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NS-CCCB Meeting Minutes May 7 - 8, 1997 Stennis Space Center Welcome and Introductions Ed Gobert of Stennis opened the meeting at 9:00am by welcoming everyone and introducing the Stennis Operations Director, Florence Kailiwai-Barnett who joined him in welcoming the board and operators to Stennis and offered their facility for future meetings. Pete Allen spoke briefly and announced that after this meeting he would be stepping down as the chairman and that Tom Hinshaw from Lewis Research Center in Cleveland would by filling this position. Review of Past Action Items A review of the boards past action items was presented by Carl Smildsin. These actions are listed in the November 1996 NS-CCCB Board meeting minutes. There was no lengthy discussion at this time since most items were to be covered in the course of the meeting. Engineering Report Carl Smildsin reported on the engineering work since the last meeting and status of the engineering staff at this time. It was reported that since the last meeting there has been a continued effort to update the references and this has resulted in 95 reference changes and/or updates. This work has been greatly aided by the input from Tom Hinshaw and the involvement that he has with the NIBS Pre-Approval Product Committee. There have been 25 Type one changes and ten 1620's completed. Four major maintenance sections were completed and there are presently eleven in the process of being reviewed for a mailing in the near future. Diana Hawkins has continued her work in reviewing the text for possible hazardous material replacements or elimination in response to the Executive Orders we have been working on. Diana has also been looking into the requirements of using recycled materials in response to that Executive Order. All of the Division 16 sections have been reviewed in the past year by the electrical engineer that was brought in-house as a contractor. This position is currently vacant and a search is on to fill the open engineering position. Lead Abatement Template from NASA HQ Tom Hinshaw lead a discussion about the Lead Abatement template document that has been sent out by Al Lew at NASA HQ for review and comments. It was decided that this document is too large for incorporation as a SPECSINTACT master section and that there are still a great many local concerns that must be addressed in abatement sections. Tom recommended that NASA adopt NAVY sections 13281 and 13282 as templates for developing local sections. These sections are utilized world wide by the NAVY and are structured for editing for local laws and regulations. After discussion the Board approved the adoption of NAVY sections 13281 and 13282 as templates for NASA projects. The word "NAVY" should be replaced with "NASA". These sections should be reviewed for local requirements and modified to meet state and local laws. These specifications, per the Code of Federal Regulations, should only be prepared by a person who is certified by the State in which the work will be performed. NIBS has produced two manuals which can be utilized in preparing these specifications for project specific requirements. NIBS Document Number - 5401-2, Lead-Based Paint, Operations & Maintenance Work Practices for Homes and Buildings provides standards for lead paint removal. NIBS Document Number - 5176-7, Guidance Manual, Asbestos Operations & Maintenance Work Practices provides asbestos removal standards. Tom Hinshaw has prepared a local section "01350, Hazardous Waste Management" which will be submitted for incorporation as a LeRC local on the NIBS CCB. ACTION: NASA Centers will review the NAVY sections and create locals with input from local IH, safety and environmental personnel. ACTION: NASA Centers shall make in-house personnel and support service contractors aware of NIBS reference material to be used in preparing abatement specifications. Product Pre-Approval Tom Hinshaw reported on the progress of the NIBS product pre-approval committee. The first step this group has taken is reviewing the government agencies references and is trying to address the fact that in some cases the different agencies are using different references for the same sections or materials. This information and comparison effort has been used to update and change references in the NASA Mastertext to coincide with the references in the Army and Navy documents. The board has endorsed the continued support of the NIBS committee and it was pointed out that the cost of travel to participate on this committee is covered by NIBS. It is hoped that others from the board will become involved with the reviews in the future. ACTION: The Lead center will get and distribute to the board members the sections to be reviewed by the NIBS committee and the dates for the meetings. Report from the Recent SI-CCCB Meeting Pat Robinson gave a brief overview of the highlights from the April SI-CCCB meeting in Washington. Electronic bid sets was a subject at that meeting that was discussed at length. The Corps of Engineers has now mandated that SPECSINTACT be used for all their jobs. NIBS will be changing the CD format to use Adobe Acrobat on the CCB subscription. Files will be stored in PDF (portable document format). This change will have no direct impact to the user other than the product being much cleaner. The target date for this change is October 1997. In April 1997 another SPECSINTACT presentation was given to the Veterans Administration as an outreach to that agencies interest in possibly adopting SPECSINTACT as their standard for construction specifications. Center Reports The SPECSINTACT representatives from Ames, JPL, Langley, Stennis, Lewis, Goddard, Wallops and Marshall were present and gave brief updates on how SPECSINTACT is being used at their centers and shared some insight as to how the metric work has progressed at the center. Most of the centers are using the new SGML editor and have found that it has been greatly improved over the past several releases. There have been some conflicts and aggravations with the metric projects at the centers. The availability of metric products has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks and there has been some noticeable cost increase on some projects because of the use of metric. It was also agreed that for the most part, contractors are converting the metric dimensions to English to get the work done and haven't really learned the metric system as a first language for those projects. Full Cost Accounting Pete Allen started a round table discussion about the upcoming "full cost accounting" that NASA will be instituting. This is a new arena for everyone and it is felt that only time will be the judge on whether it is a step towards the better or not. The effect that will be felt at the center level is still an unknown. Each center will have to start identifying the cost of the specifications, SPECSINTACT and the related support costs and decide how these expenses will be