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1. Bowley, Marian, Innovations in Building Materials (London, 1960) studies the change from the early nineteenth century to the post-war period (1945-1956), from the economic point of view. (Go back) 2. Hellyer, Bertram, Under Eight Reigns, George I to George V (London, Dent and Hellyer, 1930) p. 47, records that Stevens Hellyer of the plumbing and sanitary ware firm, "had become known as the writer of the best of the earliest books on plumbing, The Plumber and Sanitary Houses [...]." and Wright Clarke, also of the firm, wrote books and contributed to the Plumbing and Heating Engineer in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies. (Go back) 3. Lambton, Lucinda, Temples of Convenience (London, 1978), p. 9. (Go back) 4. Keny, Alison, "Coade Stone in Georgian Architecture" in Architectural History, Vol. 28, 1985, p. 71-101. Over two hundred architects known to have used the Messrs Coade’s stone or scagliola, including such as Robert Adam, Sir Charles Barry, George Dance, Humphrey Repton, Sir Robert Smirke and Sir Jeffry Wyatville, are listed. (Go back) 5. The Builder was not, as sometimes stated, the first British architectural journal, but it was the most influential. It was preceded by the indefatigable J.C.London’s Architectural Magazine, which ran from 1835-1838. (Go back) 6. Summerson, John, The Unromantic Castle and Other Essays (London, 1990) ix. "Charting the Victorian Building World", p.156-174, takes The Builder as the starting point of his study. (Go back) 7. The Art-Journal Illustrated Catalogue of 1851 has been usefully reprinted (New York, 1995). (Go back) 8. Prefabrication of component parts of a building was not, of course, new. Building frameworks were often prepared off-site in earlier centuries. James Boswell in his Life of Johnson records (21 March 1772) that he told Johnson he thought of buying the Island of Saint Kilda and Johnson suggests spending a winter there - "we may carry with us a wooden house ready made, and requiring nothing but to be put up." (Go back) 9. Wrought iron was a new material and Paxton used it for members under tension. H.-R. Hitchcock makes the interesting comment (but meaningless comparison) that even by the middle of the twentieth century, most kinds of building contained a lower proportion of factory-made parts than had gone into the Crystal Palace a century earlier - quoted by E.W.Cooney in "Innovation in the Post War British Building Industry: a Historical View", Construction History, Vol. 1, 1984, p. 52-59. (Go back) 10. Hellyer, op. cit. (ref. 2), p. 117-118. (Go back) 11. Summerson, op. cit. (ref. 6), p. 110. (Go back) 12. Stratton, Michael, The Terracotta Revival: Building Innovation and the Image of the Industrial City in Britain and North America (London, 1993), p. 97-98, 101. (Go back) 13. Wright, Lawrence, Clean and Decent (London, 1960) exploits these catalogues and provides a wealth of illustrations. Atterbury, Paul and Irvine, Louise, The Doulton Story (Stoke-on-Trent, Royal Doulton Tableware Ltd., 1979) shows pages from a Doulton catalogue of 1898, p. 59. (Go back) 14. Wright, op. cit. (ref. 13), p. 200. (Go back) 15. Lambton, op. cit. (ref. 3, p. 10. (Go back) 16. Lambton, op. cit. (ref. 3), p. 12. (Go back) 17. Summerson, op. cit. (ref. 6), p. 170. (Go back) 18. Banham, Joanna et al., Victorian Interior Style (London, 1995), p. 21. (Go back) 19. Richards, J.M. in The Architects’ Journal. (Go back) 20. Read, Herbert, Art and Industry (London, second edition, 1944), p. 54. The quotation is from a paper by Gropius, reprinted in the Journal of the RIBA, 19 May, 1934. Read’s aim in the book was to "support and propagate the ideas" of the Bauhaus, p.55. (Go back) 21. Kinross, Robin, "Herbert Read’s Art and Industry: a History" in Journal of Design History, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1988, p. 35-50. The second edition of Art and Industry in 1944 was orthodox in design; the book went through five editions, the fifth and last in 1965. (Go back) 22. Stratton, op. cit. (ref. 12), p. 121-122. (Go back) 23. Summerson, op. cit. (ref. 6), p. 174, quoting from The Builder of 1872, p. 24. (Go back) 24. Goulden, Gontran, (Deputy Director, later Director, Building Centre) "The Use of Trade catalogues in Information Work" in The Architect and Building News, 14 October 1949, p. 379-380. Goulden does not name the firm, well-known for the Kodak building in Kingsway, London (1914); it also built houses for the metal window manufacturers Crittall. He admits that the earliest catalogue he had seen was dated 1888 "although such catalogues must have existed long before this." It may still be the case that "No one has yet written a history of the trade catalogues." Messrs Burnett, Tait and Lorne’s in-house Information Book was published by the Architectural Press in 1934, the year the Information Sheets began in The Architects’ Journal. Christian Barman, the journal’s editor, wrote in the Foreword to the book that "every day there a hundred new things an architect is compelled to know about [...]