of the industry - end of conversation. Have even had one client request MF04 for an expansion of a project with the original construction only about 3 years old and done in MF95 because they thought it would be a better spec.
Like John, I haven’t maintained two masters for several years. Though I haven’t had to up to this point, I would charge an additional fee for a backwards conversion. I know of some other consultants who have the same policy.
Jerome
I would be interested to hear about your conversations with your clients on this issue - what did you do to educate them about the change - the reasons for the change - the benefits of the change - or were they like most people and resistive to any change and you just said OK.
PS I assume you have not had bad economic times for the last four years per your gloating in your posting that started this thread so that was not the reason you were not able to lead your clients to accept the change.
Robert
My clients, most of them mid to large arch firms have told me the same thing, their PM’s barely understand the 16 divisions let alone 48, their drawings, details, and databases are all based on 16 divisions, two of these firms have multiple offices in other states. I see no reason to 'educate them on why they should accept MF04. I’ve heard plenty of complaints from architects who are using MF04, basically that MF04 has not simplified their specs at all, and I see no reason economically to use MF04. Robert, my firm is very small in size though we have been fortunate to stay busy even though the current economy, knock on wood, I have enough work right now to carry me into 2010, mostly large projects. At some point in time next year I will start the conversion process if time permits and it is profitable to do so.
I have stated (here and elsewhere) that at some point it will become more difficult to maintain a MF95 context than it will be to convert. More and more information is available in MF04, and although there will be laggards (I was still seeing the old AIA file numbers on product info in the '80s and '90s), it will just become too difficult for firms (architects, consultants, contractors, and reps) to either maintain two systems or “backconvert”. I would say that we are less than 2 years from that tipping point although I have to admit that I thought this would be the year. Can you see some of these offices taking a manufacturer’s guide spec with MF04 numbers and attempting to backconvert that?
Like some of you have indicated, I have received the most flak from MEP consultants (the ones most affected by the conversion). It is my experience, however, that after taking a close look at it, them begin to see benefits after less than 15 minutes or so. They begin to see so much that could make their specifications easier to produce and clearer to the trades that they generally become positive very quickly.
Civil consultants are the worst in this area. They generally want to make general reference to published public specifications (either in MF88, MF95 or AASHTO format) without modification, and they have a point. The public works people want to see their stuff in their format and generally won’t approve anything else.
There haven’t been any postings in this for awhile, so I though I would post one. Many public agencies like the City of Chicago Public Building Commission which is responsible for new schools, libraries, and other public buildings do not have a problem with the '95 Format. The CPS master is in '95 and having just written 3 schools and about to start on two libraries I don’t have a problem with either. I checked with the engineers on the libraries and they want to use '95.
Oh, and by the way Anne I was one of the Specifiers that pushed for the 17 Divisions back in the early '80’s. Of course I got booted of the podium at the National Convention in Florida by the Institute Staff as being a heretic. The speech was Better Coordination of Architectural and Engineering Documents and I had back up proof why it worked.
On private work I go with the '04 version - but frequently do a blended set especially when it comes to Division 2.
Masterformat 2004 has increased the number of pages in project manuals we have issued this year. For a project (additions and renovations to an existing school) issued Monday 21 Dec 2009 there are 895 pages in the project manual. Under Masterformat 95 there would have been less than 500 pages. For a career and technology center issued a month ago, we needed to split the project manual into two volumes due to the number and size of specification sections submitted from our MEP and civil consultants.
Has anyone else noticed an increase in the number of pages due to conversion to Masterformat 2004?
Frankly, I’m not sure Masterformat 2004 can be blamed for the number of pages. I would tend to place the blame (if blame is to be placed), on the product/software used to produce the specifications. In the past year I’ve done projects in both formats, and have honestly seen very little difference in the size of the project manual.
No noticeable increase from the specifications I prepare.
But my guess would be that some people specifying aren’t using MasterFormat 2004 efficiently. Since MasterFormat 2004 has a number and title for most types of work results (not every type) compared to MasterFormats of the past, I’ve noticed people writing very small specifications using Level 3 or Level 4 section titles and numbers within similar work result areas–some having similar Part 1 and Part 3 requirements. To be more efficient, these sections should be combined into a Level 2 broadscope or narrowscope number or title (e.g. XX 20 00 or XX 21 00, respectively) or even a Level 1 number or title. Just because there’s now a specific number and title for something in MasterFormat doesn’t mean it has to have its own specification section.
I may have added a couple of pages by splitting a couple of sections into two separate sections - certainly not any increase to notice. The one location that I know that could cause an increase would be the splitting of common work results for the Facility Services Group (Divs 21-28) in place of couple sets for Divs 15-16.
Could you please explain how you think going from MF 95 to MF 04 caused you to go from under 500 pages to 895 pages (55% increase)? The reorganization of material does not increase the specification requirements. It would seem that you have to be repeating many of the same requirements in multiple locations. How are you implementing MF 04 to cause you to do that?
It does not seem like Ron’s comment on the possibility of using many more narrow scope sections from Levels 3-4 instead of broader scope sections in Levels 2-3 could cause a 55% increase.
I have neither longer or shorter sections in terms of page numbers for the architectural and structural sections I write. However, I have noticed that some, not all, MEP groups have really increased their number of pages. But as noted above, this also came with a change in their master system moving from one product to another. And not just that some masters don’t deal efficiently with duplication, but that when those working in a new master and are unfamiliar with it, they tend to leave more in than they should. I just completed a second project with the same engineering group for a project of similar scope for their work to one they completed 6 months ago. I was really surprised at the significantly smaller page count. The identical section numbers/titles, but about 20% few pages - same scope.
William
Some MEP spec writers seem confused by the “Common Work Results for…” sections in each Division and instead of referencing back to a common section, simply repeat it for every Division claiming that it’s too much work to state it once and reference the section. Shades of Blaise Pascal and Mark Twain…
OK, so we are finally preparing specs in MF04, albeit for Foreign work only, and these Project manuals do appear lengthier, my two cents. Once again we polled all our domestic clients (mostly private sector) none of them want to change to MF04, preferring MF95 even if it is considered archaic in the eyes of AIA, CSI, ARCOM, McGraw-Hill, et al…they cite familiarity with MF95, size of Project Manual, reduced staff, and being able to refer to previous Project Manuals for reference, those of course prepared in MF95. Some of our clients remain fairly large firms and thankfully remain loyal to our firm, we are not about to upend the cart just to appease the majority. MF95 remains as the basis for our work.
Are you sure they are referencing previous work and not simply copying it?
Masterformat 2004 went from two divisions (15 & 16) to six division (21, 22, 23, 26, 27, and 28) - more divisions to cover the same work and from one division (2) to three divisions (31, 32, and 33) again more divisions to cover the same work. Additionally the work results sections within each division has increased in all of these divisions. These are the two areas we have seen an increase in the number of sections and pages.
Architecturally we write approximately the same number of sections under Masterformat 2004 as we did using Masterformate 1995.
As pointed out by Ms. Javoroski above, it appears that our MEP and civil consultants are not utilizing Masterformat 2004 as intended.
Lynn, we have been fortunate in that respect, though some clients may be keeping their PM’s busy preparing specs in that manner. We recently received a complement from the VP of a client firm, he took it upon himself to modify one of our spec books on a project because he did not want to ‘bother’ us, apparently he bit off more than he could chew, and advised us that he will never do it again, adding that he has a new found respect for our firm - ahh, respect at last and begging us for help out of the mess he had created.