Why Younger Architects Dont Want to Become Specifiers

Archive of Older Topics Archive - Specifications Discussions #4
1

There are any number of reasons why younger architects dont want to become specifiers:

  1. Preparation for architects (especially formal academic education) strongly emphasizes visual quality as paramount; this continues in practical experience.

  2. Perception of specifying as not being a critical and necessary part of design practice, but only tangentially related to design practice.

  3. Perception of specifying as narrowly focused specialty of only peripheral importance to being a real architect. In HR parlance, this means that specifiers are not line personnel, but staff or support personnel (the result of No. 2).

  4. Perception of specifying as being a dead-end career path (related to No. 2 and 3 above).

  5. Perception of specifiers as being poorly compensated (related to No. 4 above).

  6. Perception of specifiers as mostly being ol farts (ol white guys) who are not a lot of fun; a perception your article reinforced.

Now, if The Fountainheads Howard Rouark or the Paul Newman character in The Towering Inferno had been a spec writer

[Originally received as an email from Peter Jordan, posted with his permission - Colin]

2

Specifications have nothing to do with the architect receiving design awards, which have significant marketing value to the Architect. In 36 years of practice, I have never seen and AIA award for specifications or drawings.

Preparation of construction specifications, including product evaluation and selection, is not taught in all but a very few architectural and engineering curricula. Therefore (it is concluded), specifications preparation is unimportant or something to be gained on-the-job, like preparation of bidding and construction contract drawings (drafting).

Don’t waste time learning specifications writing. The “Spec-O-Matic” programs, linked by BIM objects to the drawings, will take care of the yucky construction technology stuff, if I understand the matter after a week in Indianapolis immersed in BIM-speak.

So why worry about specifications? Just hire an independent spec writer to put together a set of specs with just enough information to get through plancheck, bidding and construction.

Since “mature” architects and engineers don’t understand and appreciate specifications (generally speaking), why should young architects and engineers?

3

Your connection of drafting skill to understanding of contract document production is assumed (I dont agree, but Ill let that one go for now) I assume that you are making the argument that students today do not leave with meaningful skills or knowledge just glitz and no understanding of insight into contract documents

I graduated from architecture school 21 years ago after a career as a working archaeologist. They didnt REALLY teach contract document understanding or drafting - then either. We had a pro-practice class and that was about it. I did not take drafting in high school. I was going to be a Zoologist. I did take every pragmatic class offered by University of Idaho and even (with the help of teaching assistants and professors) invented a couple of more.

Architecture school is about design and all the fluff that goes with it (sustainability, BIM, IPD, etc) and it has to be. Out here in the field we will beat drafting into you (computer or hand,) but intro to design will come from nowhere else but school. In business-land I dont have time to argue about the death of post modernism or the neo-classicists of the early French Republic vs Albert Spears work for the 3rd Reich. I dont have time to fill you in on why sustainability is important, BUT, in school you do have that time and you should take it! I regret that I did not spend MORE time arguing design in school.

Your argument is an old one Why dont we teach future workers the tools of the trade and the answer is This is not a trade school, its a university and its not a drafting degree or a CDT exam its a degree in architecture. If the student leaves school knowing what he or she does NOT know, then the student is ready to learn how to draft from those of us who do.

PS

Actually the emphasis on CAD in schools has done a disservice to many students because they leave school being better draftsmen and poorer architects.

I could go on but I have contract documents to administer but if you want to argue the origins of neo-classism give me a day or two to brush up and Im game!

MARC CHAVEZ / CSI CCS CCCA AIA

[sent by email by Mark and posted with his permission - Colin]

4

A lot of those perceptions (in the first post above) are right (though I might quibble with number 6…).

When my wife was a little girl, her family had a cow, which her mother had to milk morning and evening. Her mother told her, “Janice, don’t ever learn how to milk a cow…”

It’s the same with specifying–a necessary task, gotta be done. Somebody has to do it.

But it isn’t perceived as being nearly as gratifying as design, which is what attracts people to the profession–and even worse, it’s so unlike design (not involving drawing, even on the computer–unlike being relegated to “production”) that it tends to greatly diminish your chances of ever being able to become a designer, unless you start your own firm. If designing buildings is your career objective, specifying is as good a way as there is to derail yourself onto a siding.

