Phase one of the 6,000-student campus near Naples, Florida, consists of 10 academic buildings, 750 housing units and a town center that will ultimately grow into Ave Maria Town.
The standard 16 division Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) MasterFormat has been in existence for decades, and has long been the standard in building design and construction. However, as technology has evolved, it has become apparent that the standard doesn’t address the integrated systems that are increasingly a part of today’s building design.
The industry, recognizing the construction specifications needed to reflect current building practices, developed a de facto Division 17 for communications infrastructure. According to the Web site, Division17.net , this initiative “began in 1998 with the objective of ensuring that telecommunication systems are ‘designed into’ a building during the design phase of the project versus the more traditional method of ‘retrofitting’ it into the building while it is being construction.” For this project, this method was expanded with the team’s vision to allow all building systems to operate on an integrated structured cabling system to transport critical information.