SPECSINTACT Interagency Configuration,
Control and Coordinating Board Meeting

Introduction – Miguel Morales, NASA

Welcomed everyone to the meeting.

SI Staff Introduction – Pat Robinson

Introduced the SpecsIntact team and described their contribution to the SpecsIntact Project.

UFGS - Rick Dahnke, USACE/Carl Kersten, NAVFAC

	Currently the UFGS database contains 803 specifications.
		The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) maintains 411 the specifications.
		The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) maintains 392 of the specifications.
		89 sections do not carry an "A" or "N" designation.
		As the consolidation process continues all "A" and "N" designations will be eliminated and there will be 430 - 450 sections contained in the UFGS database.

NAVFAC continues to contract a firm to evaluate the specifications and indicate the differences in an effort to combine them into one unified specification.

Miguel Morales stated that the longer NASA takes to join UFGS, the more it is losing out in participating in the unified specification effort.

Total funding this year to maintain guide specifications for both USACE and NAVFAC was 1.1 million dollars.

Rick Dahnke demonstrated the UFGS Technical Proponents web page and stated that in the future all change requests would automatically be sent to the technical proponent.

Long-term objective is to link every guide specification to the index, indicating the preparing activity and technical proponent, and to a standard form to provide feedback regarding the specification. http://65.204.17.188//report/ufgs.html

The feedback database will provide status of who submitted the change request and the disposition of each change request. The access to the database is limited to Technical Proponents.

It was suggested to add the link to the UFGS Technical Proponents web page from within SpecsIntact under the Tool Menu to the option for Change Requests.

E.C. Aldridge, Jr., Secretary of Defense mandated the use of Unified Facilities Guide Specifications for Military Departments, the Defense Agencies, and DoD Field activities for planning, design, construction, sustainment, restoration, and modernization of facilities.

Electronic Bid Sets - Roundtable

USACE and NAVFAC are distributing bid sets electronically for all large projects. The contractor registers on the web site and can download the specifications and drawings or request a compact disc.

NASA is still using paper for bid sets. If a revision is made to the package it requires the entire package to be reprinted.

Steve Freitas stated there is need to establish a standard for drawings. The USACE uses raster images for scalable drawings and NAVFAC uses PDF to distribute the drawings.

Demonstration/Discussion of Automatic Reference Update - Jim Quinn

	Demonstrated how the references are updated for the UFGS Master.
		The UFGS Master references are updated from the Unified Master Reference List (UMRL)
		Reference Manager needs a selection to access the UMRL. Suggested the UMRL be stored in C:\Programfiles\SpecsIntact\UMRL\UMRL.ref.

	The UFGSREF Master on the web site posts procedures for updating the UFGS Master and for reference reconciliation for a job using the UMRL.
ACTION: Frank Der coordinate a meeting next month with Carl Kersten, Jim Quinn, Tom Hinshaw, Scott Hampton, Pat Robinson, and Martha Muller to identify reference discrepancies in the UMRL versus the NASA Master Reference File.

The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) is responsible for maintaining the reference updates for the UMRL. NIBS is providing this service for free.

Demo of SpecsIntact Editor - Jim Whitehead

The programming effort to convert the 16-bit Editor to a 32-bit Editor involves migrating from a Borland Object Windows Library (OWL) Environment to a Microsoft Visual C++ and Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) Environment.

The majority of the programming changes so far have been to support the migration to MFC and Visual C++.

A discussion was held regarding the effort required to make the SpecsIntact software and Sections XML compliant. XML rules impose tighter restrictions on tag markup than the rules for SGML, and so the SpecsIntact software and Sections would need some modifications to support XML. Mr. Whitehead made a ballpark guess of five months for the time required to make the SpecsIntact software XML compliant. Estimated that after the editor is 32-bit it would take around 5 months to make the editor XML compliant.

Demonstrated the upcoming version of the SpecsIntact Editor, including such new features as:

Customizable Internet Explorer style tool bars

Capability to easily insert single or multiple references into a Section from any Master reference list, as well as from the Supplemental Reference File or the UMRL

Improved Windows-standard spell checker

Numerous new toolbar buttons

Tabbed options dialog box

Mouse-over text for URLs displaying the hyperlink attribute

Mouse-over text for RIDs displaying the corresponding Reference Title (as listed in any specified Master Reference file or the Section Reference Article)

Feature for changing text case in five different ways

Projected the software will be released to the user community at the end of September.

Demo of Stand Alone Submittal Register (SASR) - Ken Tichy

The SASR is essentially a tracking tool for submittals. The initial data in the SASR is extracted from a text file in SpecsIntact.