. Here is surely the most pressing of all problems set to the architect of the 1930s." (Go back) 25. The Office of Works which continued the old King’s Works going back to 1378, became a ministry in 1940. The Ministry was set up to harness the building industry to the war effort, to secure coordination of building work and to control the building materials industry. It also had responsibility for post-war planning, at first in general and after 1943 for technical building matters only. In 1962, it became the Ministry of Public Building and Works (MPBW), with the Research and Development Directorates added; in 1963 it merged with the Armed Services Works branches and then was absorbed into the new Department of the Environment (DoE), re-emerging in 1972 as the Property Services Agency (PSA). It ceased to exist by the end of 1993 when all its constituent parts had been sold off. (Go back) 26. Rogers, Charles, "The Handling of Trade Catalogues in the PSA Library Service" in the Construction Industry Information Group Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1974, p. 7-11. (Go back) 27. Richards, J.M., An Introduction to Modern Architecture (Penguin Books, 1940), p. 62. (Go back) 28. Tubbs, Ralph, The Englishman Builds (Penguin Books, 1945), p. 60. Tubbs designed the Dome of Discovery for the 1951 Festival of Britain. (Go back) 29. Richards, op. cit. (ref. 27), p. 62. (Go back) 30. British Standard 1311:1946, p. 3 "Preamble". (Go back) 31. Kohan, C.M., Works and Buildings History of the Second World War. Civil Series (London, 1952), p. 433-435. The term "fitness for purpose" is quoted from Standards Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, May 1944. Read preferred the word "function", a word disliked by LeCorbusier. (Go back) 32. Given as ‘4 in. high by 5 1/2 in. wide’, clearly reversed in error. (Go back) 33. The Architects’ Journal, 23 December 1948, p. 587. (Go back) 34. Goulden, op. cit. (ref. 24), p. 379-380. An "international standard information" (sic) is referred to as having been designed - presumably a reference to the Paris meeting of the International Town Planning and Housing Federation in 1947 - when the need to coordinate building information at an international level was first recognized. Exceptions to the general rule of non-compliance were: the Building Centre which required exhibitors to provide information sheets to BS size, and the Standard Catalogue Company, publisher of Architects’ Standard Catalogue. (Go back) 35. Brunton, John, letter in The Architects’ Journal, 7 June 1956, p.630. (Go back) 36. Levett, Vivian, letter in The Architects’ Journal, 12 July 1956, p.43. Possibly the first time on public record that the A4 size was advocated for building literature. The journal referred back to Levett’s letter in a comment in its issue of 24 January 1957 that "BSI made a mistake" in 1955 in not opting for ‘A’ sizes. (Go back) 37. Notably Frank Yerbury, Director and Founder of the Building Centre, in a letter to The Architects’ Journal, 24 January, 1957, p. 134. (Go back) 38. Denison, P.A., letter in The Architects’ Journal, 13 December 1956. (Go back) 39. Denison, P.A., letter in The Architects’ Journal, 4 April, 1957, p. 489. (Go back) 40. Denison, P.A., letter in The Architects’ Journal, 4 April, 1957, p. 495-6. (Go back) 41. Stoneham, N.C., letter in The Architects’ Journal, 23 February 1950, p. 238. (Go back) 42. Stoneham, N.C., The Architect and Building News, 17 February 1955, p. 197. (Go back) 43. Phebey, Arthur, letter in The Architects’ Journal, 24 January 1957, p. 134; Michael Ventris (1922-1956), decipherer of the Minoan linear BB script, was an architect and first holder of The Architects’ Journal Research fellowship entitled ‘information for the Architect’ in 1956. (Go back) 44. Giertz, L.M., van Ettinger, J., and De Vries, K.L. Some Fundamental and Practical Aspects of Transmission of Knowledge, March 1959, p. 14 and 17. (Go back) 45. Allen, Bill, letter in The Architects’ Journal, 16 August 1989, p. 19, rejecting the suggestion that "the RIBA was only putting an official stamp on what had begun as an AJ campaign." Bill Allen was a former researcher at the Building Research Station, ex-Principal of the Architectural Association, a leading member of the RIBA Council and "the man who quickly straightens out the profession’s design faults." (Go back) 46. Building Research Establishment Annual report, 1960, p. 72-3. (Go back) 47. BSI News, March 1960. (Go back) 48. BSI News, September 1960. (Go back) 49. Building Research Establishment Annual report, 1960. (Go back) 50. BSI News, September 1960. (Go back) 51. Computing, 1 October 1987, letter from the Secretary-General, Institute of Data Processing Management. (Go back) 52. Shorrock, Brian, "Designing Standards on Paper", in Computing, 27 August 1987, p. 14. The longer the line of printed data, the more characters per second could be printed. Print-outs of 16" wide appeared. (Go back) 53. The Times, 10 November 1961. (Go back) 54. Manguel, Alberto, A History of Reading, (London, 1996), p. 127, quoting François I Lettres de François Ier au Pape, (Paris, 1527). (Go back) 55. The Architects’ Journal, 23 December 1948, p. 587. (Go back) 56. The SfB filing system was developed in Sweden in 1946-1950 to bring building product literature, specifications and Bills of Quantities into a single system. See Agard Evans, B., and Nicklin, E., Building Classification Practices (CIB Report No. 6) (Rotterdam, CIB, 