The Problem with Communication
“The single biggest problem in communication is
the
illusion that it has taken place.”
- George Bernard Shaw
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Score 10 for 10 with MasterFormat
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| Do you know which sections apply to your products? |
During the past year, members of the Chusid Associates team proposed ten revisions. We have just learned that all ten proposals received positive responses from the MasterFormat maintenance task team.
Most of the proposals were made on behalf of building product manufacturers introducing new systems or trying to expand acceptance of existing products.
The revisions to MasterFormat are:
00 31 19.23 - Existing Structural InformationThe revisions were proposed by Michael Chusid, RA FCSI CCS and Vivian Volz, AIA CSI CCS. The 100 percent acceptance of their recommendations testies to their understanding of MasterFormat and construction specifications.
New section number and title.
03 30 00 - Cast-in-Place Concrete
Explanatory language added indicating that section includes “pigmented mix.”
03 35 19 - Colored Concrete Finishing
Explanatory language added indicating that section includes “dry shake colorants and hardeners applied during concrete finishing operations.”
09 61 19 - Concrete Staining
New section number and title.
09 78 00 - Interior Wall Paneling
09 78 13 - Metal Interior Wall Paneling
New section numbers and titles.
12 93 23 - Trash and Litter Receptacles
New section number and title.
28 41 00 - Electronic Structural Monitoring Systems
New section number and title.
33 49 22 - Storm Drainage Water Detention Structures
33 49 24 - Storm Drainage Water Storage Structures
New section numbers and titles.
For more information on marketing with MasterFormat, see previous posts on this blog. Read more...
Good News for 2012
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Should you add chat software to your website?
Do prospects leave your website with unanswered questions?
Many times they will. Hopefully, they will be intrigued enough by what you offer to call or email, but there can be a substantial drop-off in interest if people have to leave your site in order to reach you. And another drop-off if they have to wait a day for your reply.
Website chat programs aim to bridge that gap, preventing interest drop-off by allowing prospects to contact you immediately, from your website, to get assistance.
We see this as an increasingly important opportunity:
- Once you have attracted a prospect to your website, it is a way to deepen the connection.
- Many individuals now use texting with the same ease, or more, than phone calls.
Here is a live chat I had with LiveChat:
Writing Captions
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| The Frank Gehry-designed bandshell in Chicago's Millennium Park provides an exciting visual anchor to the end of East Washington Street. Without this caption, however, you might not have recognized the view nor known what I felt about it. (©Michael Chusid 2011) |
Captions Sell the Article: The typical magazine reader flip through an issue to see what captures the eye. If a photo or illustration captures attention, the viewer is then likely to read the caption. If the caption conveys useful or intriguing information, the reader may decide to read the rest of article.
Captions Summarize Article: Use illustrations and captions to summarize the article. That way, the reader gets useful information -- and you get your point across -- even if the reader does not read the body of the article.
Tell a Story with Captions: A caption should do more than just identify the content of an image. It has the opportunity to tell a story. Even a short caption can explain who, what, when, where, how, and why.
Caption Stands Alone: To the extent practical, a caption should be able to stand alone so the meaning of the photo is understood even before someone reads the article. This means, for example, that abbreviations and jargon should avoided in the caption, or at least succinctly explained.
Search Engines Like Captions: When writing for the internet, captions help search engines find your illustrations.
Editors like Captions: Editors hold the key to getting your message out. So anything you can do to make the editor's job easier will help you get exposure. I found this to be the case when Carolyn Schierhorn, the former editor of Masonry Construction, expressed her appreciation for an article I contributed: “It was a pleasure to receive an article so well-organized and mechanically flawless that almost no editing was required. That you included detailed, beautifully written captions as well is nothing short of miraculous.”
Finally, remember to include copyright notices and other identifying information required for use of the photo or artwork. Read more...
Metrication Update
Two examples of metrication crossed my desk recently, demonstrating opposing approaches to implementing metric units in the building products industry.
1. One of my clients is converting its sales literature from inch-pound to metric (with inch-pound units also shown in parentheses).
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| #11 1-3/8" dia. |
The various approaches represent the different market conditions confronting each organization.
In the first instance, the US-based firm is aggressively moving into international markets and needs to speak the lingua franca used for most of the world's construction. The change will not harm domestic sales, since the company uses digital-fabrication to make bespoke parts without regard for the designer's system of measurement.
