“The problem is not that architects do not know some detail of structural engineering but rather that they often do not consider the need to coordinate with their structural consultant.”
Mark, your statement says it all and makes the best argument for why architects and their in-house or consultant specification writers should take coordinating with the design consultants seriously. We can’t know even half of what our expert structural, civil, and MEP engineers know. The same can be said for certain specialty disciplines such as elevator consultants.
I’m fortuante to work for a firm that encourages its in-house specification writers, and all members of its design teams, to coordinate with our various consultants. Often times this means being in the office well into the evening hours but it is always time well spent and saves grief later.
The following comments could be included also in the thread “Who is still using MF95” because they will address comments made there just yesterday about the mechanics of consultants’ written specifications. I send out a letter to our consultant colleages at the beginning of each project which explains how our specifications are formatted, etc. along with a sample page. Different clients sometimes require header and footer information be located in particular places on the page. We never have a problem with compliance on this whether an engineer or administrative person actually creates the specification document.
In terms of coordination, I do read our consultants’ specifications - not word for word but closely enough to see that section numbers and titles match the table of contents, references from one section to another are correct, and that all pages of a section are included. The latter is much less of a problem now with electronic file transfer than it was before with hard copies.
I don’t get excited when I see sentences written in the indicative mood or certain pervasive grammatical errors such as the use of “their” after a singular pronoun instead of “his.” (I’ve all but given up on that battle.) I do gently point out typographical errors that may cause confusion or words that spell-check doesn’t catch like “to” instead of “two.” Of course, I trust the technical content of our consultants’ written specifications implicitly and I cannot recall there ever being a problem save when the consultant was not given correct infomation in the first place.
As it has been throughout my career, the work of the architects and engineers (meaning all consultants) has been done somewhat in separate realms that, if the project is fortunate, gets coordinated sometime before the actual construction takes place. I am hopeful (and must I always be) that BIM and IPD will actually cause coordination among the design disciplines to begin sooner and be more thorough.
I apologize for hi-jacking the initial topic of this thread but the subject itself has shown clearly that a seemingly minor matter can have significant consequences when proper coordination is lacking.
