In
the typical postwar office, there would have been trade
literature of all shapes and sizes, solicited and
unsolicited, and of varying degrees of usefulness. It
would not be organized in any way or at least not to any
commonly recognized system [59].
There might be a few large, possibly late nineteenth
century catalogues of sanitary ware, windows or metal
sections, kept as much for sentimental as for practical
reasons, plus some prewar catalogues of products still
available and piles of new literature and leaflets.
Almost certainly there would be a copy of Specification
or a similar compendium and a few technical monographs. A
design office "library" in 1960 was described, in
retrospect, as consisting "of a few dozen Co-op carrier
bags, each emblazoned with a large red number, slung
under the drawing boards. Each bag was bursting with
trade literature and half an hour was the office record
for finding any particular item" [60].
The writer goes on to say "And no one felt there was a
problem" which was, of course, untrue. Commercial
services, supplying and maintaining a representative
collection of trade literature, like Barbour Index (a
later sponsor of annual competitions) had already begun
to offer its services in response to a need.
Other
design offices had set up their own A4/SfB library,
following the advice given in The Architects’
Journal [61].
These libraries were ‘integrated’ in that the
trade literature (60% of the stock) was filed with all
the other publications, including books, in one SfB
sequence in open fronted boxes accommodating A4 size.
This arrangement was recommended as "the best and most
economical for an office of fifteen or more architects"
[62].
The
librarians responsible for such office libraries -
sometimes designated members of staff - began meeting
together some time in 1962 to discuss various problems in
the use of SfB. This was the start to the Building
Industry Libraries Group. The Group was concerned about
the unsatisfactory nature of much of the trade literature
and undertook to write to individual trade associations
about glaringly bad examples. In 1967, the Group changed
its name to the Construction Industry Information Group
(CIIG) and became the recognized forum for discussions on
information problems generally of the industry
[63].
Trade
literature was, as the RIBA and the other professional
bodies had emphasized, an essential source of information
for the architect, surveyor and builder. The amount of
trade literature produced and distributed was still
growing. The estimated figure for 1950 of a thousand or
more firms making building products, using around 10 000
trade names, had risen by the mid-1960s to 8 000 or so
producers marketing some 20 000 products to 150 000
potential customers. Some contestable estimates put the
number of firms much higher. There were in the mid-1960s,
for example, at least 48 manufacturers of metal window
frames in Britain [64].
One
cause of the growth was ascribed to the phenomenon called
‘the information explosion’ which afflicted the
Western world about this time. A dramatic description of
the "extraordinary situation [...] when new
material is being produced faster than ever before"
compared it to "a process very like fission"
[65].
A more homely description was given by James Thurber who
wrote to the effect that there was so much information
that it was impossible to find out what you wanted to
know. The other cause adduced for the increase was that
"every year, more of the elements of building are
produced in the factory instead of by craftsmen on the
site", forgetting or ignoring (but surely not unaware of)
the fact that this had been going on for well over a
century [66].
Much of this trade
literature came from manufacturers who were not following
the clear advice of the Building Centre’s Guide and
who claimed that conforming would cramp their design
style. One maverick, a major window manufacturer, claimed
he was glad others used standard size literature; his
catalogue was produced to gigantic proportions so it
would be unfileable and "would thus remain at all times
on the drawing board" [60].
There
was, however, some help for architects wishing to protect
themselves from the onslaught of product data and the
blandishments of the manufacturers. Regular reviews of
new products (or catalogues) and design guides were
included in the professional journals. The Greater London
Council (formerly the London County Council) began
producing its intrepid Development and Materials Bulletin
which provided what would later be termed
‘feedback’ on its experience in using
proprietary products [67].
There was also the diligent selectivity of the design
office librarians.
Yet there was a
‘Dame Partington’ protest against "catalogue
architecture, buildings which are mere assemblies of
manufactured products the architect has not designed
[in which] the various components do not assemble
together satisfactorily, and the architect spends his
time trying to reconcile them". But equally there was the
opposite tendency, where "the revival of handmade
materials and textures, often tinged by the attempts to
imitate products of a disappearing peasant culture"
recalled the Luddites [66].
