November 2011 President's Message
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 5:04PM Hey CSI, don’t get substituted.
I’ve commented in the past that CSI could stand for the Construction Solutions Institute in lieu of the Construction Specifications Institute. This concept never rang more clearly to me than after sitting in three different educational programs at CONSTRUCT 2011, where the topic of substitutions seemed to permeate, then monopolize, the discussion. It became apparent to me during these programs that the issue of “or equal” (or “or equivalent” as one presenter insisted – yes, I did listen) needs to be addressed. I heard a lot of passionate debate, but not one solution. I believe that the industry will eventually gravitate towards a solution, but will that solution be the best for the construction industry as a whole? Enter CSI.
CSI is a diverse organization whose strength is in that diversity. Design professionals meet with product representatives and construction professionals to arrive at industry-wide accepted policies and procedures - solutions. Again I ask, if CSI doesn’t address the issue of substitutions, who will? AIA, AGC, ASPE, PMI… Who? If CSI doesn’t provide a solution, I’m afraid CSI will be substituted, even though I don’t believe any of the multitude of construction industry organizations out there is an “or equal” to CSI.
CSI’s flagship is the development and implementation of a standardized way of organizing and communicating product and project information (MasterFormat ®). But CSI has moved beyond that. CSI has become the industry leader in standardizing and organizing the design and construction process. CDT, CCS, CCPR, and CCCA are the result of that effort. Earning those credentials communicates to your peers and industry colleagues that you understand those processes. So what’s the process for allowing (and encouraging) new products and/or methods to be introduced and incorporated into the construction of a facility? At what point during the planning, design process, bidding and construction of a project should alternatives be considered and/or allowed? When presenting an alternative product or method, what needs to be communicated so that a fair and unbiased decision to incorporate it or not incorporate it can be made? Who makes that decision? Just as contractors advertise for bids when competing for a project, should A/E’s advertise for “products” sometime between the pre-design and schematic design phases of a project? (Did that get your attention?)
The bottom line is that if this industry is going to advance, new ideas and products have to be incorporated into projects. At the same time, the integrity of the A/E’s design needs to be maintained, the contractor needs to remain highly competitive, and in the end, the project owner needs to receive the greatest value possible for his or her dollar while allowing the rest of the team to receive fair compensation and profit for their talents, ideas, and labor. If CSI is going to hold true to its mission of advancing building information management and education of project teams to improve facility performance, the issue of substitutions needs to be tackled.
So, Denver Chapter, what do we do? Before we can address what I perceive as an issue, we need to verify that it is an issue that is worth addressing. If the topic of substitutions is indeed an issue worth addressing, then step one is to define the issue. If it’s not, well, I’ve been wrong before. Let me know what you think. Is there a problem in the industry with substitutions, and if so, is CSI the best organization to solve it? I believe the answer is yes and yes.
Mike Young, CSI, CDT
Denver Chapter CSI President
Reader Comments (1)
I think there's a big problem with the way substitutions are currently being handled, at least here in Colorado.
CSI already HAS some great solutions - for example, 2 different substitution request forms, one for use during bidding, and one for use during construction. Arcom's MasterSpec has what I consider to be fairly decent language regarding substitutions, in Division 01.
I think that "what we've got here is a failure to communicate" on several levels:
G.C.'s often do not forward Division 01 on to bidding subs, so subs don't know the requirements for substitution request submittals. (They don't even know that there ARE requirements for substitution request submittals.) Then the G.C's try to push substitution requests through without the required information, since they didn't receive that info from their subs.
Project architects often do not enforce the specifications' requirements about the information that is to be submitted with a substitution request. Sometimes, that's because they aren't familiar with the requirements in their own project specifications. So the architects waste their precious bid-period time trying to verify that the proposed substitution is comparable to the specified system or item, doing the work that the sub ought to have done.
Owners seem to not understand that substitutions can't appropriately be made in the blink of an eye, since the designed system took weeks to design and took everything related into account.
Back to the G.C.'s - during construction, they submit on non-specified items, or they just install them, because that's what their subs gave their bids on, even though they weren't acceptable products. This happens when the G.C. didn't verify that the subs' bids were in compliance with the construction documents during bidding, and the sub didn't know the proper procedure for getting a substitution request approved.
As a specifier, I sometimes add some language to the "acceptable products" list in each spec section that refers to the Division 00 section "Procurement Substitution Procedures" and/or Division 01 section “Substitution Procedures,” or if I have a Basis-of-Design product by one manufacturer listed, and a list of comparable manufacturers after that, I sometimes add language in each spec section that indicates that the contractor should "Comply with the requirements of Division 01 Section 'Product Requirements' for comparable product requests."
But as with everything else, the project architect still has to know what's in the specs, and then enforce the specs, the G.C. still has to comply with the requirements of the construction documents, and make sure his subs do too, the Owner still has to understand that proposed substitutions have to be very carefully evaluated since everything was designed around the specified product. I think this is where our work as CSI members lies - we should try to educate the rest of our industry about the roles we all play in this substitution process.