No wonder architects avoid specifying. If you’re the only one in the firm who can do it, then you’re the one who does it–like milking the family cow. And it never ends…

On the other hand, since most architects hate specifying so much, for the foreseeable future there will be a niche for the small number of folks who can do it, and don’t mind doing it. There’s a certain amount of job security in that (or at least a consulting opportunity). Another possible benefit is that you get to draw up legal documents–like an attorney–without the stigma of being a lawyer. Instead, you’re an architect.

Architecture could learn from film industry, which it most nearly resembles. Though many if not most film students have visions of being the next star director, directing is not the bulk of the curriculum–maybe one or two courses, since there’s so much else to learn. Film schools also teach courses in the other specialties involved–scriptwriting, cinematography, acting, lighting, editing, sound, production, financial and legal aspects, etc.–and the students get experience in a variety of those roles in school and on the job. If film school were like architecture school, the major course every semester would be directing, with the rest lumped together in a few token courses, if covered at all.

Importantly, at the end of each film are the credits: Everybody involved in the production gets credit for their respective contributions, from the front office accountants to the honey wagon drivers. Even though their roles may seem peripheral (but are essential), they all get their share of the credit.

We could learn a lot from that alone.

5

Anyone who’s gotten out of a jamb because of the specs knows the importance of specs. Someone on this website once said “what’s the difference between a plans room and a court room? They read the specs in a court room!”

6

Architecture like engineering is a profession. Professionals need to understand and be able to use the tools of their profession. To the extent we are ignorant of one or more of the tools we are a caricature of the professional we claim to be.

7

If specs were really that valuable in court, wouldn’t specifiers be paid and respected [or feared] as attorneys are?

“I get no respect” -Dangerfield

8

It may be worth mentioning that most architects do not get to design much either. The main design is often done by the few principals in the firm while the rest of the architects deal with the less exciting details and then spend a lot of time answering questions during construction administration.

Specifiers do offer some input on the design as they recommend some products and installation methods over others.

Still, I think most of us can agree on the problems facing specifiers. We seem to be in the same situation as stay-at-home mothers. The work is as hard or harder than what others do, but the rewards are not always as great. Someone needs to figure out how we can change these perceptions.

9

As a lifelong specifier, I can only say this: Stop whining and be thankful you can contribute in a meaningful way to projects that take MANY people to achieve success. And that you have a job. If you feel overworked or underpaid, do something about it, because brother, you’re not going to change the specifier’s status.

10

Amen.
If the world goes BIM and IPD there are even more opportunities for us to grow/change our jobs and move push ourselves further into the design/building process. Think up a new name like Building Information Manager or something cute, and push. If you stay at your desk and hide behind the sweets catalog (harder and harder to do) you will continue to be ignored and disrespected.

11

Anon:

That may be true, but if we don’t attempt to make a change for the better, someone else will definitely make the change for us–and it may not be what we want.

Just look at how the architect’s role has changed over the years. The contractor has assumed some of the duties that architects had many years ago. The AIA, through their documents, and professional liability insurers, through their insurance policies, limited the risk that an architect could assume, so the contractor assumed them. The architect, in essence, had been reduced to nothing more than just a designer and construction documents provider to comply with state professional registration laws.

The same will apply to specifiers in the new BIM era if we don’t assert ourselves and be a part of its development, rather than just sitting back and letting it decide our fate for us.

If we do nothing, it will only exacerbate the image of specifier obsolescence.

12

So specifier obsolescence is only an image problem?

My boss (the powerless architect) wants me behind my desk.

We are witnessing evolution. The contractors didn’t decide en mass to ‘take over’ but individually saw a need they could fill. You can hold onto old paradigms, but you can’t force others to, even if you think up really cutesy names. The game today is providing value in meeting needs, not slapping tail fins on last year’s model.

13

Thanks for the shout out, Peter.

I originally wrote this post for the email exchange a bunch of us had this morning. If you read it there, here it is again.

