Meeting Minutes

National Alliance’s Technology Task Force
March 26, 2002 – 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Rodney D. Clark, American Institute of Architects (AIA)
Rob Sterner, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
David Harris, National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS)
Jack Snell, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
James Hill NIST
Kent Reed, NIST
Susan Zevin, NIST
Robert Wible, NCSBCS
Carolyn Fitch, NCSBCS
Jaye English, Prepared Response, Inc.
Tom Ryznar, Prepared Response, Inc.
Brent Bomkamp, Prepared Response, Inc.
Dana Bres, U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
David Weems, U. S. General Services Administration

Bob Wible went over objectives of the meeting and brought the attendees up-to-date on project activities since the last meeting.

He asked if there were any corrections, additions, deletions, or comments on the minutes of the December 11 and 12 meeting in Atlanta. There were none and the minutes were accepted.

Meeting with OSTP:
Bob Wible provided background information on meetings National Alliance members have had with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to discuss the Alliance’s work progress and to get OSTP’s initial response to the project outline previously submitted to them.  Dr. Jack Snell, Director, NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory, then joined Mr. Wible in providing details of the February 26 meeting with OSTP. The Alliance and NIST are in the process of preparing responses to OSTP for further information on the project. The National Alliance’s submission is for possible major federal funding for grants to states and localities to streamline their building regulatory processes using the work products of the National Alliance and other I.T. A draft of that proposal will be reviewed later in the day and in detail by the Alliance’s Planning and Coordinating Task Force when they meet on March 28 at The Council for Excellence in Government.

Other Related Activities:
Dave Harris of NIBS briefed the group on pending changes in the organizational status of the International Alliance for Interoperability-North America (IAI-NA). Since it was formed in 1995, IAI-NA has worked with its counterparts in other countries to develop an object-oriented model, the application of which will allow the effective sharing and transfer of life-cycle building process-related data through automation -- "interoperability." That model, when complete, will allow us to actually accomplish the objectives of the National Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform. Without such a model, our Alliance will likely be able to accomplish much less of its overall objective.

The IAI board of directors has asked that IAI-NA become a NIBS' program. The two organizations are working together to effect the transition over the next few months. Under NIBS, IAI-NA is to be directed by the IAI-NA Board and managed by NIBS' vice president Earl Kennett with support from Sandy Shaw, also of the NIBS staff. At NIBS, IAI-NA will continue to pursue its objectives, hopefully at a much accelerated pace.

Dana Bres, HUD Affordable Housing Research & Technology Division, gave an overview of PATH programs as they relate to the National Alliance. A primary focus is to help communities determine what they need and how to use information technology as it relates to residential construction, i.e., make it easier to pull permits and get inspections done. They have developed a primer for state/local governments to help them decide where they want to go with I.T. This primer will be on the PATH website and published in hard copy within the next 30 days.

Bob Wible described the first work product of the Technology Task Force – an inventory of I.T. software used in the building regulatory process. This listing is available on the NCSBCS website and will be a valuable resource for jurisdictions as to what software is available and where it is being used. Future plans are to include information from jurisdictions using the software, such as initial cost, their funding mechanism, and experience with software performance. He mentioned ENR is tracking this project and runs articles periodically on updates. An article recently appeared on the software listing.

Bob Wible reviewed the handouts for the meeting and the work agenda for the rest of the day. Kent Reed, Leader of the NIST Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) Group, was introduced and provided an overview of the demonstration for task force members to see of their computer integrated construction applications.

From 10:50 a.m. to noon the task force participated in the demonstration of the work being done by the CIC. The demonstration was prepared by Kent Reed and Robert Lipman. The demonstration concluded with a visit to the National Alliance’s portion of the NCSBCS website to see the inventory of I.T. software Mr. Wible described earlier in the day.

Draft Database Outline:
Bob Wible opened the afternoon session by introducing the draft outline of proposed secure nationwide state-managed database of building designs and evacuation plans for critical structures, the major work item of this task force meeting. The origins of this work product of the Alliance was discussed and the content of the outline was reviewed (see Database Outline).