1966). SfB was introduced into Britain in 1959 and promoted through The Architects’ Journal by the second AJ Research fellow - "information for the Architect" - Dargan Bullivant. The fifty-years older UDC (Universal Decimal Classification) system’s numbers were hitched onto the SfB numbers where extension was needed. The RIBA published the SfB/UDC Building Filing Manual in 1961, recommended in the Guide. The revised version of 1968 was called CI/SfB in Britain. (Go back) 57. Kohan, op. cit., (ref. 31), p. 434. (Go back) 58. Bird, Eric (Technical Research and Education Officer, the Building Centre) "Trade Literature - an Augean Stable". in The Builder, 24 November 1961, p. 992. (Go back) 59. Gontran Goulden (1949) writes that he has yet to find two offices which employ the same filing system. Architects "seem to be allergic to filing systems." He also said that "surprisingly, few firms have reprinted their catalogues since the war, high printing charges and paper shortage have compelled them to rely on sectional lists, often without illustrations." (Go back) 60. Agostini, M.G.W. (Director, Blis Ltd.), "SfB and All that Follows", in The CIIG Bulletin, Vol.2, No.1, January 1972, p. 11-13. (Go back) 61. Bullivant, Dargan, "The Office Reference Library" in The Architects’ Journal, 29 August, and 5, 12, 17 September and 24 October 1962. (Go back) 62. Bullivant, Dargan, "The SfB System and the Information Problems of the Building Industry" in ASLib Proceedings, Vol. 15, No. 1, January 1963, p. 9-17. On page 17, there is a photograph of a typical design office library. (Go back) 63. Beck, Gladys, and Green, Malcolm, "A History of CIIG" in The CIIG Bulletin, Vol. 1, No.1, October 1970, p.2-5. The term ‘Construction Industry’ was taking over from ‘Building Industry’ generally when the engineering aspects were included. Note that Read in Art and Industry, p. 126, writes "the word ‘Construction’ began to be used during the nineteenth century for the activity of the civil engineer. The engineers who built the Crystal Palace, the Eiffel Tower and the Forth Bridge could not, it was felt, be dignified with the name of architects." (Go back) 64. The estimates are from W.S.Atkins and Partners, Barbour Index, Blis, Bristol Building Centre, Dargan Bullivant and Rogers. The figure for metal window frame manufacturers comes from Hutton, G.H., "Product Analysis by Coordinate Index" in ASLib Proceedings, Vol. 20, No. 3, March 1968, p. 171-180. (Go back) 65. Bullivant, Dargan, "Can we Survive the Information Explosion?" in RIBA Journal, Vol. 75, No. 12, December 1968, p. 553-558. Richard Saul Wurman, an architect, in his Information Anxiety (USA, 1989, London, 1991) says "So the great information age is really an explosion of non-information; it is an explosion of data" which must be distinguished from information. (Go back) 66. The Architects’ Journal, 29 June 1961, p. 936. The ‘mechanistic’ architecture of the Daily Mirror Building in London is set against the ‘expressionistic’ architecture of the Chapel at Llandaff in Wales. (Go back) 67. Produced by the GLC’s Department of Architecture and Civil Design, Materials Information Group, originally for internal circulation only. Ceased publication in 1982. (Go back) 68. Bullivant, Dargan.(ref. 65), p. 554, referring to the Agrément Board Paper No. 1 The Testing and Appraisal of New Building Products (The Board, June 1967). Testing of building materials and structural units had been carried out by various bodies since the middle of the nineteenth century. Summerson, (ref. 6), p. 173-4, describes Kirkcaldy’s Testing Works in London, a private business using "an impressive variety of machines for testing building materials" in the 1860s and 1870s. "Engineers and architects relied extensively on his reports." BRE (founded in 1923) and the National Physical Laboratory also tested products, and BS 1311:1946 and 1955 and the Building Centre’s Guide 1961 and 1965 all recommended supplying test data. (Go back) 69. Hill, R.S.D. "Quest for Quality in Buildings" in BSI News, August 1985, p. 11. (Go back) 70. The CIB Master List was published in four editions, the first in 1964 (CIB Report No. 3), the second in 1972 (now CIB Report 18) as CIB Master Lists for Structuring Documents Relating to Buildings, Building Elements, Components, Materials and Services, the third in 1983 as CIB Master List of Headings for the Arrangement and Presentation of Information in Technical Documents for Design and Construction, and the most recent in 1993 with title unchanged. The development of the Master List is chronicled in the latest edition (p. 20-23), which shows how much this key information tool owes to Ingvar Karlèn (his seminal paper on quality descriptions for building products published in Sweden in 1954 and his paper to the CIB congress in 1962 in Cambridge on "Coordination in Presentation of Information"), and Henry Eldridge who drafted much of the 1972 edition (see his paper "The 1972 Master Lists: their Use in the Preparation of Technical Literature" in Building, Vol. 224, No. 6782, 25 May 1973, p. 111-112, 114; also as BRE Current Paper 19/73). The 1983 and 1993 editions were prepared by George Atkinson, ex-BRE. (Go back) 71. Building Centre, Building Products Data Sheets. Notes for Guidance, January 1968. (Go back) 72. The National Building Agency was set up by the government, through MPBW, in 1964, to coordinate experience and ideas in construction. The commodity file publication, originally a guide to metric products for public bodies, was later associated with the Builder Ltd. The publication ceased in 1981 before the NBA itself was closed down in February 1982. (Go back) 73. For example, a pilot study by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations commissioned by the National Joint Consultative Council for Architects, Quantity Surveyors and Builders: Higgin, G., and Jessop, N. Communications in the Building Industry (London, Tavistock, 1963). (Go back) 74. Bishop, D., and Alsop, K. A Study of Coding and Data Co-ordination for the Construction Industry (London, HMSO, 1969), Building Research Station and Ministry of Public Building and Works. (Go back) 75. Honey, C.R. "Information Flow in Architectural Design" in The Architects’ Journal, 21 May 1969, p. 1389-1396. A technical study which explains some of the concepts underlying the BRE/MPBW report. The CIB conference "Information Flow in the Building Process - Classification and Coding for Computer Use" held in Oslo in June 1968 provided a platform for many of the ideas developed in the report, as did the later CIB Symposium on Information Flow held in Rotterdam in September 1970. (Go back) 76. The Working Party on Data Co-ordination was set up by the National Consultative Council of the Ministry of Public Building and Works in 1968, and first met in March 1969. The final report An Information System for the Construction Industry was published in October 1971 (London, HMSO). (Go back) 77. Construction Industry Thesaurus, Development Edition, compiled by M.J.Roberts and C.J.Eve, published by the Department of the Environment, February 1972. The project was started in January 1969 at the Brixton School of Building and the NW Polytechnic School of Librarianship in London, sponsored by the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA). It later became part of the Data Co-ordination work, with additional funding. (Go back) 78. The report, November 1969, was published in a condensed form as the MPBW’s R. and D. Paper A Commodity Identification Code for the Construction Industry, in 1970. (Go back) 79. Do-It-Yourself, in the modern sense, is also of interest because it seems to have begun in the seventeen thirties when ready-mixed paints became available replacing the grinding, mixing and compounding of colors by the painter. Some noblemen, gentlemen and their servants began to wield the paint brush themselves. See Charles Saumarez Smith Eighteenth Century Decoration (London, 1993), p. 128. (Go back) 80. The full report on commodity information supply and demand and the subsequent feasibility study, both by W.S.Atkins and Partners, were never published. Both reports are summarized in the Final Report of the Working Party on Data Co-ordination. The first report was the subject of MPBW Press Notice 148/70 of 26 May 1970. The validation of the figures in these reports is impossible from the data given and is now academic. (Go back) 81. The complaint about price information was long standing. Prices, then reasonably stable, were printed in catalogues until after the second World War, when it became usual to link each item by a number to a separate price list. Both versions of BS 1311 recommended including the price in the contents of the catalogues, clearly to little avail (ref. 24). In the nineteenth century, the new railways and canals meant that heavy natural materials could be obtained from far afield. The increasing demand for stone in a highly competitive market made the price list (per cubic foot delivered to the station or moorings) as essential as any technical description. See Kenneth Hudson The Fashionable Stone (Bath, 1971), which includes the list "Prices of Bath Stone Delivered" of Randell and Saunders of 1856. The first prize in the 1972 Building Centre trade literature competition was awarded to a single sheet price list. (Go back) 82. P.A.Denison of Cape Universal Building Products Ltd., reported in An Information System for the Construction Industry, Report of a Conference, London, 8 March 1972, edited by Charles Rogers, Special Issue of The CIIG Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 3, July 1972, p. 20. See also ref. 38. (Go back) 83. The Report of a study by the National Building Agency - Information Systems for the Construction Industry - for the Standing Committee on Computing and Data Co-ordination, published by the Department of the Environment in March 1979, reviews progress made on the proposals. From internal evidence, the information in the NBA report dates from around 1976. (Go back) 84. Bishop, Donald, "Information Flow in the Construction Industry: a Study and the Development of its Recommendations" in ASLib Proceedings, Vol. 24, No. 2, February 1972, p. 79-95. The study, on p. 3, sets out the criteria for "any scheme claiming to be comprehensive." (Go back) 85. The Architects’ Journal, 9 December 1987, p. 12. (Go back) 86. David Azzaro, technical advisor to CCPI, introduced the system in advance in "Co-ordinated Project Information for Building Works" in RIBA Journal, June 1987, Supplement, p. 