Journal Article - NBS Specification Software Enhancements

A copy of the article I have written for the up and coming NBS Journal is below.

The NBS Journal contains specially-written articles on specification, and is available twice a year. The current edition and all previous NBS Journals are available to all as PDFs from the NBS website.
http://www.thenbs.com/resources/journals/

NBS Building, Landscape and Engineering Services Software Improvements

The recent 2010-1 update of NBS Building, Landscape and Engineering Services includes a number of significant software enhancements, following over a year of development work. Head of NBS Software Development, Dr Stephen Hamil, presents these in this article.

1. Integration between the specification and CAD

At NBS, one of our main priorities is to develop our existing products in-line with our customers’ needs. To prioritise these enhancements to the software we have a number of customer focus groups and we also have a yearly customer satisfaction survey.

One of the most requested features has been to make it easier to annotate a CAD model from clauses in a project specification. The Annotator application is now installed with your NBS software as part of the NBS Tools suite of the software. This application allows you to quickly access the clause number and title from your project specifications when making annotations in your CAD model.

The Annotator application works through copy and paste; this means it will sit alongside any CAD software such as ArchiCAD, Microstation or AutoCAD. Subject to having a valid NBS licence, you can access NBS technical guidance using the Annotator. This allows you to browse the general guidance in work sections at early design stage to benefit from this comprehensive and trusted NBS information.

Figure 1- Using the Annotator from NBS

In addition to the Annotator, it is now possible from within the NBS software to export to keynote format. This allows you to work with project specification keynote references within AutoCAD, Revit or Microstation. Using this method of working, within CAD you can annotate an element type once and then quickly access this same annotation from all of the matching element types within your model.

This work is very much seen as a first step towards further CAD integration and we are currently researching and prototyping methods to take this integration further.

2. Publishing enhancements

A number of enhancements have been made to the publishing engine. The way the headers and footers are generated has had a complete overhaul. It is now possible to have mixed styles, a separator line and for the text to grow to fill the available space. This is demonstrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 – Improved headers and footers

Another key improvement to the published document is the ability to clearly indicate how clauses have been revised when re-issuing a specification or a work section. The screenshot below shows two clauses that have been revised, one has been removed and one has been added as new. This helps communicate any changes made to the specification clearly to the other members of the project team. Figure 3 below shows an extract from the re-issued specification.

Figure 3 – Revisions to the specification

3. A new search facility

It is now possible to search NBS libraries, project documents and office standards from within the software. Initially, this is useful when you are creating a specification and do not know exactly where to find the content in the NBS libraries. For example, how many customers know where to find fascias and soffits (G20) or underslab insulation (E20)? This search facility allows you to preview the clause and view the guidance prior to adding the work section to your specification. This search facility can be launched through clicking on the search button on the main toolbar.

In addition to searching for content in NBS you can also search for content in your project specifications and contract preliminaries. Once you have found the clause that you have searched for, double click on it to open for editing in the main software window.

Figure 4 demonstrates the user searching a project specification for a particular manufacturer. It can be seen that all of the product clauses in which this manufacturer is specified are returned and can be quickly previewed. 

Figure 4 – New search facility

 4. Financial summary

For smaller projects without a bill of quantities, it is now possible to publish a financial summary at the back of your specification for the contractors to price. Rather than the contractors providing a lump sum cost based on the specification and drawings, the project can be broken down to allow improved analysis of the tender costs and a clearer demonstration to the client of how money will be spent.

Like the Annotator application, the Cost Tracking application is installed as part of the NBS Tools suite of the software. This application also enables the creation of a spreadsheet to allow costs to be tracked through the construction phase of the project.

Figure 5 displays a tender analysis report generated within the Cost Tracking application. Contractor prices are arranged from lowest to highest against a pre-tender estimate. The variations in costs for each priceable item are clearly shown.

Figure 5 – Tender analysis within the Cost Tracking application

5. Further integration with CIS and Building Regulations

The final major enhancement to the NBS software is the facility to seamlessly link with The Construction Information Service and NBS Building Regulations. If you are a subscriber to these services, you can enter your user name and password once and then immediately click through from the NBS guidance to the relevant technical information.

