Background:
The Masonry Society (TMS) hopes to develop an online platform for greatly enhanced and augmented Commentary for TMS 402 (Building Code Requirements for Masonry Structures) and TMS 602 (Specification for Masonry Structures). In general terms, this project will develop an online platform that users could access the document’s provisions easily, jump via thousands of links and keywords to specific provisions, and then access significant added content (existing commentary, design examples, references, etc.) while allowing notes/preferences to be added by the user, and or the user’s firm (office defaults, etc.). Because the scope of such a project would be immense, The Masonry Society, with generous support from the NCMA Foundation, conducted a Research and Prototype Development during the last year, to determine feasibility, recommended features, and rough costs. Find out more about this pilot project here.
This current project is to consider findings and recommendations from the study, and to develop an online platform to allow users to access the provisions of TMS 402/602-16 and future editions online with the potential for enhanced commentary.
Program Details:
TMS would develop an online platform (such as those currently offered by ASTM and ICC for their standards, and by ACI for their recently released 318+) to allow users to access the provisions of TMS 402/602-16 and future editions online with the potential for enhanced commentary. Subscribers/Users would be able access content on computers, tablets and perhaps smart phone easily and efficiently. Three access levels are proposed as summarized below:
- Basic Access Level: would provide viewing of TMS standards only, without access to commentary, and access to “value-added” content. It should only have basic search capability (such as just to a section number and basic keywords).
- Deluxe edition: would offer everything that a purchaser of the hard copy of the provisions (such as Commentary) would receive with additional benefits such as complete “in-document” linking, linking to some external content, and more robust search options.
- Premium edition: would offer even more features than the Deluxe edition, such as more linked content perhaps to webinars, design guides, design examples, and perhaps access to other TMS Standards.
The initial scope of the project would be to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the Basic Access Level and the Deluxe Access Level shown above for TMS 402/602-16. Eventually, TMS hope to also develop the Premium Access Level.