5-8 (also a version "Talking a Common Language" in Building Services, June 1987, p. 39-40). (Go back) 87. Common Arrangement for Libraries, 3 May 1989, 5 + 12 pages. (Go back) 88. O’Brien, Annette, Common Arrangement for Libraries: Practical Experience So Far. Unpublished paper, May 1989. An index to CAWS was also produced, in May 1989, by Annette O’Brien and Jackie Hargrave. (Go back) 89. Day, Alan, and Longford, Victoria, The Implementation of Co-ordinated Project Information in the UK Building Industry, School of Architecture and Building Engineering, University of Bath, 22 February 1989, 30 pages. A study funded by The Building Centre Trust under the auspices of the Building IT 2000 Committee. Includes a CPI Calendar tracing development from the late 1950s up to late 1980. (Go back) 90. Dargan Bullivant Associates. (Go back) 91. It was aware of BS 1311 "first issued in 1955 and amended in 1958" but unaware of the 1946 predecessor. (Go back) 92. By P.A.Management Consultants Ltd. (Go back) 93. The BMP then had 6 000 members. (Go back) 94. Dargan Bullivant, listed as "Consultant to the Department of the Environment’s Working Party on Data Co-ordination", also called at the symposium the "Father" of the Standard by the Chairman and "the éminence grise of the whole thing" by Gontran Goulden. (Go back) 95. Reports of the Symposium "Technical Information - the New British Standard" held at the Royal Society, London, SW1, on Tuesday 30th March, 1973, (London, BMP and the Building Centre Trust, n.d.), 30 pages, gives the proceedings and discussions in full. In the event, the Secretary of State was ill and his opening address was given by his Parliamentary Under-Secretary. An attendance list was separately issued. There is a summary of the symposium in Building, 23 March 1973, p. 62. (Go back) 96. Graham Till (Group Advertising Manager, Ruberoid Ltd.) made the claim three times in his paper. (Go back) 97. Gordon Steele (Education Secretary, the Building Centre Trust), a member of the BSI Drafting Committee. (Go back) 98. Gontran Goulden (Director-General of the Building Centre) so described in Building, 23 March 1973, p. 62. Goulden recalled that it was twenty-five years before, in February 1948, that he had attended his first international meeting on the subject in Brussels, when Jan van Ettinger and L.M. Giertz were present. (Go back) 99. Graham Till. (Go back) 100. Gordon Steele. (Go back) 101. Brian Roden (BSI Chief Technical Officer, Technical Information Department) in his short paper Future National and International Work. (Go back) 102. Karl Erikstad (Director, Norwegian Building Centre), project leader, Henry Karlsson (Swedish Building Centre) and Dargan Bullivant. Mr. Erikstad had said at the symposium in the discussion period that the Scandinavian countries were not sure that a standard was the right way to achieve higher quality in technical information - "I am not sure if the right way is to seek to obtain international standardization [...]. We are not sure if the right way is to work to the ISO." (Go back) 103. Paragraph 4.14 of BS 4940:1973 states "All documents of more than 32 pages should have an index or indexes [...]." The CIB Report has no such recommendation. (Go back) 104. The IBCC was established under the Chairmanship of L.M.Giertz and it produced the Abridged Building Classification for Architects, Builders and Civil Engineers (ABC), based on the Schedule of UDC Numbers for Use in Building which had been developed in Britain by the Ministry of Works Library. The international ABC was published in English in 1955 for CIB by Bouwcentrum, Rotterdam and parallel editions were published in twelve other languages. (Go back) 105. Edgill, Brian, "Progress in the Data Co-ordination Field" in CIIG Review, No. 1, Winter 1976-77, p. 4-7. (Go back) 106. It repeats the error that "the first standard relating to trade literature was BS 1311, published in 1955." (Go back) 107. Goulden, Gontran, "Continuing Struggle" in Building, 6 April 1979, p. 78. For Goulden, it was indeed a continuing struggle. He had been a member of the committees responsible for the preparation and revision of BS 1311 and the chairman of BS 4940 Drafting Committee. He joined the Building Centre in 1947, became its Director in 1962, then Director-General from 1968-1974. From 1974, he was Deputy Chairman of the Building Centre Group. He died in April 1986. (Go back) 108. DoE estimates in Better Trade Literature, p. 5. (Go back) 109. Reported by Dargan Bullivant in the Minutes of the third meeting of the BSI Sub-committee DOS/6/13 - Building Technical Information, held on 16 January 1985. (Go back) 110. At that time the PSA was responsible for about £2 thousand million of construction work every year, including new work and extensions, repairs and maintenance. It did not generally buy building products but provided specifications of products for the contractors to buy. (Go back) 111. Chaplin, M.F. "Quality and Quantity of Information" in ASLib Proceedings, Vol. 32, No. 2, February 1980, p. 62-7. Chaplin was an assistant director in PSA and a participant in CIB W74. (Go back) 112. Mackinder, Margaret, The Selection and Specification of Building Materials and Components: a Study in Current Practice and Educational