Yesterday I spent the day attending GlassBuild 2009 at the Georgia World Congress Center. GlassBuild is the largest trade assembly solely devoted to the glazing construction industry in the world.  Lots of amazing products, vendors and speakers.

The single biggest lesson learned from the show? Visual is IN! Greater than 80% of the vendors that were displaying “glazing” materials (glass, plexiglass and other things used to fill a hole in a building) were displaying decorative products front and center. Fritted glass, dimensional glass, ceramic printed glass...and the machines and equipment used to produce them...were upfront and stars of the show.

I attended one educational seminar about the future of decorative  glass in the industry where all of the three presenters all had three similar things to say. First, visual design in architecture is embracing the use of the glazing surfaces, second, the evolution of any art form is driven by the availability of the necessary technologies, and lastly, the technologies to enable that transition are now available, in place and are affordable.

At the end of the session, a number of questions were raised about how to handle decorative glass products from a specification standpoint. The most interesting lesson that I learned in that session was that a proper specification, as encouraged by the CSI format, is almost unheard of in this area of the glazing industry. As a matter of fact, the panel almost encouraged the audience to depart from an accurate, formatted specification and go towards a vague, amorphous spec in an effort to be able to control the end result more closely and therefore be more “artistic”.

This “thought process” is nothing short of lunacy. In reality, the artisan/architect, the manufacturing concern and the contractor/installer should be collaborating early on in the design process to enable the end result to be a synergistic yet structurally sound result that is delivered on time, under budget.

I know, “get in the real world” you say. But I do live in the real world. I may be an artist at heart, but I’m from a family of engineers. I fully understand the need for accurate construction documentation, and I’m beginning to see a shift away from building using a formatted project manual.

The Institute itself is squarely in the middle of this shift. We have an entire generation of well-trained, experienced professionals that are at the peak of their knowledge base.  Viewing them, from the outside, is the next generation of construction communicators. These professionals have new skills, new technologies and new points of view...but lack the wisdom and experience of “our” generation. Not to mention that I’ve personally witnessed these newcomers being treated like idiotic dolts by the older grayhairs in the room at CSI meetings.

Let me put forward a thought. The construction communication industry IS going to continue...with or without the old grayhairs...and with or without the Institute. Some have already said that “CSI is dead...it’s just too stubborn to have figured that out yet”. Others are advocating a name change for the Institute because the word “specifications” itself is becoming outdated. We have competitors that “get it”...they do a fairly good job of reaching out to the next generation of professionals. We don’t...at least not yet...but there is hope. Contained within our Institution is a knowledge and experience base of over 140,000 years of industry experience. This experience base has solved some of the biggest construction problems that have ever come along...and made it look easy.

It’s become my personal passion to look for ways to connect the experience we hold with the future professionals that can use it, for if we don’t open our minds and pour that information and experience into the upcoming generation, our Institute is destined to die with it’s aging membership.

More to come...stay tuned.