Printed from the ArchiMentor Knowledge pages on - www.archimentor.net

NBS

About NBS

• The NBS (formerly the National Building Specification) describes itself, on its website, as "Delivering expert solutions to the construction industry through distinctive specification products and information resources".
• NBS is a division of RIBA Enterprises, the commercial arm of the RIBA.
• NBS offer a range of Products, the most well-known of which is NBS Building, the recognised national standard specification system for the UK.
• The NBS website home page is at www.thenbs.com.

Technical Information from NBS

Although the NBS website is grouped into four main headings - Topic Areas, Products, Solutions, Resources - these are, essentially, different ways of arriving at the same information. Technical information and guidance, similar to the ArchiMentor Knowledge pages, is available from these four products/resources:

• Construction Information Service - Produced in partnership by NBS and IHS UK. Provides full text versions of most relevant British Standards and many other technical publications but requires subscribers to be members of BSi to allow access to British Standards. Therefore not cheap, but essential for all but the smallest offices. Read more on the Construction Information Service page of the NBS website.
• NBS Articles - The NBS has, for a number of years, produced an excellent series of articles on general construction-related topics but, prior to October 2007, these were only available to NBS Subscribers. They are now available to all, on the Articles page of the NBS website.
• NBS Building - NBS Building contains pre-written technical specification clauses and preliminaries for selection and editing to produce project specifications. Clauses are authored by the NBS team of in-house architects and surveyors to be concise and robust and are arranged in accordance with the Common Arrangement of Work Sections. Read more on the NBS Building page of the NBS website.
• NBS Shortcuts - NBS Shortcuts is a series of illustrated articles covering a wide range of practice, regulatory and design guidance, with easy to follow text and hand-drawn graphic details. For more information, refer to the NBS Shortcuts page of the NBS website.

It is somewhat difficult to understand NBS's logic in maintaining the parallel, and very similar, Articles and Shortcuts when one is freely-available and the other is subscription-only.

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