Provision, (Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, Research Paper 17, Edition 2, May 1980). Financial support was also given by the Brick Development Association, the Timber Research and Development Association, the Interbuild Fund, the National Building Agency and the Solid Fuel Advisory Agency. The Steering Committee of ten people also included representatives of the Cement and Concrete Association, and the BMP. (Go back) 113. More detailed information about office libraries and the handling of trade and technical literature within the office is given in IAAS Research Paper 1 Architects and Information by J. Goodey and K. Matthew (IAAS, 1971). This paper reports that 90% of unsolicited literature was thrown away by architects. This work was supported by BRE. (Go back) 114. Percy Thomas Partnership with John Ritter, Building Design Information and Aids: a Report for the Building Research Establishment, February 1981, Vol. 1, 50 pages, Vol. 2, 30 pages (unpublished). (Go back) 115. Mackinder, Margaret, and Marvin, Heather, Design Decision Making in Architectural Practice, (Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, Research Paper 19, April 1982); also summarized in BRE Information Paper 11/82, July 1982. There is, curiously, no mention of the Percy Thomas Partnership report. (Go back) 116. Marvin, Heather, Information and Experience in Architectural Design, (Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, Research Paper 23, June 1985). (Go back) 117. The quotation is from General Information: Towards the Better Use of Existing Construction Industry Information Resources, Final Report of the General Information Group to the National Consultative Council of the Building and Civil Engineering Industries, 1979, p. 3. The General Information Group was a rump of the Data Co-ordination studies. Figures such as that quoted here and elsewhere should be treated with caution because of the number of variables and the problems of definition, especially when used to support a case. (Go back) 118. Some manufacturers’ literature was found to lack specific items of information; one architect found a piece of technical literature "incomprehensible" and called in the manufacturer’s representative to explain its contents verbally. Cf. Gordon Steele’s story, told at the Symposium on BS 4940:1973 of why a manufacturer deliberately left something out of his catalogue, (refs. 95, 97 and 15). (Go back) 119. The two BRE Information Papers, both by Heather Marvin, usefully summarize the findings of IAAS Research papers 19 and 23 (refs. 115 and 116): IP13/85 Using Experience and Publication in Building Design, (BRE, June 1985) is addressed to practicing building designers, specifiers and educationalists, and IP14/85 Meeting Building Designers’ Needs for Trade Information, (BRE, June 1985) is for manufacturers of building materials and products, and for trade associations. (Go back) 120. The "gatekeeper" idea seems to be intended. (Go back) 121. In the 1980s, PSA librarians were, whenever possible, assigned to multidisciplinary design teams for (mostly) large and specialized projects. The example of hospital consultancy teams was being followed. (Go back) 122. The first time BS 4940:1973 was cited in the IAAS reports. The AJ Information Guide 1985, The Architects’ Journal Supplements 2 and 9 (January 1985), also recommended as the critical selection of the best trade literature, gave a useful indication of what makes good quality in trade and technical information. (Go back) 123. Eldridge, H.J. Common Defects in Buildings, (HMSO, for the PSA, 1976). There were later editions. There were other such books, for example Common Building Defects, (NBA, 1979) and publications from The Architectural Press, Construction Press and The Open University. (Go back) 124. Strategy for Construction R. and D., prepared for publication by the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) on behalf of the Building and Civil Engineering EDCs (NEDO, 1985). NEDO was the national forum for economic consultation between government, management and the trade unions. (Go back) 125. In 1968, the collapse, after a gas explosion, killing five people, of part of a 22-story block of flats at Ronan Point in East London Dockland, started controversy about system building, workmanship and safety standards, and gave rise to the literature of failures and feedback. The NEDO report says that among others "some of the many defects in system building are all failures which occurred within the scope of the then current codes, standards and regulations." The causes of the Ronan Point disaster were reassessed in 1981. (Go back) 126. The perpetrators of this journalism are, sadly, not named - probably not The Financial Times which carried a calm and succinct 10-inch column news item about the NEDO report on the day it was published, 9 September 1985, by Joan Gray, Construction Correspondent. (Go back) 127. Bonshor, R.B., and Harrison, H.W. Quality in Traditional Housing, Vol. 1: an Investigation into Faults and their Avoidance, BRE Report (HMSO, 1982). (Go back) 128. With two unavoidable statistical exceptions, the NEDO report does not provide literature references to other than NEDO publications. The studies evoked must be the work of Bonshor