NASA SPECSINTACT Interagency Configuration,
Control and Coordinating Board Meeting

Attendees:

Jim Pratten, SGS - KSC 5/7
Robert Mathis, NASA - MSFC 5/7-8
Scott Hampton, SGS - KSC 5/7-8
Chester Bennett, NASA - JSC 5/7-8
Pat Robinson, IDI - KSC 5/7-8
Raymond Schuler, NASA - ARC 5/7-8
Thomas Hinshaw, NASA - GRC 5/7-8
Lee Lillard, NASA - LRC 5/7-8
Bela Gutman, NASA - JPL 5/7-8
Ed Gobert, NASA - SSC 5/7-8
Frank Der, NASA - KSC 5/7-8
Art Lee, NASA -HQ 5/7-8
Jonathan Mullin, NASA - HQ 5/7
Wil Harkins, NASA - HQ 5/7-8
Sherry Gebhardt, NASA - HQ 5/7-8
Mike McNeil, NASA -HQ 5/7
Albert Johnson, NASA - HQ 5/7-8

Meeting Minutes:

Welcome and opening remarks were made.

Jim Pratten described SGS's SpecsIntact Maintenance organization. He indicated that Scott Hampton is lead technical engineer and that Chip Johnson, new full time specification writer, was hired. Slides were shown indicating which sections were updated with major maintenance and which sections were updated to include EPA CPG requirements.

Tom Hinshaw discussed the CSI's MasterFormat Expansion effort. He is not aware of any government organizations being contacted for input to CSI about the MasterFormat expansion. He feels it will require a substantial amount of money for the government to change all its documents. NASA's options for handling SpecsIntact in the wake of a CSI format change were discussed. The direction taken may be effected by combining with the UFGS.

		Eugene Hubbard, the new NASA HQ Director of Facility Engineering, was introduced.
		Pat Robinson presented and overview and anthology of SpecsIntact software, and then talked about major maintenance issues. Board approved Form 1620 request to reverse the display order of units to be consistent with the UFGS (i.e., metric/English). Other comments to come out of discussion are as follows:
			Eliminate reference to Military Specifications and Federal Specifications unless there is no equivalent industry standard. Verify that standard is still maintained. (In 1994, the Secretary of Defense signed a policy directing the use of performance and commercial specifications and discouraged the use of military specifications by requiring the approval of a waiver.)
			Need to take advantage of industry peer review.
			Add a list of pre-approved vendor items to reduce submittal processing.
			Reference updates may cause a need to change master guide specification.
			Specification tailoring tags should be taken advantage of to provide better output formats.
		Mike McNeill talked about environmentally preferable products and affirmative procurement. He indicated that the specification should be written to be compliant with the laws and regulations (i.e., RCRA, EO, and FAR). Specifications must call for product meeting CPG content requirements unless a waiver is granted. A waiver can be granted for three reasons: Meeting the requirement will take unreasonably long time; the requirement can not be met; meeting the requirement will be too costly.

Rich Wickman talked about energy efficient products and the EO and FAR's requiring there use. He listed sources for EPA and DOE product recommendations. He then gave an overview of 17 NASA SpecsIntact sections requiring text updates to incorporate energy efficiency considerations. Tom Hinshaw made the observation that benefits from energy efficient products may be regionally based (e.g., cool roofs used in the northern states may have undesirable affects on snow melting).

	Scott Hampton talked about SGS's implementation of EPA CPG requirements into SpecsIntact specification section. Twenty-five of twenty-seven existing sections have been reviewed. Of those, 14 sections were updated with CPG comments. One new section was created based on UFGS Section 1670. The NASA SpecsIntact board decided that most of Section 1670 was not relevant for construction, and only one paragraph within it should be saved and moved to Division 1, Summary of Work. The other information is to be discarded. Alignment with the UFGS will be worked out when the merger takes place.
ACTION:			(SGS ACTION ITEM) Delete Section 01670 and add only part of paragraph 1.3 into Division 1, Summary of Work.
ACTION:			(SGS ACTION ITEM) Add specification developer paragraph, in each applicable section, indicating that a waiver must be obtained by the specifier if the CPG requirements are not used in the specifications.
ACTION:			(SGS ACTION ITEM) Add more brackets to let the specifier know, that in the case of concrete, flyash and GGBF are not both required at the same time.

	Art Lee discussed OSHA VPP and safety engineered into designs.
	Center reports were given for all but three centers. Dryden Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Wallops Flight Facility were not represented. Generally speaking, most local masters are in need of updating. Also, most centers have more local masters than present situations require and may try to reduce the number of local masters. Making local masters available to all centers may be beneficial. A few of the centers expressed their concerns that the NASA master specifications were not being kept up-to-date well enough, and one of the centers, Marshall Space Flight Center, has switched from SpecsIntact to Master Spec for this reason.
	Tom Hinshaw talked about standardizing NASA SpecsIntact submittal requirements with UFGS requirements. Limit submittals to the minimum amount required, and designated those requiring government approvals to delineate them from information only submittals.
ACTION		(SGS ACTION ITEM) For all 223 NASA specification sections add G's behind submittals listed in Part 1 that require government approval. Also, add specification developer paragraph, in each section, indicating similar content as given in UFGS specifications. Tom Hinshaw will mark up first draft of the placement of the G's in all sections. A 3-month turn around time was set for completion of this task.
	Bela Gutman made a similarity comparison between the NASA masters and the UFGS masters. Based on his finding as compared to the UFGS's findings, it was determined that SGS should make a comparison between NASA and UFGS specifications section to determine which NASA sections are not redundant with UFGS sections. Unique NASA sections will be marked for future conversion into UFGS format.
ACTION		(SGS ACTION ITEM) Determine cost estimate, resources, and schedule required to develop a list of NASA unique specification sections as compared to the UFGS specification sections.
	The Board needs to determine if it is cost effective to make major changes to non-unique NASA specification section prior to unifying with UFGS. This is dependent on the time frame for unification (which is not well defined). The general consensus is that it would be prudent to focus NASA unique sections first for all major changes.
ACTION		(FUTURE ACTION ITEM) Develop prototype short section by use of tailoring tags available in SpecsIntact software.
	Pat Robinson described and demonstrated the latest software updates being prepared for SpecsIntact. These updates will be officially released at some future date.
	Tom Hinshaw expressed his concerns that SpecsIntact specifications are not on par with the specifications developed by private industry. Because of this, NASA centers may switch to other specification providers. Mr. Hinshaw requested that SGS provide more resources to fully utilize the budget provided for specification maintenance and hence improve SpecsIntact content.
	A video conference has been tentatively scheduled for the week of July 8, 2002.
	Meeting was adjourned.

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