Field Notes

Chicago has always been one of my favorite cities. With sons living there, I jumped all over the chance to attend the GANA Fall Conference there this past week. I flew in Sunday morning after the arrival of grandchild number eight on Saturday. I then visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House (arguably his best work), the Art Institute for the Japanese print collection (some of which were from Wright’s collection), and watched the Eagles pull out a gift from the Ravens at the very last minute (we will NOT dwell on what happened in Arizona this past Sunday). I also had a first-time-in-30-years reunion with four friends who helped me survive college. Good times, no doubt. But then there was work to do.

While I only got to attend the Technical Committee on Tuesday, there were several notable discussions. One of the discussions was on secondary seal migration into the vision area of insulating glass units. It seems this is becoming more of an issue. An industry consultant is asking if GANA is going to step into and / or come up with a standard to address this.

Such sealant visibility is unacceptable and hasn’t been seen in the industry before. The root cause would seem to be too much sealant applied to the spacer during unit fabrication, which then gets squeezed past the spacer into the vision area when the glass is set to the spacer. However, that’s not the only issue; over time the sealant is moving for unknown reasons, almost like it’s “bleeding” into the vision areas. The cause of such “migration” is unknown. GANA is developing guidelines for this – what’s acceptable, what’s not, etc. This issue is also getting the attention of the Insulating Division within GANA. The organization is calling this problem “PIB Migration,” so you might see that phrase more in the coming months.

Building Commissioning is another issue you might start hearing rumblings about. When I was doing work a couple of years ago regarding housing and energy performance, some of the Energy Star ratings had started to talk about full-building commissioning. One topic was how tight a home could be for air infiltration, and that the home had to be fully tested. Basically, what it amounted to was pressurizing the inside the house to see how tight it was. So, any of the penetrations through the walls, (doors, windows, bathroom and kitchen vents, etc.) were tested as a whole.

For anyone who has tested windows and curtain walls, you know how rigorous the tests are for individual products. Now multiply that to a whole building. In commercial construction, it’s virtually impossible to test a whole building for air penetration. For example, can you imagine what the blowers needed for a three-story building to build up enough pressure, and then how would you measure the pressure drop? I guess it would sort of be like the window air test, but on a much grander scale.

Tom Culp reported ASHRAE 189.1 was being developed to try to address this issue for the whole building envelope. As I’ve said in the past, I’d love to see how the air and water tests typically required of windows and curtain walls would be applied to other parts of the envelope. You see some of that tested at mockups occasionally, when surrounding conditions are included (such as precast, brick or stud wall construction, etc.). Now apply that to a larger scale. What’s the last job you worked on where you could or would test the whole building? How would that even be accomplished? Who’s set up to conduct that sort of test?

Fortunately, the voice of reason broke out and several people raised concerns with how much whole building testing would cost and what the liabilities would be. ASHRAE may not move off the whole building testing, but they’re still interested in having observation and inspection of the building envelope during construction, as well as on-site testing to confirm compliance with whatever standard may hold sway. For the glass  and the glazing industry, with the way specifications are written, there’s enough industry self-governance through the ASTM and AAMA testing requirements to ensure through initial mockup and jobsite testing the specifications can  and are being met.

I think our industry has done its part, at least in commercial construction, to cover all the bases here.  Whether or not the surrounding trades or other construction detailing has to change, it will be interesting to watch.  That may impact the glazing industry, because detailing to different air and water barriers on those surrounding conditions upon which the windows and curtain wall are mounted is 90 percent of the detailing required.

No further discussion about turtle testing came up, which was something new since the last time the Technical Committee met.  But as always, something new always comes up.  It’s certainly interesting.  And like Chicago itself, it’s what keeps me coming back to these conferences, along with a chance to catch up with old (in Greg Carney’s case, VERY old) friends.

In Paul Newman’s movie “Cool Hand Luke,” the warden famously tells the prisoner, Luke: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Do you ever feel like that? Whether in words or drawings, meanings sometimes get muddled. Here are some observations on communicating clearly, especially in shop drawings.