CRSI, on the other hand, focuses on regional and national promotion. As a commodity product, little quantities of rebar is exported. The industry began marking its product in nominal metric sizes when it looked like the Federal government was serious about enforcing a 1991 Presidential Executive Order mandating metrication. However, the Federal Highway Administration (FWA) retracted the requirement in 2008, and most building construction in the US remains firmly inch-pound. (The primary exceptions Government agencies such as the Department of Defense.)
Traditional rebar diameters are stated in 1/8 inch increments; #3 = 3/8 in. diameter, #12 = 12/8 in. = 1.5 in. These units just make sense when constructing a 1 ft. thick wall with 3/4 inch concrete coverage over rebar that must be spaced to allow passage of 1-1/2 in. dia. coarse aggregate. In CRSI's soft conversion, these correspond to #10 (9.525 mm) and #40 (38.1 mm) respectively. Soft conversion reduce the cost of producers, but frustrated everyone else. Builders using inch-pound had to convert sizes to traditional nomenclature to calculate positioning. And fractions of a millimeter confounded those used to using real metric sizes, where #30 bars have 30 mm dia.
LESSONS LEARNED
Many US industry sectors are now firmly metricated. (When was the last time you bought a fifth of whiskey?) Yet it is unlikely that there will be a comprehensive countrywide construction conversion anytime in the foreseeable future.
Until then, each building product manufacturer will have to "weigh and measure" whether and when to embrace metric based on their unique marketing "metrics."
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By the way:
"Metrication" is term for adopting metric measurements.
"Metrification" is term for using poetic meter.
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Not on Time. Not in Budget. But Who Cares!
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| Isaac Chusid. Date of Substantial Completion: 2011-DEC-12 |
Born to Aaron and Alex Chusid, and grandson of Michael Chusid.
Another fine job done by a Chusid associate.
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The Ultimate Roll-Up?
I was recently asked about the attractiveness of having a single company provide all elements of the building envelope, including roofing, foundation, exterior walls, cladding, windows, curtainwalls, entrances, storefronts, insulation, vapor barriers, and the rest. The question came from a business strategy firm, suggesting that some group of investors is seriously contemplating such a move.
At least one company is already well on its way to being able to offer complete building envelopes. Oldcastle is one of the company's that is well on its way toward offering a complete package,
with strong positions in masonry, concrete, glass and glazing systems,
curtainwalls, doors and skylights. Add a roofing manufacturing line, and
they have it.*
The past few decades has seen strong trends towards "roll-ups" -- bringing many small producers under one corporate ownership -- in attempts to gain economy of scale and improve competitiveness by dominating an industry and combining related products into package.
Proofread or Perish
Your 2nd grade teacher was right: proofreading your stuff is an absolute must. Othawise, your risk having you’re busness appear solppy an unresponsible, or worse, even ignorent.
Which stuff am I talking about? Every single thing you publish. Your product literature, your ads, your catalogs, your website, even your material safety data sheet (MSDS).
I was recently reading a web page about a coloring product. The manufacturer was boasting that the product “is available in a full pallet of pigments.” Which is good, I suppose, if you’re a volume user who buys pigments by the pallet.
But if you’re an artist who likes many color choices, you might prefer a full palette of pigments.
I thought to myself, "the code monkey who put together this website isn’t very literate." Then I pulled up the technical data sheet for the product, and found the same language there. It wasn’t that feckless web designer after all, it was the manufacturer!
Another technical data sheet I recently downloaded was simply incomplete. Two sections were blank except for notes in red, notes asking if this info should be a copied from the sheet for a related product. Nobody had checked the file that went online.
To be fair, the file was dated several years ago and nobody had ever said a word about it, so we might conclude it wasn’t getting read very much anyway. Maybe this slip-up hadn’t impacted their reputation heavily. But it easily could have.
I see typos and grammatical mistakes every day on manufacturer’s websites and in their product literature. It makes a bad impression on me, but it could have a more serious impact on architectural outreach. Specifiers depend on the accuracy of product information when they select products for a project. Do you really want to shake their confidence in your information?
Now that you’ve seen the light and are determined to proofread everything, a hint: it is very difficult for the writer of a piece to proofread it well. She knows what it should say, which makes it easy for her to miss what is actually printed. Somebody else should proof it. Ideally, the writer should read it aloud to somebody else who follows on a printed copy and proofs it.
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