Representatives from Prepared Response, Inc. gave a demonstration of Rapid Responder, which provided task force members an opportunity to see an emergency preparedness software now on the market and in use by a number of jurisdictions.

After seeing this demo of an actual product, Mr. Wible opened a general discussion of the proposed secure database initiative.  Issues discussed were:

• Security has to be the highest priority.
• Finding a way to keep the database updated and maintained is crucial.
• Proprietary concerns – Imperative to provide proprietary or sensitive information to emergency response personnel.
• As-built drawings must be current.
• Performance objectives, both short-term and long-term, must be defined and established. Two of these objectives might be:  a)  foster interactive hazard/incident-specific analysis capability; b)  assure data is transportable/interoperable.
• Concerns of all stakeholders must be addressed.
• There must be training and retraining on the use of an emergency response database.

Based upon these discussions, the task force made revisions to the draft database outline. The revised outline will be presented to the Planning and Coordinating Task Force for their consideration and action at their meeting on Thursday.

National Technology Model Outline:
Sophie Zager, Fairfax County Building Official, had given NCSBCS a concept paper for discussion by the task force. It outlines a national technology model for plan submittal, review and processing. Mr. Wible asked the group to review to see if it were something that the group would want to work with. These are long-term performance objectives. You have to have interoperability first.

Dave Harris asked Rodney Clark from AIA if they had ever considered taking a survey of what architects wanted a CAD system to do. This could serve as a strawman for next piece of work.

The task force agreed to include Ms. Zager’s model outline in their future work (see Attachment A).

Electronic Building Process Demonstration Project:
An outline draft of a demonstration project put together by Rich Geissler, IAI, and NCSBCS staff, was introduced. Mr. Wible suggested that since the IAI-NA structure has now changed, this document should be put on hold until NIBS could review as a potential activity and to address again at the next meeting. It was suggested that if the task force considers demonstration projects as described in this paper, they must be well coordinated and be pieces of a bigger plan to be of value to a whole complete system.

Work Items for Planning and Coordinating Task Force:
Since the Planning and Coordinating Task Force will be holding their organizational meeting on Thursday, March 28, Bob Wible asked if the Technology Task Force had any additional work items that should be brought before them. Listed below are the items identified at the last meeting of the Technology Task Force.

• Advocating the products of Technology Task Force to jurisdictions.
• Code group involvement and ownership of rule set applicable to the building code.
• Architecture Association involvement in establishing guidelines and policy for use of IFCs.
• Provide proper funding and scheduling.
• Sponsor technology demonstration.

The Planning and Coordinating Task Force will do an in-depth review of the draft grants proposal to OSTP. Member organizations/agencies will be asked to write letters to OSTP indicating their support of the proposed work. NCSBCS will take any comments on the proposal to the meeting on Thursday.

Dave Harris commented that issuing grants to states must be a well-coordinated effort overseen by a national multidiscipline team to set the criteria in order to assure grant products can be used at national level.

GIS-based Software Program:
Dave Harris described HAZARDUS, a GIS-based software program used to predict earthquake potentials. It provides estimates of damage and serves as a good emergency response tool. Modules are being developed for flood and wind and a building-specific model that will show what the impact would be to a specific building in the event of an earthquake. A possibility for this project would be a module for acts of terrorism to show the performance of a building in the event of a terrorist attack. What is the likely result. This might serve as a demo project under the National Alliance. There have been demonstrations of this program in Portland, OR, and Boston, MA.

Next Steps:
The minutes will be sent out early next week. Comments on the OSTP draft grants proposal should be given to NCSBCS before Thursday. The task force will be kept updated on any response received from OSTP on the proposal.

Mr. Wible concluded this portion of the meeting by once again reviewing the progress the task force had made since its first meeting last fall in producing work products it identified within its one-year work goals. These goals are: