M2
Regional Design Policy All renovation
AE / CM Advertisements
and new construction projects of $
500,000 or more, shall be done
As required for the past 2 years,
completely in metric.
advertisements for
Architectural/Engineering (AE) or
All specifications for new construction
Construction Management (CM)
lease projects shall be metric. The
services shall be as follows:
same firms that provide construction
services to developers on lease
1.
State areas in m2 only. (ex, The
projects perform construction for us in
new building will be
direct federally funded projects.
approximately 40,000 net square
meters)
Projects under $ 500,000 may be done in
SI, based of feasability. About half of
2.
Each announcement shall state:
our projects under 0,000 are
"This project will be designed
currently selected for metric design.
and built entirely in metric
units."
Feasability of doing projects below $
500,000 is based on the number of hard
3.
For A/E firm announcements,
metric products used. Small projects
including term contracts, this
using mainly soft metric products can
is a required evaluation factor:
usually be easily done in metric.
"Familiarity with SI and ability to
Very small projects under ,000 are
design in SI units." This will
generally not being done in metric yet.
typically be 10-15 % of the
evaluation.
Timeframe To Convert Projects To Metric
Our past year reinforces earlier
Each responding firm must continue
policy: It is fully feasible to convert
to submit a one page
medium and large projects to metric up
summary of their SI experience,
to about 25-30 % design completion.
familiarity with SI, and ability to
This can be up to about 40 % for
design in SI units.
smaller projects.
Metric experience though is not
For CAD drawings, it is usually easy to
mandated.
convert to SI and select similar metric
structure dimensions.
Almost half of the 500 largest US
design firms, which design many of
Many projects nationwide, at the
our medium and large scale projects,
federal, state, and local levels, have
did overseas work last year, much of
now been converted to metric up to the
which was SI.
30% design stage, with success.
Based on our experience though, size
CAD While regional policy requires all
of firm has not been a determining
projects be 100 % CAD, projects are
factor. Many small, medium, and
being done nationwide in metric in
large firms are producing high
freehand format with little difficulty.
caliber metric designs.
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