Demonstrated some of the new features such as:

Capability to use as a blank form

Undo feature up to 50 times

Added a button to enlarge the fonts displayed

Added database support

Up-Coming Enhancements - Umberto Sartori

Several new enhancements that will be included in the next software release were demonstrated:

New functions were added to the Job Property Dialog Box. Options now include a drop-down box that allows a job to be relocated, and buttons to connect working directories or masters without closing the properties dialog box.

Reference Manager was enhanced. The major change was to speed -up loading the Master Reference file. The process that previously took 10 to 11 minutes for the largest files to load now takes initially 3-4 minutes, and reloads in 4-6 seconds.

Added a new feature to remove Chg Tags globally for an entire master.

Enhanced the "Find" feature to include "Replace" functionality. The feature includes the option to use ADD and DEL tags to indicate the replacements.

A maximum of 1000 characters can be searched and replaced.

Added execute revisions for an entire job or master.

Web Site/User Tools Update - Cheryl Mansfield

Reported January 2002 release of new design for the SpecsIntact web site.

Reported over 18,000 hits to the SpecsIntact home page since the new site debuted.

Demonstrated improved QuickTour graphics that were released with the last software in March.

Demonstrated new generation of user assistance - Action Learning Tools - created with Flash. Not only will they provide animation and sound, but they will be able to do it with small file size. The demo shown, with all the graphics and sounds, was under 300 KB in size.

The board members were very impressed with the new Action Learning Tools. This capability will be very beneficial to new and existing users.

Support Issues - Cheryl Fitz-Simon

Conducted an overview of the problems the support personnel have experienced in working with customers using the UFGS database.

Reviewed the UFGS Master reports for references, submittals, section verification, and other markup issues.

SI-CCCB Charter/Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) - Al Johnson

A teleconference was held to discuss the draft MOU distributed by Al Johnson.

There is possibly a need for two MOUs, one for the software and one for UFGS..

NASA needs to develop a transition plan with a date of when NASA will integrate the NASA-specific specifications in the UFGS database.

Board Change Process - Miguel Morales

Reviewed why the SI-CCCB was formed for configuration control.

Reviewed the reason for writing the letter in February 2002 regarding SI-CCCB Board Meetings.

Reviewed the process that is currently in place and decisions cannot be made outside of the semi-annual meetings.

All changes are required to be documented on a change request.

Rick Dahnke asked Miguel to clarify who the voting member is for NASA. Miguel responded he was the voting member for the SPECSINTACT Interagency Configuration, Control and Coordinating Board (SI-CCCB). Tom Hinshaw is the voting member for the NASA Master Text (guidespecs) Configuration, Control and Coordinating Board.

Uniformat Sections/SI - Carl Kersten/Jim Whitehead

Carl Kersten explained than eventually up to seventy percent of new NAVFAC Jobs will use Design/Build Specifications using UNIFORMAT elemental classifications.

Mr. Kersten stated that NAVFAC would like to use SpecsIntact to process these Design/Build Jobs, and described the SpecsIntact capabilities that NAVFAC would require for these Jobs.

Jim Whitehead explained the UNIFORMAT elemental classifications, and described several issues with NAVFAC's prototype UNIFORMAT Specifications.

Mr. Whitehead recommended that the SpecsIntact team be an active participant in the UNIFORMAT Specification Format being developed by NAVFAC.

Construction Specification Institute (CSI) Revised Masterformat - Carl Kersten

The MasterFormatTM Expansion Task Team was formed in May 2001 to study the need for expanding the subject matter coverage of MasterFormatTM.

The new format is a reorganization of separate categories for electronic with a break down to 43 Divisions.

The new format of MasterFormatTM is projected for release in 2003.

It would be desirable for NASA to transition the NASA Master Text database to the UFGS database before CSI releases the new format for MasterFormatTM.

Jim Whitehead stated this will not be a major software impact.

REVIEW CHANGE REQUESTS - Cheryl Fitz-Simon/Patricia Robinson

Presented for Board's consideration twenty (20) new Change Requests.

The results of the changes requests presented:

Accepted - 17

Withdrawn - 5

Rejected - 3

Deferred - 1

UFGS Database Maintenance - Jim Quinn

Demonstrated the process required to maintain and update the UFGS database for release.

Proposed SI Team become responsible for maintaining and performing quality assurance of the UFGS database for release to the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and web release.

The next meeting is scheduled for November 13-14 at Kennedy Space Center, FL

SpecsIntact and WordSpec are software products of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and are developed and maintained under the Joint Base Operations and Support Contract (J-BOSC) at the Kennedy Space Center.  All other products mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.
SpecsIntact, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899
Technical Support line - (321) 867- 8800, Fax - (321) 867- 1444
Email - specsintact@ksc.nasa.gov

Web Site Curator: Cheryl Fitz-Simon
NASA Official Responsible: Miguel Morales

If you have questions, problems or comments regarding this web site, email: Cheryl.Fitz-Simon@jbosc.ksc.nasa.gov

Last modified: July 31, 2002