The middle to late 1960s
saw other developments in the field of building products.
In 1966, the government, through the Ministry of Public
Building and Works (MPBW), set up the Agrément
Board. This body, based on the French example, was
charged to supply accurate and unbiased independent
appraisals of materials, products, components and
processes, and their performance in use. Manufacturers
would pay a fee for having their products (for which
British Standards did not apply) tested and a certificate
would be issued for those products which passed (in
practice, ten percent failed and 30% had to be improved).
Assessed certificated products were given wide publicity
in technical publications.
The
emergence of the Board was welcomed as "an excellent
opportunity to link the interests of the specifiers and
manufacturers alike. Its effect on product literature
should be increasingly felt by setting a standard"
[68].
The
interests of the government specifiers and some
manufacturers were linked by the Method of Building (MOB)
System developed by MPBW. Certain high-risk,
costly-maintenance products such as windows, partitions,
suspended ceilings, door sets and door hardware were
assessed against a number of performance requirements.
The performance-based specifications, produced after
extensive research and development, defined precisely
what would be required to satisfy the needs for
government buildings and to ensure the best value for
money [69].
Successful tenderers were
shortlisted (some manufacturers, it was found, did not
understand the specifications while others complained
that the standards were too high). The MOB publications
on this subject were available outside the department.
There were ambitious plans for widening the range of MOB
products but they were not achieved and MOB ceased with
the end of the Public Services Agency (PSA).
A manufacturer setting
out in the early 1960s to prepare a trade catalogue to
meet a standard specification would not have lacked
advice. The Building Centre’s Guide, which could be
taken as a ‘surrogate standard’, would give
recommendations about the catalogue’s physical
appearance, layout, dating and classification; it would
also indicate the information required about the product
itself: its type, composition, purpose, properties and
application, as well as commercial details. But the
advice given on product information was sparse and left
the producer to decide what was "factual, comprehensive"
and what was "a logical sequence".
This lack
of substance and methodology in the description of
building products began to change with the publication in
1964 of CIB Report 3 Master List of Properties for
Building Materials and Products. This document is
arguably the most useful contribution ever made in the
field of construction information, since it was not
confined to trade literature but came to provide the
building industry with a structure of headings for
general use in the preparation of technical information.
The Master List had evolved over the previous ten years,
notably in Sweden and in the deliberations of CIB Working
Commission 31, and it would evolve further in the future
with the work on it carried out at the Building Research
Station in Britain [70].
The
value of the Master List was recognized by the
discerning, and a call was made for specifiers to bring
it to the attention of manufacturers and insist on all
the requirements being met [65].
The Building Centre recommended it as a detailed guide to
the content and sequence of headings for information on
products [71],
and the National Building Agency used it for the product
descriptions in its prestigious Commodity File
[72].
The essential recommendations for producing trade
literature acceptable to architects and other users had
now been settled. All that was needed was for all the
elements to be brought together to form a new British
Standard.
There was, by this time -
the middle 1960s - a growing feeling in the British
industry that the problems caused by the uncoordinated
flood of information had got out of hand and that
fundamental investigation was necessary. It was also
apparent that the transformation of building into an
industrial process had led to the fragmentation of the
industry. The participants in a building project - the
client, the designer, the quantity surveyor, the
suppliers of materials and components, the contractors,
the engineers and possibly specialists consultants - were
technically interdependent but they remained
organizationally separated and interdependent.
There was
a lack of communication, and therefore an information
problem between the members of a group all working on the
same project - and they often did not understand each
other when they did communicate. In studies of
construction information [73],
there was now to be a concentration on communication,
coordination and what became known as ‘information
flow in the construction process’. And the computer
would be the deus ex machina.
