Alliance Secretary Robert Wible thanked Alliance partner, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), for hosting the task force meeting and for making a phone connection available for several individuals to call in to participate in today’s meeting.

Mr. Wible also noted that several task force members had sent regrets that they would be unable to attend. He added that those members not able to attend included representatives from state and local government associations. He had received input from a number of these individuals regarding the materials being reviewed during this meeting.

Attendance was taken and noted as follows:

Present:

Paul Mendelsohn, AIA
Paul Domich, NIST
David Harris, NIBS
Dana Bres, HUD
Ho Wing Sit, IAI, Accela
Robert Wible, NCSBCS

By phone:

Mark Topping, New York City
Tom Teague, Protesoft
Paul Watkins, MobileHwy and Chair of the NCSBCS Information Technology
          Industry Advisory Subcommittee

Robert Wible went over the objectives for the meeting as follows:

• Update members on Alliance activities since the last meeting (May 28, 2003);
• Review Alliance interoperability project work undertaken with funding from both NIST and HUD;
• Take action on several interoperability project work items.

Mr. Wible asked if there were any questions, additions or corrections to the minutes from the task force’s May 28, 2003, meeting held at the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS). There were none.

Attendees were updated on work done by the Alliance over the past nine months as follows:

1. With funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a project was launched to develop a draft interoperability statement and plan and conduct a national Summit (held in New York City, September 24, 2003). The national Summit brought together representatives from the building construction and regulatory communities with the information technology industry to take steps to speed the development of technologies and requirements needed to advance the creation of a state-of-the-art integrated and interoperable building regulatory system.
   
2. Following that Summit an expanded group of jurisdictions developed and submitted to the IT community the following documents designed to facilitate interoperability in the building regulatory process. (Copies of these documents were provided to Technology Task Force members along with the agenda for this meeting.)

1. Final Report on the September 24, 2003, Summit
2. High Priority Uses Cases – User Functionality Priorities
3. Alliance Report on Characteristics and Capabilities of Currently Available Commercial Software and Gaps in Current Approaches, Implementations and Technologies
4. Interoperability Background Study
5. Revised Interoperability Statement
6. Industry input incorporated in the above work items and input on future directions for the Alliance.

1. Develop a cost/benefit matrix for measuring the savings achieved by homebuilders and government from jurisdictions using information technology in their building regulatory processes.
2. Development of criteria for the issuance of matching grants to state and local governments for streamlining the building regulatory process using information technology.
3. The research into the feasibility of mandating the incorporation of an interoperability statement into the Alliance’s model procurement guidelines.

    5.   In response to a request made by the IT industry attending the September 24 Summit,
          NCSBCS formed an Information Technology Industry Advisory Subcommittee.

6. The Alliance’s Third National Forum on Building Smarter in the Digital Age was held in October 2003.
   
7. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) issued a letter endorsing the use by state and local governments of the Alliance’s model procurement guidelines (copy attached).

Each of the above Alliance activities were reviewed and discussed. Highlights of that review and discussion follows:

• Paul Mendelsohn and Robert Wible described the pending Alliance/AIA survey on state and local government use of online plan submittal and plan review hardware and software. (Survey to go out in early April.)

• Work on the HUD-funded project on cost benefits of IT used by jurisdictions, grant criteria, and feasibility of including an interoperability statement in the Alliance’s model procurement guidelines was initiated in early February. (Draft project materials are available from NCSBCS for task force member input.)

• Feedback received by NCSBCS from IT community to Alliance’s post-summit work products has been favorable. That feedback included recommendations that the Alliance move forward with industry in developing XML schema for several use cases and conduct a second summit sometime during the summer of 2004 to bring same parties together to move towards that objective.

Tom Teague, as NCSBCS subcontractor, described work that went into the completion of the detailed use case templates for ten high priority use case areas.

• Paul Watkins, as Chair of the IT Industry Advisory Subcommittee, reported on the formation of that body and their response to the work products produced by the Alliance as a result of the September 24 Summit. Mr. Watkins noted, in particular, the following subcommittee actions:

• Agreed to work in support of the Summit objectives and to bring about interoperability of the building regulatory process and that IT must be web-based.

• Reviewed the High Priority Use Cases and Use Case Templates and agreed, as a point of departure, to develop two work groups to develop XML schema for two of the use cases: addressing/location and online building permits.

• Will work on developing "proof of concept" demonstrations using jurisdictions and prepare the above in anticipation of a second Alliance summit for the IT, construction and building regulatory communities during the summer of 2004.

• Subcommittee is seeking more guidance from the Alliance regarding web services: What can be done to encourage more jurisdictions to overcome current fear that their building regulatory data should not be directly accessible?

• Subcommittee is committed to not work in a vacuum. Members want to identify and then collaborate with all others working on interoperability as it impacts the construction and building regulatory processes. (It was noted that the subcommittee would like to work with ESRI and IAI.)