For the record, though Im only 41, I took drafting in high school and used most of the techniques Ralph mentions in college. I also took a course from a mad scientist prof, in a new technology called parametric object-oriented modeling. But I refused to waste a credit hour on learning AutoCAD. I concurred then, and still concur with Marc, when he says its not a trade school, its a university. I got paid $10/hr to learn AutoCAD on the job the following year. Funny, were still learning to use object-oriented modeling professionally, now known as BIM.

Peters point number 6, the old fart point, is something we really could start working on, simply with our attitudes and editorial stances when we talk to the industry. Im not an old white guy, nor is Edith Washington, nor is Anne Whitacre, nor is Emily Borland; and even old(er) white guys dont have to be old farts, as Peter, Bill DuBois, and the East Coast Dennis Hall exemplify. I think the post-gala dancing with the SpecTones at Construct this year was a joyful example of the fun we have together. No offense taken, Ralph, but Im an activist about our outgrowing the old fart image.

The real problem, as I see it from my perspective as a recently laid-off architect and specifier, is point number 3, with a dash of point number 2 as its cause. While my design teams valued my advice and expertise in materials, I think management forgot that I am part of the design team. (I am an architect, but I have great respect for the many specifiers I know who are not.) Some of my colleagues have been staffed into administrative studios instead of into design studios. Its far too easy for somebody with technical expertise in materials and systems and technical expertise in written construction documentation to be shunted off to sit with the people with technical expertise in computer networking, and to be viewed as overhead. If were thought of as overhead, we can be underpaid, undercut by the cheap kind of consulting spec writer who doesnt coordinate documents, and cut from staff when times get tight.

Our real value delivered to the team and the client isnt a set of contractually-required written documents; its our expertise in analyzing, selecting, and specifying the materials and systems used in the project designs. Integrating into the design team is the most effective way to deliver that value. If the written documents morph into some other deliverable, the expertise will still be required. But if were perceived as the people who put the information in the book, then we are vulnerable when the book goes away. Annes all that other stuff is how the projects get built and last thirty years and keep people safe; and we are the keepers of much of that knowledge.

We have to show office management how they make money on us. We have to show project managers how our early and integrated participation in the design saves their projects time in design and money in contract administration. We show project architects every day that we are their partners in design, if we are available to answer their questions and make suggestions and share detail drawings. We show all the junior staff on the team that there is more to product selection than color and texture, if we take the time to ask them questions and send them off to find the answers. The price of all of this is making ourselves available to interruption, interaction, and other people skills. If we sequester ourselves from teams and generally act like old farts, we cant show anyone our real value.

My former teammates and I were involved in an ongoing process we called the Paradigm Shift (which I assume theyre still doing without me), the goal of which was to integrate the specifier into the design team more fully. To varying degrees it meant involving the senior specifier earlier, placing more responsibility for the content of the specs with members of the design team, and improving the whole teams understanding of the spec information. A lot of the plan involved shifting the perception of specs from a black box process (shove drawings under the door and the specifier tosses specs over the transom a few days later) to a design process. We had talking points, presentations to managers, and even (playfully) forbidden phrases. (Doorstop is not a permissible word for Project Manual.) I see us as having a similar task, as CSI, to shift the industrys understanding of specs from documents to information, and the specifier from a technician to a building information specialist. We know what we mean when we say specifier, but do our project teammates? And how do we exemplify what we mean?

If we fix Peters point 2, quite a bit of the rest will follow. It is, of course, the hardest to fix. We can work on points 1 and 6, just to get started.

Thanks for a stimulating discussion!

Vivian

14

“Importance” is such a relative term, and I have to believe that the “importance” of a contribution made by any single member of the procurement team (owner, architect, engineer, contractor, supplier, finance guy, etc.) varies with the stage of the project and the time of day (to say nothing of the freshness of the coffee). I have worked on projects that were killed when the prime rate edged up a quarter point; that is the most important thing on that project.

15

I have met lots of specifiers that think they know their stuff, and even more architects. My observation is that few actually do. I have made it a priority in my career as an architect and specifier to actually know what I am talking about, drawing, and specifying. I am still employed, and well paid.