In May 1966, the Minister
of Public Building and Works set up a Committee on the
Application of Computers in the Construction Industry, to
foster their effective use. Computers were already
beginning to be used, mainly for architectural design,
estimating and scheduling, but it was seen that
information could not be processed for effective use,
both in individual firms and in communication between
them, unless there was "a system of data coordination and
coding applicable to the whole industry."
In
February 1969, the Committee’s Sub-Committee on
Coding and Data Co-ordination published its
ground-breaking - in places baffling - Study
[74].
It presented a general theoretical model of information
flow, with procedural flow diagrams, and analyzed the
building process "in terms of information required and
generated by different functions [...] which lead
to achievement of separately identifiable goals
including, for example, resource allocation, design of
components, selection of products and preparation of
product information" [75].
The Study, which generated a host of subsidiary reports
both before and after publication, was not just
theoretical but put forward proposals for an information
system for the construction industry.
The opening words of the
Study set the theme: "for long enough, many people in the
industry have felt that something should be done to
improve communication and to facilitate access to data on
e.g. materials, products and commodities, regulations,
standards, costs etc." It continues about the unease felt
concerning the way information produced by one member of
the building team is independently produced again by
others for one reason or another, and ends by suspecting
that "the less efficient practices stem from the
uncertainty created by the inadequacy of information
flow".
A framework for the
information system was set up. This included (among other
parts not discussed here, for example classification
categories, conventions, procedures and information
structuring):
- a preferred vocabulary
(i.e. the thesaurus);
- commodity coding;
- and a Central Commodity
File (this Central Commodity File would contain all the
information on materials, products and components
scattered in trade catalogues, design guides and other
publications, systematically coded by attributes and
properties).
At first the file would
be of standardized trade and technical literature but
later would be computer-based. In setting up the
information system, commercial and practical
considerations would be taken into account, including the
involvement of industry, and also the requirement that
any codes adopted should be appropriate for computer use.
There is an emphatic recognition in the Study of the
importance of commodity information -
‘commodity’ being defined as a general term
covering products, materials and components - "an article
of trade".
The study states that
"much of the volume of specialized information the
industry uses is related to things that make up projects
(e.g. to materials, products and components) rather than
to concepts. [...] Designers are concerned with
performance, properties, price, dimensions, methods of
jointing; contractors with sources, availability, form,
discounts, transport and packaging, and working
properties; and the need to exchange information about
commodities alone could justify the initiation of a
measure of data coordination reaching right across the
industry and into the associated supply and manufacturing
industries".
Participants in the
building process need to be made aware of available
commodities and this involves a range of sales literature
from eye-catching advertisements to full product
descriptions but - and the old complaint is repeated -
"Too often the information available is of a very general
character and much will be gained if agreement is reached
as to the characteristics that should be mentioned for
different classes of commodities, characteristics that
should be chosen to reflect the interests of designers
and constructors at different stages of the design
process, and be cross-referenced to indicate associated
literature, standards, and Codes of Practice. From a
purely practical standpoint, standardization of size,
method of binding and methods of filing will be to the
advantage of everyone in the industry, and the CIB Master
List of Properties is helpful in suggesting content."
The Study notes that
manufacturers and merchants did not agree with the
suggestion that a comprehensive system of data
coordination would make sales representatives less
necessary. Indeed they considered them to be more
necessary for marketing products and to ensure a proper
service to customers.
What, in the end, was the
outcome of the expenditure of so much intellectual energy
to develop a comprehensive information system for the
construction industry? Of particular concern here are the
general information proposals - the thesaurus, commodity
coding and the Central Commodity File - which relate,
directly or indirectly, to manufactured
products.