passed along to the project, customers, contractors, etc. The bottom line is that there will be some growing pains with the learning curve, but being forewarned means being forearmed. Homepage Discussion Pat Robinson gave a demonstration of the S/I Homepage and a roundtable discussion followed with the board providing input to the lead center as to what they would like to see added to the Homepage for their use. Most of the NASA centers have spent sometime on the Homepage and feel that this will become a very useful tool for the SPECSINTACT community as its full potential is realized. The board has requested that the open 1620's for Mastertext be included on the web site and provide such information who submitted and what the status response is to the request. This will be an item that will be added to the web site by the Lead center. ACTION: The Lead center will provide the Mastertext 1620 information on the Internet. This will include the 1620 tracking number, originator, description and status and resolution. Once resolved the 1620 will be removed after 30 days of completion or board approval. Tailoring / Spec CAD Interface Pat Robinson gave a an update to the board as to where the SI Board is heading with the tailoring option program. At the last meeting it was decided that NASA was going to wait and see how the effort progressed before fully endorsing the idea or spending any resources on this project. At this time the Tri-agency at the SI-CCCB has committed to working towards identifying how the "tags" and key words for tailoring will be identified. Tom Hinshaw will attend a meeting in Texas the week following this board meeting to represent NASA and this board in that effort. The cost of travel will be covered by the committee doing this work. In the future EG&G may also send a SPECSINTACT representative to these meetings if expenses can be covered. ACTION: Tom Hinshaw will travel to Arlington, Texas to represent the NS-CCCB and NASA at the meeting to determine the tag identification system that will be accepted. Tom will report back to the board at the next meeting on the progress. WordSpec Demo Pat Robinson gave a short demonstration and overview of the WordSpec system that is available. This allows a user to convert a SPECSINTACT section to MsWord work with it and then convert it back to SPECSINTACT. Elimination of DOS Version of SPECSINTACT The plans to eliminate the DOS version of SPECSINTACT was discussed by the board now that the SGML editor is working much better and more centers are using it for there jobs. It was decided by this board that for NASA Mastertext the October release would be the last DOS version released and that as of January 1998 it would not appear on the NIBS-CCB any longer. ACTION: The Lead Center will put a notice to users on the Web site that the DOS version will be going away as indicated above. Migration to NPG Documents Art Lee gave a presentation to the board about the current development of NPG (NASA Policy Guidelines) that is underway within the agency. He pointed out that some of these documents may effect our guide specifications and how work will be accomplished as well as how some reporting systems may effect the center operations. It will be important to be aware of these documents as they are developed and review their content to determine if we have actions effecting our guide specs. Environmental Update Odean Serrano from NASA HQ came and gave an update on how the NPG is developing and has asked that input from the board members on the environmental issues such as the reporting concerns and use of recycled materials be forwarded to her so that she may continue to support the centers. Since this is front end effort, it was agreed that input from the board at this stage would be more helpful in determining how business is conducted than trying to correct or change edicts after they are sent out. Odean will continue to interface with the board and Lead Center on environmental and specification issues. ACTION: Odean will provide a copy of the new environmental NPG to the Lead Center for distribution to and comments by the NS-CCCB. Operator Concerns and Input The operators and managers met for a portion of the second day and exchanged ideas and concerns. One item that was brought forward was that the NIB-CCB disks are not being distributed in a timely manner to the end users. It was requested that the CCB disks be sent directly to the operators or engineers that will be the end user. The board agreed with the operators that the sessions they have together are very useful and the networking between the operators has been successful in problem solving. The operators have been meeting about every two years as a group in conjunction with the NS-CCCB managers. It was decided that every attempt should be made for the operators to get together on an annual basis for a networking session. They only need to have this meeting along with the NS-CCCB every other year. It was felt the off year could best be held at KSC where BETA testing could be a major emphasis. ACTION: A list of end users to receive the NIBS subscription at each center should be sent to the Lead center for future mailings. Please E-mail the name of the NASA Center recipient to Freda Cash (freda.cash@ksc.nasa.gov). Other Topics There was a discussion at the previous NS-CCCB meeting that the NASA text stop using the date of the references and that text stating that the latest available reference at the time of award be the controlling document. This subject was discussed at the SI board meeting and it was stated that the FAR prohibits this action. The NASA board does not agree and is going to pursue this issue some more before giving in to that ruling. ACTION: Cheryl Gebhardt and Kenny Hudson are going to work together to build a case in favor of this boards desires and will present their case to the appropriate personnel at HQ. Another subject that was brought up was the fact that certain programs or attributes available on the CCB cannot be used through Windows ...they are DOS applications. ACTION: The Lead Center will work with the concerned centers to identify these items and will approach NIBS to see what if anything can be done to ensure that all attributes are available to a CCB subscriber. One last item that was discussed was the comparison of SPECSINTACT to other commercially available specification editing systems. It was decided that to maintain the integrity of our product an thorough and honest evaluation of the other systems must be done. ACTION: Cheryl Gebhardt, Pat Robinson, Tom Hinshaw and Kenny Hudson will do a comparison of other systems and report to this board on their findings. NEXT NASA CCCB MEETING The next meeting is tentatively planned for November 1997 at Langley, Va. The exact dates will be determined closer to the meeting time.
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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.
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