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I discovered through my interest in pressure-equalized
rainscreens that most of the Canadian provinces have building
enclosure councils (BECs) that provide great opportunity for
multidisciplinary exchange of experiences and ideas.
When I first thought about establishing such a resource here in
Boston, I realized it was imperative to have the support and
interest of the three most respected building envelope consultants
in the region. After various attempts to get these experts together
in one room (and after repeatedly being asked, "You want to do
what?"), they eventually supported the venture.
It was also imperative to have administrative support of an
organization for such things as meeting space and mailing lists.
Since I was a member of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA), I
asked the BSA's executive director for support and received it.
Thus, the Boston Building Enclosure Council (BEC-Boston) was
formed.
BEC-Boston is the result of concern about the quality of
construction documents prepared by design professionals and the
quality of building envelope construction. This concern stems from
the lack of understanding by many design professionals regarding
the principles and practices involved in the design of enclosures
and of the level of detail required for certain elements to convey
their design intent to contractors. Problems are compounded by
general contractors' inability to coordinate or control the quality
of the work of the various subtrades, especially on subcontractor
work. Thus, our primary objective is to improve architects'
documentation of building enclosure elements.
And we are successfully meeting our objective. Since its inception,
BEC-Boston has grown to 200 members, and we have 30 to 40 attendees
at each meeting. The reasons for the success of BEC-Boston include
the newly adopted Massachusetts Building Code requirement (the
first in the nation) to have air barrier systems and the consequent
interest of architects, consultants, contractors, material
suppliers, and installers. The other driving forces are the many
leaders who work hard to make the group a success and the
contributions and support of the many experts in our diverse
membership.
Our hope for the future is that this movement will continue to
grow, especially under the auspices of the new BETEC/AIA initiative
to create building enclosure councils across the United States.
Toward that end, we have purchased the domain name of www.bec-boston.org (try
it!) and we urge prospective BECs to purchase similar addresses. We
hope BECs will help architects regain leadership in the design of
the building enclosure, which is so intimately involved with the
building design-and is usually the image we show in architecture
journals.
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