The
Working Party on Data Co-ordination, in its Final report
[76],
considered "a preferred vocabulary to be an essential
part of the basic syntax for project and for general
information (including commodity information". The
Thesaurus, then in draft form only, needed, in its
opinion, improvement and testing and "in its present form
[...] would not provide an adequate means of
communication for documentation or for computer
applications". The ‘development edition’ of the
Construction Industry Thesaurus (CIT)
[77]
was published in February 1972 after two years of
preparation, providing a "controlled authoritative list
of some 9 000 terms". It was criticized for being too
large and complex for the average professional practice,
and for being too conceptual and giving as preferred
terms some which were not the usual language of the
industry. It was also in competition with existing
in-house thesauri (at BRE for instance) and, for computer
use, with free-text searching and other methods of data
retrieval.
Data coordination implies
a single system of classification or at least linkage
between different systems. There were attempts to use the
underlying structure of CIT as a practical
classification, in convergence with existing systems,
especially CI/SfB. In the end, the CIT lost its battles
with the entrenched systems and CI/SfB continued supreme
for filing trade literature. Although there were a second
edition and an abridged version, CIT was not kept up to
date and so it eventually faded away. In the meantime,
BSI continued to produce the extensive glossary of
building and civil engineering terms (BS
6100).
The need to describe and
identify commodities (and other resources) was of prime
importance for data coordination. The CIB Master List had
shown the way to describe materials and products but
there was no ready-made solution to the problem of
providing each commodity with a unique identifying code.
A separate study of commodity coding carried out for the
National Computing Centre estimated the size of commodity
files as being up to 2600 million characters with about 1
million commodity records of about 2600 characters each.
However, for the construction industry, a much smaller
central file of about 100 million characters was
considered to be still very useful. Incidentally, the
illustration of a code provided in an Appendix to the
data coordination study would have been sufficient to
deter the industry.
Britain
was, however, a pioneer in assigning unique identifying
numbers to articles (commodities) when it began using a
ten-digit Standard Book Number (SBN) in 1966. The SBN
became the international ISBN in 1970. In that year, the
report from the Working Party on Data Co-ordination
stated "the construction industry will be implementing
its commodity identification system in advance of other
industries or an agreed national system. It will be some
time before an agreed system is operating on a national
scale." It also proposed that "catalogues, trade
literature and price reporting services should be the
primary vehicles for displaying the code numbers"
[78].
The National Computing
Centre had begun to address the commodity coding problem
on a national basis in 1967 and in February 1969 it
produced a report on coding for the National Federation
of Builders’ and Plumbers’ Merchants. The
Working Party on Data Co-ordination in its Final Report
[76] did not "wish to see any delay [in
implementing its system because] codes become
increasingly necessary with the growing use of
computers." A Draft British Standard was circulated but
thereafter little or no interest was shown in the topic.
Individual manufacturers and merchants had, of course,
long been using their own codes and did not see much need
for a national system.
A change
came with the experiment in electronic data interchange
(EDI) in the 1980s when a common transmission code
product was needed. The construction industry firms
involved, led by the large home-improvements (DIY) sector
[79],
were then encouraged to adopt the national 13-digit
non-significant article number/bar code system
administered by the Article Number Association (ANA), set
up in 1976.
The
establishment of the Central Commodity File itself was
considered highly ambitious from the start. For such a
high cost project, real demand and lasting benefits would
have to be demonstrated, so a fact-fining survey was
commissioned. The report [80]
of April 1970 was deemed to show, not surprisingly, that
product information users were very supportive of such a
file and even manufacturers and merchants (almost fifty
percent) were in favor. In both cases, the larger the
firm, the greater the support. It was calculated that
users spent a total of £28 million each year on
searching for and storing commodity information and
manufacturers and merchants £20-40 million in turn
on supplying it.
The users of product
information made the usual points:
- that comparison and
selection of products from a range was a frustrating and
costly business;
- that much of the
information was out-of-date;
- that trade literature
contained insufficient technical data and little or no
information about application and installation;
- and
that price information was difficult to obtain
[81].
The providers of product
information referred to their difficulties in producing,
updating and distributing it to the right person. Testing
and lack of feedback were also cited as problems. The
consultants, as a result of this evidence "considered
that a case had been established for a central commodity
file" [76].