It is astonishing the number of times I have heard (and read on this forum) statements of opinion being fobbed off as statements of fact. Specifiers are some of the worst offenders.

Folks, if you want to be a valued member of the team, enjoy job security, and be well compensated, you need to become a voracious reader, an objective learner, and a soldier for truth. Opinion, conjecture, and rambling are poor substitutes for the truth. People do recognize the difference.

The good economic times of the last few decades have resulted in laziness and complacency within the profession. The wheat is now being separated from the chaff. I am not sad to see the blow hards being let go. I am not sad to see the Old Fart specifiers and the pseudo-experts being let go. These nfolks have always been a hindrance to efficiency, quality, and accuracy. I say good riddance. And I say Welcome! to new and better ways of doing things. I fully embrace the concept of BIM and IPD and look forward to using and improving these tools for the betterment of the profession. Spec writers have an important, integral roll to play in both.

16

A few recessions ago, I was thinking about setting up a company that would produce CAD documents for older single-practitioner firms. I had been in discussions with several architects who were then in their late fifties or early sixties folks who had never learned CAD and who didnt want to, who were getting demands from clients to produce CAD documents, and who wanted to practice for a few more years. It would have been the perfect scam to ride out the rest of my career, and I could have folded the company and retired when the last dinosaur hand-drafting client died, and CAD finally emerged triumphant.

Of course, that story has little application to this discussion of the current state of specifications, not just because I never followed through completely with the idea, but also because I believe specifications will be with us always. Or at least the information that specifications bring to the party will always need to be part of the instruments of service (as the new AIA A201 says). That information looks like it is increasingly less likely to be bound in a thick doorstop document, and more likely to be imbedded in an electronic something-or-other.

BIM integrates information (some day, all the information?) into one place (or into an interoperable series of places?), the model. Because of the way the primitive versions of BIM software we now use (e.g. Revit) are set up, design teams will need a much earlier understanding of the things we specifiers bring to the party. As mentioned earlier in this thread, many firms are looking at bringing specifiers onboard the design team much earlier than they used to. We are looking at it here, and it seems to be well received. It seems to be working well on the projects weve started doing it.

Back when I was thinking of the CAD support firm for dying dinosaurs, one of the architects I was talking to made a really great point. He had been doing some consulting work for one of the larger firms here in town, simply figuring out the details for one of their buildings. George, he said, There will always be a place in this business for old gray-haired guys like us who know how to put together buildings. I would suggest that a specifier is one of those old gray-haired guys (although she might be a middle aged woman) who truly do know how to put together buildings. I would also suggest that there are folks out there who are quite eager to do what I do now, although they might not YET be aware of it.

A local macro-brewery in town (which shall remain nameless) used to require middle and upper level managers to make one of their five year career goals to identify and train my replacement. Ive adopted that goal here, and Im on the way to doing just that. It takes a bit of extra effort to seek out those people, to encourage them, and to include them in your thought processes from time to time. But it is amazing to me that when I start off a conversation with What do you think about this problem I have been looking at how interested the right people are in learning what we do. When young people see specifications from the inside instead of just view it from afar, they find out the dark, dirty secret that weve been hiding from them: specifications can be fun, interesting, valuable, and dare I say it creative.

Our firms are filled with curious young people eager to carve out a niche for themselves. Judging from what I have seen in the ten years since I gave up being a generalist architect and became a specialist specifier, the profession of specification writing is full of intelligent and caring folks who are willing to share what they know. Ill close with the thought that while the problem may lie with the younger generations and the profession-at-larges perception of us, it is we who are the solution.

17

Anon: For now, yes. If specifiers ignore or refuse to to participate in the BIM development process, then it will be perceived that specifiers are no longer necessary since the “Spec-O-Matic” (I like that, John) feature will do it for them.

BIM-operators, like many CAD operators, know the ins and outs of what the various software programs can do, but know very little about about the technology and constructability of the building elements they are entering into the programs. BIM itself is not the panacea to solve all our construction-document-related woes. The old saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” still applies with BIM. And, even though specifications in the form we’re comfortable with now will likely change with BIM, the same information will still be required to produce the building.

