ill try although it may be a little long winded and is gonna be a bit of a read and are purely my own opinions and observation,other guys with differnt curcumstances may disagree and think this is the best thing since sliced bread, but i will say that if everyone erected to this guide (most unlikely) than we wouldnt have 1/2 as much fun on here looking at all the photos lol
although on the nasc website it shows individual prices for :13 the suite can only be bought as a whole and costs £1200. and no-one can purchase any of the parts unless theyve allready bought the entire suite. which seems a little stupid to say the least - i understand the suite represents a major investment to the nasc ,which obviously needs to be recouped but this does not allow an individual scaffolder to buy the pocket guide.
the desighn guide is exactley what it sez on the tin and is aimed at desighners, full of facts and figures,charts graphs and the like of which info needed to desighn - do not get confused and think this is a design aid for you to bang up your own drawings and desighns cos it aint....most of the information in this version is replicated from the previous 20:08. so if we hadnt been forced to purchase it then we would have saved £250 on his book alone
the operation guide is full of information that a qualified and experianced scaffolder will allready know & in fact can be alternativly sourced, its the basis that we have all been taught under the citb & cscs - obviously that have now been some alterations from :08 such as bay sizes, bracing etc and most have allready been discussed earlier or on other threads. but tbh you will have covered all the information within the book on your courses, there is quite a detailed section on birdcages & ties/instalation but again this can all be sourced seperatley, in fact the individual sg & tg notes that non members can purchase from the nasc website cover them all and would be a lot cheeper to buy as well as free info you can download from the HSE website.
the main emphasis of this guide is the new basic desighns incorperated into compliance sheets,which can be adapted to a certain degree and printed off with the eguide. i think they could have gone a little further in this section and enclosed additional loading bays as the one shown isnt going to be practical all the time and defo should have put in a
t&f staircase desighn or 2. & they have done this with the chimney stacks, although again most guys use a beam to throwin onto the ridge this hasnt been covered. and the bridge sections use steel beams but do state that they can be supplimented with ali but you have to make sure they have the desighn loads the same as stated.
the problem i can see with this is that to the unqualified scaffolder posing as a scaffolder inspector there will be no room for movement and if it doesnt look exactly like the limited pic ( not a desighn drwg) in the book then they will cry foul and expect to see a desighn drwg.
The eguide is my biggest disapointment - in so much as the 1st thing that hits you is the impractability of only being allowed to load it onto 1 device/computer....ffs even skygo allow you to have it at home and 2 portable devices. but no, you would have to uninstall it from your computer and reinstall onto a laptop/tablet if you wanted to show it off at a site meeting- i fully understand that they dont want this to be abused but it would have been nice to be able to put it onto multi devices under the same product key...if i were a big company with say 4 supervisors on the road, i would want them to have the ability to have access to it without costing another £500 each.
once your get past the presentation of what looks like a gucci bit of kit you realise how limited it is. although you can change dimentions to a certain degree, on differnt types of basic structures (all of which are in the operational guide) such as a bridge or a loading bays. and it will then print off a "complience sheet" so for instance with a 3 bay bridge it will include a 3d picture and the info for the spacing tubes onto the chords etc, with a independant it will tell you the bay sizes and the tie patterns,but these are individual complience sheets,which you then save as a pdf and print off- do not get confused with this as being the definitive answer to all your needs, cos it aint, what this is not is a autocad where you can desighn your required scaffold insert a bridge where its needed then print it all off to show your client what its gonna look like.if thats what you need then i think the smartscaffolder autocad pack would be better suited
so for us the reason i feel a little bum raped is since :08 we have spent money on having generic drwgs done for many individual stuctues such as loadingbays, strcases canterlevers ,bridges etc which we put indivdually into a cdm pack along with the calcs and all the elements reguarding the materials used. so for instance a scaffold to be complient will hold all the written documentaion to show its type w12 3-4-2 then include a desighn for the loading bay & staircase etc. its quite comprehensive and may sound over the top but like the nasc eguide version onced saved as a generic type i can allways edit it to individual site needs,all the info i use has been gathered from either the nasc or hse with certain calcs for materials coming from either the British standard docts and requirements or a desighner - this method and presentation has been excepted as complient from all our contractors and sso. but after all the hype surrounding the release of 20:13 i felt we'd up the game and get the suite although looking at it realistically ,all we really required would have been the operational guide for £250.
i think the change over period for tg20:13 is june 2014, so if your thinking of getting a copy i'd wait till then and hope that they allow people to buy the items individually.or if you know someone thats has already bought the suite then get them to purchase you the op guide and a few pocket guides. i think this is a big investement for a company and obviously if all you do is tea & buiscuit jobs you proberbly wouldnt bother -like many small firms never did with 20:08 lol, but if you want to stay current with the regs and complient i dont think you'll have much choice, i'm hoping that after another couple of weeks of cover to cover reading i may feel differnt but i'm not gonna hold my breath