“All PDFs Created Equal” Effort Moving Ahead

December 19, 2013

9:45 PM

The “All PDFs Created Equal” campaign, an effort to create standardized PDFs so that they can be used instead of paper documents in construction projects, is moving ahead. (Read the previous article about this program by clicking here.)

“The campaign is now in the vetting stage,” says Sasha Reed, director of strategic alliances for Bluebeam Software, which is helping to facilitate the communication among the coalition’s general contractors who are leading the effort. “The GCs and designers are talking about the standards.”

The group of GCs behind the campaign first met in August, and has since developed a set of standards that designers are vetting. Reed notes that since all of the committee members are actively working on live projects, no set deadlines have been established for completion of their work. But the committee hopes to finish the vetting by the end of 2013, and have a revised standard for public review sometime in 2014.

Reed says that the designers now vetting the guidelines have put them into three categories:

1) Some of the suggestions are simple and easily agreed upon.

2) Some are more complex, and are still being discussed. For example, hatch fills are used by designers to visually designate certain materials, but they can cause problems in the PDFs, slowing down rendering speeds on PCs and mobile devices. The “All PDFs Created Equal” standard is designed to reflect a compromise that meets the needs of the designers and the GCs.

3) Some suggestions need to be addressed with software providers, not the designers, so those will be handled separately.

Reed says that the specifics about the suggestions are not being widely publicized at this time because the committee hopes to wait until they have been internally vetted before inviting the AEC community at large to provide feedback.

However, she notes that the general concept of a “paperless” worksite is moving ahead, and points to an example of a major project in Sweden that is being completed without paper documents. Read a case study about that project here: http://www.bluebeam.com/us/solutions/case-studies/skanska.asp

Comments (2)

Comment Feed

PDF or Paper... they both require Information Management Services!

A "paperless" worksite is an opportunity for the Reprographics industry, unless they sit back and allow some other entity to eat their lunch!

I agree with Mr. Rowe's comment (from the initial article dated October 10, 2013) that the IRgA, and it's members, establish it's own initiative for taking the lead on “Information Management” requirements for construction projects.

For over a century the reprographics industry has been the trusted vehicle for providing project communications throughout all project team members, throughout all phases of a project. One of the reasons this model worked is because the reprographer was a third party consultant that was not influenced by other contractual requirements. This allowed the reprographer the ability to support all project stakeholders without bias.

The contractor's “All PDFs Created Equal” initiative requires the designers coalition to embrace the contractor's requirements by champion change within their own industry (which is bound to have it's own set of challenges). The intentions may be good but the model perhaps is flawed. The solution is within the industry's “Information Management” model (as a whole) that is developed to support all project team member's, throughout all phases of a facility's life cycle, and not just the contractor's project management needs (which by the way probably still accommodates for both PDF's & paper prints on a jobsite).

The “Information Management” role is becoming a recognized solution for integrated electronic communications throughout a facility's life cycle. The reprographic industry is the natural service provider however a “blueprint” (sorry couldn't resist) is required for establishing industry standards and educational requirements... In my opinion this is an opportunity for the IRgA to help get these establish so that their membership can start billing for "Information Management" services rather than feel threatened by.

Mark Mathias - Mathias Project Information Management Services more than 10 years ago

standards

Some years ago, I tried shaking a few trees regarding a file standard. I think the crux of it will be the will of business to let a print and display "standard" to be a simple one without too many bells and whistles. Really, all we are looking for is proper display and print. We can all use native files too do the other jobs we want them to do. I need to dig up my old notes. Hmmmm......around here somewhere....
But I fully agree with Mark's comments. Let's look at this as opportunity.

Steven Ullmer more than 10 years ago