A feasibility study in
January 1971 gave imposing statistics for inquiries
regarding building products (thirty-one million a year)
the answers to which were obtained mainly from
manufacturers: from their literature (44%), their
representatives (27%), or from telephone calls (27%).
Commercial information services, including the Building
Centres, accounted for only 2%. The number of
manufacturers supplying the construction industry was
estimated to be between 10 000 and 14 000 and it was
estimated that information on 360 000 products (or 200
million characters) would need to be held on
file.
It was
perhaps unfortunate that the Final Report of the Working
Party on Data Co-ordination contained the expression
‘the total system’. This expression, with its
overtones of dictatorial uniformity, was seized upon at a
conference by the representative of the National Council
of Building Materials Producers, who said: "so far as the
idea of a total Central Commodity File was concerned, it
should be set aside for at least five years." He said (in
retrospect reasonably) that it was "sheer conceit" to
believe it possible to define the composition and
mechanism, program and cost such an enormously
complicated idea as a total central commodity file.
People should not be deflected from "the merit of
achieving gradual and totally compatible information
systems" [82].
The
Central Commodity File was never started although even
seven years after the study it was stated: "ultimately a
fully comprehensive service as envisaged in the original
DRS report should be the aim" [83].
Over the following years, many commercial trade products
services were set up, adding to those already in
existence, with various forms of output: printed,
microfiche, viewdata and CD-ROM, and with various degrees
of comprehensiveness, usefulness and quality. Some are
still operating successfully, for example the RIBA
Product Selector, now in both printed and CD-ROM form,
which began as Product Data in 1974.
The
industry-wide information system proposed in the Study
and associated reports was too idealistic and
over-ambitious and was not to be. One of its authors
wrote, a year or two later, that it was not possible,
necessary or desirable to develop a single comprehensive
system. The nature of the industry dictated, as the Study
said, "a ‘continuous creation’ rather than a
‘big bang’ approach", a view endorsed by the
Minister’s National Consultative Council
[84].
In the event, development in data coordination was not
evolutionary but piecemeal, patchy and sometimes
ephemeral. The construction industry (in the late 1960s:
90 000 firms, consisting of a few large, and a multitude
of medium-sized and small ones, with an annual output of
£4000 million) remained conservative and cautious
about new ways of working, aware as ever of its economic
vulnerability.
There
were, however, some important later developments, after
the data coordination work in the DOE was stopped. In
1979 the Co-ordinating Committee for Project Information
(CCPI) was formed - with representatives from
professional bodies - and began work, in 1982, on what
was to be known as Co-ordinated Project Information
(CPI). "Despite a long and troublesome gestation period"
[85],
CPI was officially born in November 1987
[86]
after the CCPI had published in June The Common
Arrangement of Work Sections (CAWS), the first of a set
of related documents. CAWS was designed to replace
existing methods of arranging specifications and bills of
quantities. It was hoped that CAWS would also replace
CI/SfB as the basis of classification and arrangement of
technical libraries and proposals to this end were put
forward by the CI/SfB Agency, now with the RIBA/NBS
Services (which developed CAWS) [87].
At
least four technical libraries, three in structural
engineering and one in quantity surveying practices, were
converted to the system [88].
But the prediction made in a study of the implementation
of CPI that "many architects will be reluctant to move
away from SfB as it has become a familiar old friend"
proved to be true [89].
In 1988, the CCPI became the Building Project Information
Committee (BPIC) and it is now the Construction Project
Information Committee (CPIC). The CPIC has sponsored
Uniclass (Unified Classification for the Construction
Industry, 1st edition, September 1997), developed like
CAWS by the RIBA/NBS Services. Uniclass includes all the
topics covered by CI/SfB, CAWS and the International EPIC
(Electronic Product Information Co-operation) and is
again intended to supersede CI/SfB, which was last
revised in 1976.
