HPD Collaborative (HPDC) and Construction Specifications Institute, Inc. (CSI) announced a product alliance that brings cutting-edge technology to the built environment. CSI has created the CROSSWALK platform, the first agile application programming interface (API) to connect leading construction industry standards and classifications, including CSI’s MasterFormat®, Uniformat®, and OmniClass®, and ASTM’s E1557-09(2020)e1, with the world’s building professionals, construction technology platforms, and data flows. HPDC is a nonprofit that improves the transparency of information and the material health in the built environment.
Up until now, manufacturers creating a Health Product Declaration® (HPD) needed to provide their products’ classification codes into the HPD Builder, a guided software tool for entering data, performing hazard screening and formatting reports to be consistent with the HPD Open Standard. With this new alliance, manufacturers now access the CROSSWALK platform directly from the HPD Builder. This ensures their product classification data is entered in a structured format, providing consistency and avoiding inaccuracies, while dramatically reducing time spent on researching the material ingredients of building products.
“There are thousands of manufacturers and they historically have classified their products in different ways. Now with CROSSWALK, we can provide a more accurate, reliable, and consistent way of reporting product contents and associated health information. The HPD Repository links product records with CSI classifications, which makes it easy for our Product Library API partners to use these CSI classifications for product search and other applications,” said Wendy Vittori, Executive Director of HPDC.
This consistent reporting, available for free via the HPD Public Repository, enables architects and designers to reliably compare products between manufacturer A and manufacturer B with the correct classification.
“The building industry is incredibly complex. A single build could span the course of years, and during the passing of time those standards and classifications may have also changed. That’s where CROSSWALK comes in,” said Mark Dorsey, CEO of CSI. “When the CROSSWALK platform is integrated into your software, it can translate and update the standards seamlessly in the blink of an eye. What was once a manual process that could introduce errors and cause additional time and money to be spent, is now automatic, creating efficiency, saving money, and even making the build safer.”
HPDC has integrated the CROSSWALK platform into HPD Builder, a free tool for manufacturers to create and manage Health Product Declarations (HPDs). HPDC and CSI plan to build on this initial implementation to continually advance the harmonization of product classifications in the building industry.