I agree, it’s an evolution, and I don’t think that anyone here on this discussion forum thinks otherwise. Specifiers need to change along with the evolution. But if the image, or perception (as used by Peter Jordan), of specifiers held by architects is that specifiers are no longer needed because BIM will do it for them, will have a rude awakening when, after they’ve let go or retired all of their specifiers (i.e. technical expertise), that BIM doesn’t do what they thought it would.

I never said the contractors “took over” enmass; but, when they saw an opportunity, they took it–and the architects did nothing to retain it. Now contractors all over the country are touting themselves as “construction managers.”

We specifiers need to take this opportunity to tout our expertise in building construction and adjust to this developing technology; lest we lose it to another entity–gasp! the contractor!?

18

Architects ought to stop griping that construction management is done by contractors, since most architects have neither the interest nor the knowhow to do it. Architecture and construction management are two different things. Most architects I have known want to design buildings, not manage construction.

How many architects still do construction estimating? Or do any construction scheduling at all? Or like negotiating with, coordinating and policing subcontractors? For that matter, how many architects really enjoy checking and processing submittals–something that, like specifying, is still done by architects?

Architecture is not construction management, and hasn’t been for a long, long time, except for a very few architects who really like to do both, usually on small design-build jobs. If architects wanted to become construction managers, there’s nothing stopping them, but they’d be wise to avoid architecture school, since its curriculum has little to do with construction. There are, however, construction technology programs that don’t pretend to be architecture schools, and probably do a good job at what they do. The fact that most architects don’t practice construction management is evidence enough that they’re either not interested, or can’t do it well enough to be competitive (or both).

There will always be a need for specifiers and people who know how to put a building together. They’re the ones who will write the specs that will be embedded in the building information model; the BI modelers can’t and won’t do it; they generally don’t know enough or care enough about specifying. They evidently expect their “Spec-O-Matic” to crank out a project manual automatically, but that won’t happen until specs are standardized or customized for the BIM system–by specifiers.

Since architectural schools don’t generally recognize specifying and detailing as design functions (or teach them), those functions will eventually be taken over by the construction technology and engineering schools, and architects will become primarily schematic designers, with the detailing and most of the product selection (except for finishes and maybe some high-profile materials) done by the contractor–excuse me, construction manager.

I doubt that attitudes toward specifiers will change. After all, you don’t have to be a specifier to be an architect, or to do schematic design, which is what most young architects seem to want to do (and are trained to do). But conversely, you don’t have to be an architect to be a specifier, though it could help.

If we still lived in the era when an architect had to “do it all” (design, draw up construction documents, and manage construction), specifying would just be another part of the job. But in the future, it will likely become mainly a construction industry specialty, done on a consulting basis by persons who aren’t architects, like hardware consulting and roof consulting. And likely done a lot better than the typical generalist architect could do it.

19

When I was first asked to do specs, the principal architect said he really just wanted me to be the person that everyone could go to with their questions about products and materials. Editing specs was just a way to help turn me into that person. Most architects, with a good master spec in hand, can provide an adequate spec for a project. But not many of them can be the kind of product and material resource that an architects office needs.

I think that is the core of the problem. Many of us are much more than specifiers and we somehow need to help the industry and our architect cohorts understand that. If I were to leave my office, thousands of conversations with manufacturers reps would leave with me. I really see myself as a general construction materials specialist who also writes specs.

20

“Most architects, with a good master spec in hand …”

However, most architects do not have a good master spec in hand. While MasterSpec and other commercial master specification libraries are a good start, few architects have the capability of adequately editing the selections in these documents and ending up with an accurate project specification. My WAG is that about 10 percent of project architects can perform this task adequately.

So “a good master spec” implies a pre-edited office master, which implies a competent specifier either in-house or consulting that has created, and maintains, said master spec.

Richard’s point about the material knowledge resource is so well taken. Many non-specifier architects continue to see specifications as a product, rather than an instrument of service that is integral to design. That’s why bidding manufacturers continually report receiving project specifications that consist of completely unedited masters.

Not preaching anything here that the choir doesn’t already know by heart.