Recently, when writing about what I thought were basic industry terms, it became apparent that to the uninitiated, understanding the lingo is sometimes not as easy as one might think. While terms like “screw-spline connections,” “shear block construction,” “moment splice,” etc., are common in glazing, have you ever tried to explain to someone what they mean? In writing, especially writing that will be translated to another language?

When it comes to jargon, I remember when I first heard the term “shop drawings.” It was in a construction management class at architecture school in which we were discussing how various subcontractors have to submit their interpretation of the contract documents, including for the drawings and specifications, and put down in drawing form exactly what they plan to build, supply and/or install on a given project.

It wasn’t until I got my first job in the glazing industry that I learned just how that applied to glass curtainwalls and windows. To me, lockstrip neoprene gasketed curtainwalls are like mother’s milk: they were what I was raised on, and what that company did for a living. To execute the work we drew every detail. The philosophy was that the field crews shouldn’t need to have any drills or saws in their tool buckets since every piece could be more easily fabricated in the shop. So we spent a lot of time on shop drawings, detailing every aspect of a given curtainwall. My first project had an extruded lighting track, with big, glass-jar lites spaced out along every corner, across every parapet, soffit and coping. I got to detail a lot of that.

I admit to being somewhat anal about what constitutes a good set of shop drawings. In their simplest form, the primary purpose of shop drawings is to facilitate the manufacturing and installation of the window or wall system by the glazing subcontractor and their supplier(s). So, much of what is detailed is strictly for those functions. Once approved, the drawings convey a message on how the wall will look when the installation is complete.

This is where the rubber first hits the road (or the glass hits the gasket, as the case may be): in many instances, the first “product” shipped by a curtainwall supplier or installer is the set of shop drawings produced for the job. And the reason they’re submitted and reviewed is that other parties to the project need and use them, and therefore the drawings become communication tools to those other parties.

Those other parties are by no means small potatoes to a project. The shop drawings are used by:

1. The architect and their consultants, to primarily check for compliance for design and technical adequacy of the proposed systems with the contract documents.

2. The general contractor to coordinate the curtainwall and/or window wall work with adjacent trades and scheduling or coordinating who does what, when.

3. Those affected other trades.

4. A structural engineer to confirm the loads imposed on the building frame at anchor points are not overloading those components.

5. The fabricators as the basis for completing:

a. Material take offs;

b. Fabrication drawings;

c. Which parts are “shop applied” to other parts before shipping, and which parts are “shipped loose” directly to the job;

d. How those parts are bundled (e.g., by floor? by area?), and when are they shipped to the site; and

e. The actual cutting, notching, drilling, general machining and partial assembly (as necessary) for any/all of the parts.

6. The installing contractor, who must use them for:

a. Layout dimensions, datum elevations, opening dimensions, etc., specifically identifying where the material is to be installed;

b. Field requirements: what equipment is needed to install the material;

c. How to staff the job: how many crews, how fast can material be set, etc., that determines the schedule;

d. Layout and storage needs: when will material be delivered, how often, where it’s going to be stored on site, etc.;

e. If/when will a crane be required; and

f. And, most importantly, specific instructions for installations NOT covered in the typical “installation manual.”

The point: shop drawings are communication tools. While many of the details in them might be completely for internal use, there are a lot of other operations/individuals that will use them for their own purposes. Thus, clarity is essential in order for the shops to be effective communication tools.

The Glass Association of North America (GANA) is about to issue a bulletin that addresses what should be included in a good set of shop drawings. Start with that. Look at how your organization prepares and uses shop drawings, and see if there are things that would have been smoother on the last job had some aspect of the drawings been better. And, ask yourself if that change would be worth making an “SOP” for the next time?

My first employer, Bill Swango, never wanted the field guys standing around scratching their heads about something that wasn’t covered in the shops. If the guys doing the installation have questions, they usually try to reason it out. Then if they can’t, they call their supervisor, who will call the office if he can’t straighten it out himself. Think of all the time and money that takes. Then the guy in the office has to figure it out anyway. Bill’s point was all of that could have been avoided if the guy in the office (often it’s the guy who did the shop drawings) figured it out, and put it on the shops in the first place).

