I never said the industry "should not standardize anything"... we already have NEC codes to follow and the many trainings that we attend serve to continually educate us. I just feel that you are a brainiac with way too much time on your hands... the kind of microsoftie client that I love to fire. This talk about making everything so simple a builder can understand is giving way too much credit to the average builder. Before anyone reads this to mean that builders are stupid... that is NOT what I said. The builder just wants to build a house and sell it... end of story. The more complex the home... the more likely that that builder is involved with this to a point but any good builder uses good subcontractors and is more than willing to turn this part over. This 80% accepatnce factor you speak of means that a recommendation usually suffices. He/she does not have enough time to learn this standard and check up on it. Many states, Washington among them have begun to inspect low voltage and require separate permits... the inspectors don't even know what half the wiring we put in does... they just make sure it is run right. Do you think that governments and municipalities are going to spend the extra money and time to educate the inspector to make sure that all of the wiring is to your spec? In effect to understand all of the complex designs we come up with? WHERE do you suppose that money comes from when most of them are cutting staff short due to budgetary constraints?

Maybe I'm just playing devils advocate. If you want to spend all of your time being the MAN... knock yourself out. All of us will be glad to eat humble pie if this goes through and you are the one behind it. I'm sure most of my cohorts agree though, that we don't have the time to spend on such an exercise... we're way too damn busy keeping the multitude of projects we run managed and profitable and whether their is a "standard" or not... we'll continue to do whats best for our client. Also, if what you come up with in any way serves to make us obsolete, you can expect major disapproval and lack of cooperation.