In its
discussion of the proposed Central Commodity File, the
Data Co-ordination Study makes the somewhat naive
assumption "that the manufacturers, together with the
merchants, would supply the information in a prescribed
and agreed form" to a central organization. The
preparation by manufacturers of their information "in
compatible ways [was] a task that would require
determining just what information about a commodity was
of interest to all users and the most useful way of
presenting it." There is no mention in the Study of a new
British Standard being the mechanism for achieving
compatibility; however, by the mid-1970s, a consultant
[90]
had been commissioned by the Working Party to study
possibilities of standardizing the presentation of data
in trade literature.
The
Working Party’s Final Report regarded
standardization "as a first priority to improve the flow
of commodity information in the industry." It was aware
of BS 1311 (that it "does little more than standardize
paper sizes" and of the Building Centre’s 1961 Guide
but "considered that there is need for a British Standard
which would enable like products to be readily compared,
reduce time in searching for data relating to products,
and make technical data in trade literature more readily
usable in project documentation" [91].
The consultants prepared
a draft Standard to the Terms of Reference set by the
Working Party. These were, briefly,
- to study relevant
publications,
- to consult with
producers of trade literature and with "successful
competitors in the Building Centre Trade Literature
Competition",
- to ascertain the
requirements of designers, quantity surveyors,
contractors, and specialist sub-contractors for technical
data,
- "[to ascertain]
the views of manufacturers on its inclusion in their
trade literature
- [and] to
consider the use made of trade literature in project
documentation and the way in which technical data, fixing
and assembly information etc. in manufacturers’
literature might be presented so as to be suitable for
direct incorporation into project documentation."
The
consultant was to establish with BSI the form the draft
should take and, after the Working Party has approved the
draft, serve on the BSI Technical Committee to agree the
final draft. The Working Party’s Final Report
contains a summary of a commissioned report
[92]
on the costs and benefits of data coordination which gave
the "ultimate potential saving" attributable to the
standardization of trade literature as £22 million
per annum with relatively insignificant initial and long
term costs (i.e. after fifteen years). One of the main
conclusions of the report, however, was that
"Manufacturers and Merchants do not envisage any great
benefit" from data coordination.
The new British Standard,
now twenty-five A4 pages long, was published in March
1973 with the title Recommendations for the Presentation
of Technical Information About Products and Services in
the Construction Industry. It was given a new number - BS
4940 - and contains no reference the BS 1311. The
expected recommendations are there, for example: use A4
size paper, CI/SfB, CIT for keywords, and the CIB Master
List for product description and its sequence.
There are, however, some
extra features:
- the various types of
‘Main Documents’ to be used - Single Product
Handbooks, Single Products Catalogues, General Catalogues
of Products and General Technical Documents - are
defined,
- fifteen ‘Part
Documents’ are listed, including: Product List,
Product Selector, Design Data, Sitework Instructions,
Price Lists, and List of References - which are
differently collated to form the first three main
documents.
The recommendations
considered essential are cast in imperative forms
(‘shall’) and those where standardization is
"open to question" are cast in conditional terms
(‘should’). This differentiation seems rather
arrogant in a non-legal document, unlikely to be cited in
official regulations. Although the recommendations apply
specifically to printed documents, other forms, i.e.
magnetic tape, paper tape, microforms and aperture cards
are taken into account. Microfiche is considered
especially suitable for information issued by
manufacturers for library and desk side use. The Foreword
to the Standard repeats the now ritualistic disclaimer
that "the recommendations are not intended to create
stereotyped literature or to restrict freedom of design"
but adds "except where a certain arrangement is essential
for clear presentation".
The
appearance of the new British Standard was signaled by an
impressive symposium sponsored by the National Council of
Building Materials Producers [93]
and the Building Centre Trust held on 13 March at the
Royal Society in London. The symposium attracted about
180 people, of whom about one third came from
manufacturing companies; also present were delegates from
Building Centers in Czechoslovakia, Holland, Norway and
Sweden, and building materials organizations in Eire and
France. The importance accorded to the event was
underlined by the opening address scheduled to be given
by the Secretary of State for the Environment.