Good communication tools pay for themselves. Always have, always will. Shops are just another part of the equation each of us deals with on a regular basis.

Until last November, having grown up in Pennsylvania, I’ve never known of another Penn State football coach than Joe Paterno. He covered up something so heinous, it makes all of us sick. God bless the victims. One thing is certainly obvious from this case, and it’s applicable in our personal lives, careers and business practices: cover-ups never work.

Trying to hide mistakes is simply wrong; the price will be paid, sooner rather than later. And the more time goes by, the steeper the price that will have to be paid. Nixon tried the cover-up route – it didn’t work. So did Enron. That didn’t go so well, either. Ted Kennedy came clean about his responsibility almost immediately after Chappaquiddick, and he remained in the Senate until he died. One can argue about what costs he paid, both personally and professionally, but he ‘fessed up to some degree within a relatively short time, and he “survived.” Ronald Reagan did, too, with the Iran-Contra arms deal. He admitted some of his people made mistakes and he was responsible because they were working for him.

Point being: when something’s not right, fix it, make it right, and just do it NOW. We all make mistakes, but covering them up? Come clean, live with the heat, ‘fess up, and be better the next time because of the experience. From the book, Leadership Principles of Attila the Hun: ”Never shoot the messenger who brings you the bad news. Shoot the messenger who hides or doesn’t bring it to your attention. It’s much simpler to deal with when it’s fresh, not old.” Penn State missed that opportunity. Heaven forbid the same should happen to any of our businesses.

Everyone remember the Domino’s commercials a few years back? “Hey, we admit it, we’re making a lousy pizza, but we’ve heard you, and we’re changing it.” An article in Southwest Airlines’ “Spirit” magazine this month discusses this marketing tactic in detail. Turns out, Domino’s faked out everybody about how bad their pizza was. They faked us into thinking their pizza was bad, and then they turned a supposed fault into a 14.3 percent sales boost. Since they pulled this little stunt, their sales have gone up another 20 percent.

Like many of us, I’ve been watching from some distance the case of the glass industry employee who’s accused of stealing company drawings/data/trade secrets and taking them to a new position with another company. The twist is his old employer sold off the new company, and the argument is whether the employee took confidential information that affected the buying/selling price to either party, and who, if anyone, got an advantage in the transaction. All of us probably send something to our personal email addresses, or copy something onto a flash drive to work on at home at night to catch up a little. It’s what one does with such info later that in this particular case has been interesting to watch.

But of even more interest is how the original employer found out what had gone on. By accessing both his office AND home machine (by some legal means, they confiscated the employee’s home computer, the grounds being he had sent info to it from the office), the former employer was able to trace back for a number of months all of the employee’s computer activity, both in emails sent/received, data transferred via flash/portable drives, etc. All of it. They KNEW every move the employee had made, what went where, when it went, and to whom it went, if anyone.

Most employers have company policies on what you can and can’t do from the office computer. Better brush up on them if it’s been awhile. I venture to guess a lot of them aren’t strictly enforced. Until one person steps over the line, and then the pressure’s on everyone to measure up, and THEN watch the enforcement step up.

The experts have been telling us: when we’re all this linked together, when you hit the send button, someone’s going to be able to trace it. If you don’t want it to come back, don’t put it on the ‘net, on Facebook, on anything anybody’s going to find. Hitting the “post” or “send” button is like carving it on Mt. Rushmore: it’s gonna be out there an awfully long time. Potential employers are asking new applicants for access to the new hire’s personal Facebook and LinkedIn sites. This is why I’m reluctant to tweet: I say too many dumb things to risk putting anything down in writing.

George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Paterno failed to learn from history what happens in cover-ups. And, we all should learn from the history of those who have misused their work computers. Everybody read George Orwell’s “1984?” Big Brother CAN watch you. From the “Hill Street Blues” TV show, “let’s be careful out there.” Some tracks you leave won’t ever go away.