and Harrison (ref. 127). The IAAS report, No. 19 (ref. 115) is not acknowledged as the source of some statements made. (Go back) 129. Building Defects: Report on the Occurrence of Defects with Recommendations for Avoidance and Improving Performance, researched, written, designed and produced by Denis Mills Associates, 1988. The survey was based on a sophisticated statistical analysis of the replies to a list of sixty questions, divided into three sets, one for architects, one for manufacturers and one for contractors. A total of 6 000 questionnaires were sent out and 624 were returned (10.4%). Separate reports were issued for the three groups. Only the Manufacturers’ Report and Survey Analysis was to hand for this paper. The architect Owen Luder devoted the whole of his page in Building, 17 June 1988, p. 28, to the Survey, writing "these reports are compulsory reading for all involved in the design and construction of buildings." AJ Focus, April 1988, treated the Survey in its editorial. (Go back) 130. For Quantity Surveyors, as well as architects. In another survey, Quantity Surveyors were asked about the kinds of information they needed in their work. Three types were frequently needed: cost and price (unsurprisingly); manufacturers’ literature; and contract information. Shoolbred, M., and Miller, Peter, "Information in the Construction Industry: Quantity Surveyors and Information Technology", Journal of Librarianship, 20(1), January 1988, p. 16-35. (Go back) 131. Construction Industry Law Letter, December 1985, p. 234. (Go back) 132. The Architects’ Journal produced a timely legal report on the Act in its issue of 2 March 1988, p. 65-6; also a critical editorial. (Go back) 133. Chappell, David, "The Product Manufacturer and his Liability at Law" in Building Defects, ref. 130, p. 123-6, which included case law. (Go back) 134. Listing these again would be too tedious. (Go back) 135. What were called Interpretative Documents which amplified the scope of the essential requirements were issued from Brussels in July 1993 in a publication (III/4164/93) of about 220 pages. (According to the Building Defects report, ref. 129, the Latent Damage Act 1986 had discouraged architects from specifying products with a life expectancy less than 15 years). (Go back) 136. Kirk, Anthony, "EC Requirements for Technical Literature" in Building, 3 February 1989, p. 62. In fact, non-compliance with the new law meant that such products could not be sold legally and could result in imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding £2 000 or both. Building published the useful periodical Euronews Construction, Construction Monitor (from April 1994) for the DoE. After December 1995, it ceased to be a separate free publication. A detailed analysis of EC law at the time is in Lloyd-Schut, W., and Brown, T.K., "Recent Developments in EC Construction Law", Building Research and Information, Vol. 21, No. 2, March/April 1993, p. 99-102. (Go back) 137. This meeting was chaired by Dr. Evan Dunstan, BSI’s Director of Standards, because the former Chairman, Gontran Goulden, had resigned some years previously. Subsequently Ken Hale, Director Technical and European Affairs, BMP, was appointed Chairman from the second meeting onwards. (Go back) 138. Gontran Goulden is quoted from ref. 106 and Graham Till from ref. 95. Ken Hale, in private conversation, said he was led to believe that the Sub-committee would have participating manufacturing members. (Go back) 139. Dargan Bullivant, with the graphics sub-contracted to Denis Mills, who represented the Association of Building Component Manufacturers (ABCM). (Go back) 140. Gontran Goulden in his review of Better Trade Literature, (ref. 107), says that the explanatory references to the Master List and other documents "very slightly [give the impression that] like the Marx Brothers at the races, you can’t get along without the code book, the master code book and the guide to the form." (Go back) 141. Targeting information can be delusory. The old Ministry of Works Advisory Leaflets were written specifically to help the practical builder but they were much, if not more, appreciated by architects. In the early 1970s, the prominent architect Owen Luder wrote "any manufacturer who directs his main marketing emphasis to architects may find he is missing the mark. The architect is to be concerned with spelling out the performance and requirements of what has to go into a building. The builder will be left to make the final selection and take the responsibility for that selection." See also ref. 144. (Go back) 142. The team produced for the Sub-committee a typescript illustrated booklet as a record of the presentation - Suggestions on the Form of the Revised BS 4940, unpublished. (Go back) 143. Gordon, Malcolm, "Technical Literature - or Just a Bundle of Rubbish" in What’s New in Building, May 1985. (Go back) 144. Mills, Denis, Associates, "The Presentation of Technical Literature" in What’s New in Building, [October] 1986. 