Enthusiastic
speakers, led by the consultant [94],
gave a detailed description and explanation of the new
Standard and of the benefit it would bring to the
construction industry [95].
One of the building materials producers’
representatives on the BSI drafting committee claimed
that the Standard was "one of the most important steps in
developing communications in this industry for many
years" [96].
A more dubious claim was made by another speaker that who
said "I believe I am right in saying that this is the
first Standard in the world dealing with technical
information for the construction industry." The same
speaker drew attention to the paragraph in the Standard
which urged "complete frankness and honesty" about a
product and a "clear statement of limitations", quoting
the managing director of a reputable company who put it
quite strongly that he left something out of his
literature deliberately because it made the user of the
catalogue get in touch with him - which meant that the
manufacturer then "had his foot in the door"
[97].
The
symposium was rounded off by the "very happy" chairman of
the BSI Panel on Building Trade Literature
[98]
- the drafting committee - who said he believed the
committee "did one of the quickest jobs that has ever
been done on a British Standard." Not too remarkable
perhaps since it helps if the first draft is already
prepared by the consultant before the Committee’s
first meeting.
What was now required for
success was for the Standard to be talked about,
understood and used.
Among the
symposium speakers, five out of the seven of whom were
members of the drafting committee, there was a real sense
of achievement in the publication of the new Standard.
They had great confidence that a significant number of
manufacturers would not only read the document but accept
that the recommendations were sound and put them into
practice with profit to all. Furthermore, the implication
of the Standard, according to one speaker
[99]
"could well go beyond the UK [because in this
field] there are some countries still in their
infancy compared with us. Their standards of technical
literature lag behind." Wisely, he did not name these
countries!
Another
speaker [100],
lacking such chauvinism, drew attention to the fact that
"the CIB and UICB both have working parties on technical
information which are beginning to use this Standard as a
basis, and we may well find that an eventual
international Standard on technical information will be
based on it." It was left to the delegate from BSI itself
[101]
to be more specific: "within the ISO we hope to begin
work this year on producing a truly international
document." He pointed out that BS 4940 was already
"international" since it embraced the CIB Master List, A
sizes and microforms for which there were international
standards (CI/SfB could have been added as having
international origins). When (and if) the international
Standard existed, the British Standard would have to be
revised to be in line with it.
The
international version of BS 4940:1973 was not published
until four years later and then not as an ISO Standard
but as a CIB Report. The title Draft Recommendations for
Trade Literature and the Presentation of Technical
Information about Products and Services in the
Construction Industry (Publication No. 35) indicated that
it was not intended to be a definitive document but
"serve as a guide for national published recommendations,
which may need to be more detailed." The three editors
[102]
based the draft on "experience from extensive practical
work with product information over many years especially
within Scandinavia and the United Kingdom." The document
follows the general pattern of the British Standard but
has fuller explanations and more illustrations. It also
has an index, not present in the British Standard,
presumably because that publication had fewer than 30
pages (the CIB Report has 36 pages) [103].
It
should be noted that there has been strong British
involvement in international building industry
information work, from its postwar beginnings at a
meeting on town planning and housing in Paris in 1947.
Britain was a founding member of the International
Council for Building Documentation (CIDB), which was
inaugurated in 1950 after a ten-day conference in Geneva
the previous year, and of the International Building
Classification Committee (IBCC), a joint FID and CIDB
Committee [104].
It participated in the work of the Commissions on
information (W31, W52, W57 and W74) after CIDB became the
wider CIB in 1953. The construction industry information
developments in Britain, up to and including Uniclass,
have all been derived from, or have benefited from,
discussions at CIB meetings. Currently, there is no CIB
Commission on construction information.
