Government/Military Trends

The Whole Building Design Guide: A One-stop Shop for Design Guidelines

Issue Table of Contents

Delivering Home Sweet Home Through Private-sector Partnerships Creating Home Front Efficiencies Through Consolidation and Cooperation The Whole Building Design Guide: A One-stop Shop for Design Guidelines Military Construction Standards and Related Publications

Where do contractors for the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Energy, General Services Administration, and many other federal agencies go when they need to find the latest information on building design and construction guidelines developed by these federal agencies? They all go to the same place — the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG)¹.

Launched in 2001, the WBDG is the only Internet-based portal providing government and private-sector organizations with one-stop access to current building-related guidelines and criteria. The site was developed by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), a non-profit organization established by Congress to act as an intermediary between federal building programs and the private sector, but relies heavily on the collaboration of federal agencies, private-sector companies, and trade associations. An advisory committee that includes the DoD, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, the General Services Administration, and more than fifteen other agencies helps manage the content of the site and oversees its future development.

The WBDG utilizes the Construction Criteria Base (CCB)² , an extensive collection of construction guidelines developed by a number of federal agencies and industry organizations. Managed and operated by NIBS, the CCB contains more than 12,000 documents and is employed by approximately 38,000 users.

According to Earle Kennett, vice president, NIBS, the CCB was created nearly 15 years ago, when the DoD agencies began looking for a more efficient way to manage and distribute their thousands upon thousands of documents that contained their construction guidelines. At that time, they were simply distributed as paper copies.

“There were obviously a lot of problems with the hardcopy system. First, there was the cost of copying and distributing criteria, and second, it was difficult to make sure you had the current copy of the criteria you needed. So the DoD approached us to develop a way to allow all of the agencies to distribute their information through a CD-ROM system. We did that and it really ended up being very popular,” Earle says.

More recently, as the possibilities inherent in the Internet as a document distribution device become more apparent, NIBS decided to move the CCB online, and eventually created the WBDG.

Earlier this year, NIBS added another, even larger database of documents to the site — non-government standards, provided by Information Handling Services Inc. (IHS). The availability of these standards through the site supports Public Law 104-113 and the Office of Management & Budget Circular A-119, which make it mandatory for federal agencies to use private, voluntary standards as much as possible, rather than developing their own unique guidelines.

Working with the Whole Building Design Guide
The WBDG is much more than just a repository of building criteria — it acts as an overlay to the document libraries, making it easier for users to research and find the information they need. “The Whole Building Design Guide is more of a design tool that will give you an overview of particular subjects, whatever those subjects may be,” says Earle.

Users can also access more than just design criteria. The WBDG offers guidelines on project management, and includes other features such as agency-specific information; news, events, and training; links to federal mandates; and contact information for trade associations.