The Serviceability Tools and Methods (ST&M), which incorporate the ASTM standards, offer a macro, broad
brush methodology appropriate for strategic decision making in office facility procurement. They were
developed by the International Centre for Facilities (ICF) as a way of dealing with the relationship between
users and their facilities and to bridge the gap between the occupants’ “lay-persons’ language”,
and the
and the
technical language of the professionals involved. Architecture and Design typically focus on each building
project as a unique event and forget to capture the lessons learned from one project to the next. We were asked
by our clients to create a systematic, consistent and comprehensive approach to deal with repetitive facility
projects.
Some of us have noted that EDRA should pay more attention to the history of the concepts developed over the
years by its members. It is frustrating to come to EDRA conferences and find the same issues discussed year
after year with little evidence that the new discussions take past contributions into account. Papers at EDRA
often ignore papers published in the EDRA Proceedings, or in Environment & Behavior, that are more than ten
years old, even when the older material is of quality, and a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of the same
topic. Therefore, we felt that a brief history of the concepts incorporated in our work, and a comprehensive
bibliography, would be in order in this paper.
The Serviceability Tools & Methods (ST&M) have strong foundations. This work does not stand in isolation. It
builds on and links with the work of many others. In the text below, we have focused on recording those prior
events and concepts which have been most important in shaping ST&M, and on acknowledging those
individuals and organizations whose work has had the most significant effect on the development of the
serviceability concept as a complement to the performance concept in buildings.
4.2 The performance concept in building
ST&M has been founded in part on "the performance concept in building", which has roots before World War II
in the United States, Canada, and overseas. In the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Public Building
Service (a component of the U.S. General Services Administration) funded the U.S. National Institute of
Standards and Technology (then known as the National Bureau of Standards), to develop a performance
approach for the procurement of government offices, resulting in the "Peach Book" series of publications. An
early marketplace application of the concept was the project of several California school districts (School
Systems Development Corporation), which purchased component building systems for schools by specifying
and testing performance. Similar applications to school construction occurred in Canada, in Ontario and
Quebec.
Founded in 1946, Committee E06 on Performance of Buildings of ASTM (American Society of Testing and
Materials) has developed standard performance test methods for building components. Starting in the early
1980s, the performance concept was applied to facilities for office work and other functions by ASTM
Subcommittee E06.25 on Whole Buildings and Facilities.
In England, leadership for development of the performance concept has been provided by the government's
Building Research Establishment (BRE). In Canada, the effort to develop norms for the physical setting of a
productive workplace were led by: the former Building Use Section of the National Research Council; the
Department of Public Works of British Columbia (succeeded by the British Columbia Buildings Corporation);
the government of Alberta; and Public Works Canada (Public Works & Government Services Canada).
4.3 Performance and serviceability
By 1985, the importance of distinguishing between performance and serviceability had been recognized, and
standard definitions for facility and facility serviceability were developed. Facility performance is defined byASTM as the "behavior in service of a facility for a specified use", while facility serviceability is the "capability
of a facility to perform the function(s) for which it is designed, used, or required to be used"2.
Serviceability is more suited than performance to specifying the functional requirements for a facility, because
the focus of performance is on a single specified use or condition at a given time. Indeed, the ranges of
performance specified constitute the capability of the building to respond and, thus, its serviceability.
4.4 Programming and briefing
The term program, meaning a statement of requirements for what should be built, was in common usage in the
mid-nineteenth century by architects and students at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and came into use in
American universities as they adopted the French system for teaching architecture. In North America, the
architect's basic services include architectural programming, i.e. "confirming the requirements of the project to
the owner", but exclude setting functional requirements, which is the owner's responsibility. In Britain and parts
of Canada, the term briefing includes programming, but the distinction between functional, architectural and
technical programming is not often made.
We have advocated that there should be an on-going dialog between “programmer” and “designer” on a given
project, but the profession of “programmer” did not materialize quite in the form that we anticipated. The role
that we envisaged for the programmer is now partially filled by the in-house facility manager, partially by the
“strategic planner”, partially by the space planner. This is due to the fact that most projects are managed as a
series of distinct phases, instead of being viewed as an iterative continuum. By the mid-twentieth century, some
clients for large or complex projects paid extra to have their architects or management consultants prepare a
functional program for their projects.
The first stand-alone, general practice in building programming in North America, not part of an architectural or
management consulting practice, was TEAG - The Environmental Analysis Group, founded in 1965 by Gerald
Davis. In the late 1960’s, building programming professionals, closely linked to architecture and interior design,
were employed mainly to set requirements for individual projects, each project being treated by its architects as
a unique, one-of-a-kind "event". The programmers acted as translators between owner and designer, or as
surrogate for the occupants. They documented requirements for rooms and spaces, for proximities and
separations, and the like. Some programmers included careful analysis of social and behavioral requirements.
John Archea, Aristide Esser, Gary Moore and Ray Studer were early leaders in launching the Design Methods
Group (DMG), the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), and the journal Man-Environment
Systems, all venues for the exchange of research findings and networking.
Among the early leaders in programming, building evaluation, organizational development and behavioral
sciences, whose work has provided direct foundation for the Serviceability Tools & Methods (ST&M) are
practitioners Pamela Cluff, Gerald Davis, Pleasantine Drake, Francis Duffy, Ezra Ehrenkrantz, Jay Farbstein,
Min Kantrowitz, Walter Moleski, Willy Peña, Henry Sears, Geoff Shuttleworth, Don Sinclair, Fritz Steele, Carroll
Thatcher, and John Zeisel, and university-based researchers and theoreticians Chris Alexander, Irwin Altman,
Franklin Becker, Edward T. Hall, Volker Hartkopf, Kiyo Izumi, Peter Jockusch, Vivian Loftness, Wolfgang
Preiser, Amos Rappoport, Henry Sanoff, Lynda Schneekloth, Robert Shibley, Bill Sims, Robert Sommer, Daniel
Stokols, Phil Thiel and Rich Wener. We have been very fortunate that many of these leaders have collaborated
with us, in one way or another at some point in our career.
4.5 Programming and evaluation for organizations with large portfolios of similar facilities
In 1976, Doug Shadbolt, then head of the School of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, and Guy
Desbarats, then Assistant Deputy Minister of Public Works Canada (PWC), teamed to launch a graduate degree
program in the management of facilities for public and institutional organizations, funded by the tuition fees
from mid-career civil servants in need of training and an added degree. They brought Gerald Davis and
TEAG - The Environmental Group to Ottawa to lead the graduate program in facility planning and
programming. The Carleton/PWC project was aborted because of budget cuts, but PWC continued itsleadership, and in 1987, as discussed later, issued a contract to develop the standard methods and tools for
programming and evaluation, which are now known as Serviceability Tools & Methods.
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