• Subcommittee soon will have its own web pages within the NCSBCS website. This will allow point of contact and communication between industry and government, soliciting both parties’ reactions to interoperability. (Site should be up by April 7.)

• Mark Topping, New York City Department of Buildings, described the release of that city’s procurement RFP for permitting software and its incorporation in the RFP of feedback received at the September Summit.

In addition to the above discussions, the task force went through the Alliance post-summit work products listed on page 2 and the feedback NCSBCS had received from both the IT industry firms who attended the summit (during a conference call held March 19, 2004) and the firms who had not attended.

In this review, Tom Teague, Mark Topping and Paul Watkins offered further comments on the work products. Mr. Wible shared feedback he had received from industry to the documents and noted that, in general, there had been reluctance shown by the IT industry at this time to share their data requirements for software being used in the building regulatory process.

In regard to that request, both Tom Teague and Paul Watkins reported that, at this stage in the Alliance’s project, they saw no need for industry to share their data requirements. "We don’t need to know any underlying internal data structure. We only need to know what software data needs to be exported and imported into the software used in building regulatory process systems."

During an exchange of questions and answers, Paul Watkins described the range of software and hardware firms that had already joined the ITI Advisory Subcommittee and a group of firms that were considering joining. It was noted here that it was useful to the subcommittee to include in its membership representatives from state and local governments that had developed or were developing their own building regulatory software. Mr. Wible noted that the State of New Jersey had a staff member participating on the subcommittee and that several other states and localities were considering joining.

Paul Domich asked what process was being used by the subcommittee to identify other standards for interoperability. Mr. Watkins noted the subcommittee was open to input from everywhere on this and went on to describe his contacts with the US Postal Service and Universal Postal Union. He also noted that the subcommittee had determined their work product would conform to all W3C and XML standards.

Mr. Wible noted that NCSBCS was planning to work with NASCIO and, through a national news release, would solicit input from other interoperability projects for the subcommittee.

Mr. Topping was asked how many different addressing systems were there just within New York City. He responded that there were a number of them and that one of their efforts was to create a citywide standard for generating addresses.

It was recommended that perhaps a white paper should be developed on the issue of addressing to give clarity on legacy systems that don’t comply with the UPU standard being developed and provide guidance on how to both decompose an address down to its components and how to render an address.

The task force discussed the possible need for an electronic plans subcommittee that could build upon the feedback gained from the Alliance/AIA survey. It was noted this issue could be a good topic for the proposed second national summit.

Robert Wible reviewed the following action items before the task force and requested consensus towards either moving forward with each of the items or holding them.

The items and task force responses were as follows:

1. Send a letter to the software/hardware industry from the Alliance seeking industry’s further participation in developing a consensus with government and the construction industry on data requirements and modifications in the Alliance’s draft interoperability statement. Action: Approved
   
2. Support and work to accomplish the following Alliance activities:

1. Gain funding support and conduct a second summit in the summer of 2004.
2. Gain funding support and expand for that second summit the details on one or two high priority use cases and begin to generate XML schema – proof of concept approach.
3. Expand the "Interoperability Background Study" to go into greater depth on relevance of other interoperability efforts relevant to the building regulatory process.
4. It is feasible to incorporate the Alliance’s revised interoperability statement into the Alliance’s model procurement guidelines.

In carrying out the above action items, it was noted that NCSBCS would provide industry with further information on both the Alliance and on the Information Technology Industry Advisory Subcommittee. Feedback received by NCSBCS and the Alliance to the above letter to industry will be shared with the Technology Task Force and other Alliance members.

In follow-up discussion, New York City noted that there may be some generic information that can be gleaned from their current procurement effort to help in updating the Alliance’s model procurement guidelines and in assisting other states and localities through the procurement process.

Those participating in the meeting were invited to provide an update on work their organizations were doing in the information technology and building regulatory fields. The following are highlights of those presentations:

• David Harris described NIBS work with federal agencies to better manage their design and delivery and use of data in the life of a building and the work with David Conover and the International Code Council and IAI Codes Dominion project. In the latter project, Mr. Harris noted that ICC and IAI were planning to develop some focused areas within the ICC code as demonstration areas. Mr. Harris also described NIBS/IAI work on the National CAD Standard.

• Paul Mendelsohn described AIA’s work on regulatory streamlining and the workshop held for architects and building departments on the issue of electronic plan submittals.

There being no further business to come before the Technology Task Force, the meeting was adjourned. Mr. Wible thanked everyone for their participation. He noted the next meeting of the Technology Task Force was tentatively scheduled for late May. A notice regarding the exact time and venue would be sent out in April.

At 11:55 a.m. the meeting of the Alliance’s Technology Task Force was adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert Wible
Secretariat to the Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age