Announcing: CSI/DBIA/BSD Technical Review Committee

Building Systems Design, Inc. (BSD) is enormously pleased to announce the formation of a joint Technical Review Committee responsible for the ongoing review and enhancement of the BSD SoftLink® suite of products, which includes PerSpective®¹, BSD SpecLink®, and BSD CostLink®/AE. For the last three years, these products have been exclusive offerings of the CSI-DBIA Joint Venture and BSD, with BSD assigned overall management responsibility. The unique tripartite relationship has now resulted in the formation of an unusual review committee structure. CSI and BSD have each appointed two members to an Executive Committee which will oversee a much larger group of Corresponding Members. DBIA is anticipated to appoint representatives in the near future.

CSI appointments to the Executive Committee are Edward C. Wundram, CSI, AIA, DBIA, of the Design-Build Consulting Group; and John R. Guill, CSI, CCA, of Quattrocchi Kwok Architects. BSD's appointments are Susan McClendon, RA, CSI, CCS, BSD Executive Vice President, and Robert Paul Dean, AIA, CSI, CCS, BSD President.

Executive Committee members will have oversight and management responsibilities for all three products, and all members of the committee will be able to comment on any aspect of the BSD SoftLink products that is of interest. There will be two Corresponding Members with primary responsibility for ongoing review and enhancement of the BSD CostLink product. The plan for SpecLink and PerSpective is to ask each Corresponding Member to assume primary responsibility for ongoing review and enhancement of a particular range of topics, which BSD has organized into subcommittees. Altogether, 16 PerSpective/SpecLink subcommittees have been identified. Examples include "Substructure," "Doors and Windows," "HVAC Equipment," and "Site Improvements," based primarily on the UniFormat™ organization used in PerSpective, with an approximately equal number of commonly used SpecLink sections in each group. Three architecturally oriented subcommittees have already been "claimed" by Corresponding Members recommended by CSI. The remaining open subcommittees relate to the following topics:

• Structural topics (Substructure, Superstructure)
• Architectural topics (Exterior Closure, Doors and Windows)
• Plumbing topics
• HVAC topics (HVAC Equipment, HVAC Distribution)
• Electrical topics (Electrical Distribution, Electrical Equipment)
• Site Improvements topics (suitable for a landscape architect)
• "Electronics" topics, covering fire alarm, telecomm, electronic security and safety, integrated automation, and HVAC controls (jointly with Mechanical)
• Conveying Systems topics
• General topics, covering bidding, contracting, general requirements, RFP documents in PerSpective

Each Corresponding Member appointed to the committee will have primary responsibility for one group of topics, secondary responsibility for a second group, and the ability to comment on anything of interest at any time. CostLink/AE committee members will be expected to be active subscribers to the product. PerSpective/SpecLink committee members will be expected to be familiar with both products and to be active users of at least one of them. BSD will provide a free 1-user version of one product, provided the committee member maintains a subscription to the other product. In the situation where a new committee member is already subscribing to both products, BSD will offer a free renewal subscription to the less expensive product.

Every SpecLink and PerSpective subscriber is eligible to participate. If you are interested in becoming a Corresponding Member of the CSI/DBIA/BSD Technical Review Committee, please call (888) BSD-SOFT or send an email to specwriters@bsdsoftlink.com.

¹PerSpective® is owned by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI), (www.csinet.org), and is used with permission.