Assembling A Collaborative Team - Other - Page 104
Assembling a Collaborative Project Team
The value of standards, processes and guidance
When practices focused merely on their own outputs, Common Standards
offered fewer benefits. With the advent of BIM this is no longer the case and if
a project team is to work together collaboratively Common Standards must be
utilised. It is difficult to provide a definitive view on this subject because newly
introduced Common Standards have not yet been widely circulated or used.
However, in the first part of this chapter some of the existing or emerging new
standards and guidance and how they might assist matters are considered.
The difference between Common Standards and legislation
When considering Common Standards it helps to examine the difference between
standards and legislation. To be effective, legislation needs to be prescriptive or
it would not be possible to ratify compliance with the appropriate legislation.
Standards set out best practice or suggested codes of practice in relation to a
subject in order to encourage competitors to harness the same systems or
protocols (for example, publishing the details of a phone charging socket would
mean that competing companies could share information, encouraging them to
use the same socket and thereby standardising the use of a product to the benefit
of the consumer). From a design perspective, some standards recommend best
practice whereas others suggest alternative approaches and care should be taken
when using standards in a contractual way, such as inclusion within specifications.
What standard protocol documents and
guidance exist?
As outlined above, most practices utilise their own methods for carrying out
projects, including CAD/BIM standards. This section considers current Common
Standards, their publisher and purpose. One essential consideration is that
Common Standards facilitate collaborative working by agreeing certain working
methods up front on a project. By selecting Common Standards, disagreements
over which practice’s protocols are the ‘best’ can be avoided and, by using
Feedback, the Common Standards can be continuously improved.
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