The expectation that the
new Standard would be quickly effective was soon
dispelled. The opinion offered a year or two later in the
NBA Report [83] was that further promotion of the
Standard was needed "to secure a more widespread usage,
and this may be achieved more quickly if the various
commodity information systems encouraged manufacturers
and trade literature designers to conform to the new
Standard." The Technical Secretary to the Working Party
on Data Co-ordination wrote, with, one suspects, more
faith than evidence, "use of the Standard is growing and
an increasing number of manufacturers’ catalogues
are based on it." However, he goes on to say, implying
disappointment, "one of the difficulties has been that
the somewhat technical nature of the Standard, requiring
expert understanding and interpretation to apply it. The
answer may be a guide to the Standard"
[105].
In January 1979, an
explanatory booklet Better Trade Literature was published
by the Property Services Agency (PSA) of the Department
of the Environment. It was prepared by the Building
Centre (assisted by a seven-strong Steering Committee
consisting of members from the Building Centre itself -
Chairman and Secretary - BMP, NBA, BSI, PSA and Blue
Circle Industries Ltd.) on behalf of PSA "acting on the
instructions of the National Consultative Council
Standing Committee on Computing and Data Co-ordination."
The
twenty-page booklet, available free, was attractively
produced and followed the recommendations of the Standard
in so far as they were relevant, in contrast to the
Standard itself with the dull gray cover, quasi-legal
prose and format adopted for all British Standards. The
aim of the booklet was to convince manufacturers that
"well-presented trade literature that provides all the
information needed by the specifier inspires confidence
and helps to sell the product." After giving the
background to BS 4940:1973 [106],
it then goes through the main recommendations, explaining
them in simple terms with clear illustrations from
published manufacturers’ trade literature. The
egregious "shall" used in some clauses is quickly
disposed of - "if ‘shall’ offends, read
‘should’ instead."
The
ebullient Chairman of the original BSI drafting panel
welcomed the booklet in an article entitled
‘Continuing Struggle’ [107].
"Struggle? What struggle?" he wrote, "Well, the struggle
to convince the generality of manufacturers and suppliers
in the construction industry that good literature means
good business." He admits that "nearly all the best is
produced by consultancy firms who have made a special
study of the subject [and who like] all the
people who have made a success of it, [use BS
4940:1973]". He goes on to complain that "The
Building Centre Trust, through its bi-annual competition,
is the only organization continually beating the drum for
better trade literature and this [has] proved to
be insufficient to enthuse the main body of the
industry."
PSA is described as being
"distressed by the industry’s ignorance of the
existence of the BS" which he called "a rather long and
intimidating document", excellent for the professional
trade literature designer but not for the lone
manufacturer who needs a guide. He regrets that the
Guide, intended to be taken with the BS, was not produced
six years earlier. (Perhaps he should have said that it
was a pity that the full Standard was not originally
written and produced in the way Better Trade Literature
was).
It was,
nonetheless, doubtful whether the booklet was much help
in getting the message across to the ten thousand or so
manufacturers supplying the construction industry with
about 360 000 different products and a considerable
variety of services [108].
The sales figure for BS 4940:1973 was reported
[109]
in 1985 to be "more than 7 000 copies, which was
unusually good for a British Standard, but it seemed to
have had little influence on a good deal of the technical
information that was produced." Those manufacturers who
read the booklet either already had the Standard, which
they may or may not have been following, or they did not
bother themselves to get it.
These
was to be a gap of over twenty years between the
publication of BS 4940:1973 and that of its revision,
described later in this paper. In the interim, there were
few efforts to promote the use of the Standard other than
by the Building Centre, with its trade literature
competition every two years, and by the PSA. Indeed,
manufacturers’ trade representatives who visited the
PSA Central Products and Standards Library in the 1980s
were given a copy of the pocket-sized booklet Selling
Building Products for PSA Work which contained the
statement "BS 4940 gives recommendations for design,
contents and presentation of catalogues; literature which
follows this Standard is preferred by PSA designers"
[110].
At least one interested observer appeared to hold onto
the belief that the Standard was effective, saying "in
the field of product information, I am pleased to say
that the manufacturers and the product data services are
now showing much more interest in compiling information
along the lines of the British Standard"
[111].
Go
to part 3