Figure 6 - External links within the NBS Guidance

Figure 7 - Seamless links through to The Construction Information Service

Larger practices can securely enter a company username and password to these services in their NBS office settings file. All users of the NBS software in the office can then immediately click through and download documents such as British Standards, BRE publications and Building Regulations without the need to log on individually each time.

6. Further information

• Video showing these improvements at: http://www.thenbs.com/update
• Free NBS Tools download: http://www.thenbs.com/nbstools  

Displaying Tables within NBS

Most of the blog posts I have done so far have been about exciting new developments. However, I think it only fair that I address items that cause a level of dissatisfaction too.

The way NBS displays tables within a specification has been drawn to my attention a couple of times recently by users of NBS Building. This blog post explains (1) why tables within NBS do not always align correctly, (2) what we’re doing about it and (3) what workarounds are possible in the short term.

1. Why do tables do not always align correctly?

The technology we use for the work section editor in NBS Building is the Microsoft RichText control. This is the main editing component that is included in the Microsoft Development Environment which the NBS products are written.

Unfortunately, this control does not support tables other than allowing tabbed content. An example of this can be seen in Microsoft WordPad. This screenshot shows the alignment going wrong when the font size is changed.

This is the exact problem that users see within NBS Building.

2. What are NBS doing about tables?

Firstly, in the short term, most of the tables that are in the NBS work section libraries have been removed and re-authored into bullet point format. I appreciate a few still exist and cause frustrations (F22 for example), but I understand that they will be re-authored later this year.

Secondly, in the medium term, we are looking at technology that will allow robust tabulated content to be included in an NBS specification. We recognise that our users want to be able to include tables in their specification and this is definitely on our “to-do list”.

3. What current workarounds are available?

Until we re-write the editor component within NBS Building, I can suggest two workarounds.

3.1 Use bulleted output

Instead of the table above the same content could be displayed as follows:

Person 1:
- Title: Mr
- First name: Adam
- Second name: Andrews
Person 2:
- Title: Mrs
- First name: Betty
- Second name: Black

3.2 Copy and paste an image of a table into the specification

Step 1 - Write the table using a word processing package.

Step 2 - Take a screenshot of the table and crop the image using a photo package like IrfanView or Paintshop Pro.

Step 3 - Save this screenshot as a GIF to keep file size down and then copy and paste this into your specification.

Note that this will print out and retain the format of the table.

Unfortunately if the table needs editing at a later date, the process has to be repeated – this is the negative with this second work around.

Working with Revisions

One item of functionality in the current software that is slightly hidden away is the Revisions functionality. NBS Building users that make use off this often give us great feedback on how they they use it to go good effect.

The good news is that this functionality has now got better for the 2010 release of the software.

Screenshots are used below to demonstrate this.

Fig 1. The user applies revision stamps against a work section as it changes over time

Fig 2. The work section cover sheet clearly shows which clauses have been modified in the latest revision

 Fig 3. Now in the 2010 version of the software, the revision details are indicated in the work section itself

Note:

One further tweak has been made to the revisions functionality - you now no longer need to have modified a clause to apply a revision label. Many customers told us they were having to "fool the software" by adding a full stop or similar to apply a new revision stamp when nothing had changed. 

2010 Software now with Beta Testers

The NBS Beta Testers now have their preview version of the 2010 software. This will be with customers in March 2010. I'll blog more about each of the enhancements in detail over the coming months, but for now here are some screenshots as tasters...

1. Searching and previewing the clause content of specifications, office standards and NBS libraries:

2. The NBS Annotator, allowing clause references to be easily added to CAD models and schedules:

3. Printing and publishing improvements such as highlighting of revised clauses in the printed document:

4. The ability to add a tender summary and then work with these costs through the construction phase

5. Seamless links to The Construction Information Service - no need to enter username and password each time:

6. Interoperability so that a single project specification can be produced with prelims, building fabric, landscape and engineering work sections:

Update 13 April 2010 - This 2010 software is now being dispatched to all customers. Please note that the interopability work did not make it into this release. However all of the other features did. Interopability will be considered for a future release.