and Intranet servers; or they might be incorporated directly into the equipment covered by the manual. In five years, when you buy a new boiler, it might have the microprocessor in it, and the screen and the electronic manual might come in the boiler control panel. Or, the manual might not come with the equipment; it will be accessed on the World Wide Web.

Now, what are we going to do with electronic manuals? First of all, we are going to prepare printed copies and printed extracts for reading. We'll use traditional sequential on-screen viewing, a search engine, and hypertext viewing. When we get to the point where software packages are automatically tagging operational data, it will be a very powerful concept for data reporting and mining. It can be the source of electronic information for manual electronic copying to other electronic systems. Or, we are positioned to have the electronic information automatically copied from one system to another or to have the electronic information automatically directly accessed and used from the electronic manual CD.

The initiative is based on the Navy OMSI standard, which uses the Construction Specifications Institute listing of about 4,000 building elements. As the evolution of the DTD progresses, I envision that experience from the initiative will lead to:

1. Expansion to the finer granularity of the approximately 80,000 building elements of the R.S. Means estimating data base.

2. Provision for tagging to accommodate facility geography such as site, building, floor, room, zone, and functional space.

3. A methodology for ongoing timely expansion of the standing lists of building elements and their components.

4. Provisions for tagging to be applied to elements and facilities not covered by standard tagging listings.

There is a saying, “Build it, and they will come.” If the building professionals will define the application requirements and listings of building components, the electronic data processing professionals can build the SGML, XML, HTML, or whatever future technology tools are needed to meet our goal. It is that simple.

The DTD you will see today is the initial model of those tools. The NAVFAC's work, built on the Construction Specifications Institute standard, is the content, the building professional's definition of the data. The content model was combined with the SGML worldwide standard to produce the application DTD. The benefits and the paybacks that are to be achieved are electronic tools for the lowest life-cycle cost. How? Information is manually entered only once. It is conveniently and instantly accessed. By bringing down implementation costs, the specific feasibility threshold levels of setting up automation will be lowered. Documentation costs will drop. Setting up automated inventory systems and supply chain management are major costs that will be significantly decreased.

The initiative will enable a rapid increase of several orders of magnitude of the state of the art of automation of building operation and maintenance functions. This will cause significantly increased reliability and performance levels and dramatically lowered operating and ownership costs. This will happen quickly because of the opportunity for major profit that will become available to the highly aggressive and competitive automation suppliers.

It will also enable us to put more “smart” tools into the hands of mechanics. As a mechanic travels through a facility, there will be smart electronic troubleshooting tools as part of his mobile tool kit. Having tagged data available will increase the speed at which smart systems, on-screen prompts, coupled with sensors, are available. This will result in lower training costs for mechanics and reduced time to make them fully productive in a building. The mechanic will be empowered to access and use the information, resulting in lower costs and enhanced reliability.

Front Matter (R1-R6)

1 Workshop Overview (1-5)

2 Purpose and a Vision for the Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manual Initiative (6-8)

3 Experience Publishing Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals for the Automotive Industry (9-13)

4 Prototype Practice for the Building Industry: Operation and Maintenance Support Information (14-19)

5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future (20-24)

Appendix A Participants (25-31)

Appendix B Agenda (32-33)

Appendix C Document Type Definition Document (34-45)

Appendix D Naval Facilities Engineering Command Guide Specification 01781 (46-59)