28 pages. (Go back) 145. Kirk, Anthony, "Remember the Collectors" in Building, 24 May 1985. Anthony Kirk, architect, was technical consultant to the Building Centre, London. See also ref. 136. (Go back) 146. "Briefing Stage" is not defined but presumably is a stage in the production of trade literature. It is hard to envisage this happening. (Go back) 147. Atkinson, George, letters in Building, 16 August 1985, p. 5 and 25 October 1985, p. 5. Librarians were careful to datestamp trade literature on receipt. (Go back) 148. CIIG Newsletter, June-July 1986. The research was carried out by Ron Brewer of BRE’s Design and Communication Division and a member of the BSI Sub-committee revising BS 4940. (Go back) 149. Snow, Christine, and Brewer, Ron, "How Building Designers React to the Technical Publications of the Building Research Establishment and Other Organizations", Journal of Information Science, 14 (1988), p. 181-7. The survey was carried out by Mandix, Design and Information Consultancy Services. Christine Snow of Mandix had been active in the field of architects’ information requirements since the early 1970s; see her paper "Architects’ Wants and Needs in Information, Demonstrated through a University-Based Information Service", ASLib Proceedings, 27 (3), March 1975, p. 112-123. (Go back) 150. Building Centre Trust, BS 4940: the Provision of Technical Information, Final report, June 1987, unpublished. (Go back) 151. Management Summary of the research by Judith Deft, Building Centre Trust, December 1986, unpublished. (Go back) 152. Dargan Bullivant, the Consultant, left in October 1988 and was replaced by Denis Mills in March 1989. A new Consultant, Sylvester Bone, was appointed in November 1992. The long-serving Secretary left the Sub-committee and was replaced in July 1990. A new Secretary joined the Sub-committee in October 1992. The Chairman, Ken Hale, stayed the course. (Go back) 153. Drafts for comment, regarded by the Sub-committee as unsatisfactory, were sent out in December 1991 in an attempt to speed things up. These received a circa 1500-word review in CIIG Newsletter, No. 88, March/June 1992, as if they were the final version. (Go back) 154. For example, the CI/SfB number was not put on the covers. BSI policy was to print the UDC number only on Standards. The maxim is from Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack. (Go back) 155. According to Building Centre Trust Final Report, (ref. 150) over 49% of manufacturing companies used the services of outside design consultants. (Go back) 156. BRE research had also revealed "that some technical publications deliberately omit information to provide an excuse for salesmen to make direct contact with enquirers. The user does not appreciate this [...]". Ron Brewer in Write it Right: a Guide to Preparing Technical Information, BRE Occasional Paper, September 1994, p. 3. The practice is deprecated. See also ref. 118. The BRE paper gives much useful advice, based on research, includes a section on BS 4940:1994, and like Better Trade Literature, was free. A publication of Wedgewood Markham Associates and The Building Centre called Technical Literature: Getting it Right, advertized at £135 per copy, has not been examined. (Go back) 157. The revised CIB Master List 1993 was published in parallel with the revised BS 4940:1994. Two members of the BSI Sub-committee, George Atkinson and Charles Rogers, were also members of CIB W57 which was responsible for the revised Master List. (Go back) 158. The speakers were: N.E.Bridges (architect), Chris Jackson (design director), and Joyce Chidlow and Ceri Martin (librarians); the BSI Sub-committee members were Ken Hale, Sylvester Bone, Ron Brewer and Geoffrey Hutton. Summaries only of the users’ talks were issued. (Go back) 159. Better Technical Information: a Brief Guide for Manufacturers of Construction Products for Europe, prepared by Sylvester Bone, first draft, April 1994, unpublished. (Go back) 160. "Why an ISO Standard on the Presentation of Technical Information?", ISO Bulletin, December 1995, p. 12-3. (Go back) 161. Convenors: Ken Hale, technical expert (UK) and Sylvester Bone. (Go back) 162. Geoffrey Hutton in a letter to BSI, 20 February 1995. (Go back) 163. Graham Till, op. cit. (ref. 95). (Go back) 164. The scheme is fully explained in a paper by Gordon Jones, Director, Product Design Review, "A Product View" to a British Standard Society meeting on Innovation, Reliability and Liability in Building, 11 February 1987. The prototypes were: 1. Membrane roofing, built-up and single ply, and 2. Profiled roofing and cladding, steel and aluminum produced 1988-1991. (Go back) 165. A consortium, consisting of British Telecommunication - BT (Value Added Business Services, Design and Engineering Services), PSA Library Services, Hutton+Rostron and CCC Ltd. of Haverstock Associates (ex-NBA staff), attempted in 1985 to set up a comprehensive building product computer database, using the NBA Commodity File methodology. A five-year business plan was prepared but the project as such had ceased by 1989 after BT withdrew from all computer projects as a matter of policy. (Go back) Warmest gratitude is owed to a number of people who supplied documents to supplement the Author’s own collection: George Atkinson, Ron Brewer, Eric Corker and especially Vivian (Dan) Levett who also sparked off the paper. Thanks are also due to Mark Hurn (BSI Library), Susan Woodman and Marian Bodian (BRE Library) and John Keenan (CIRCA). © Charles Rogers, 1998.
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