ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an empirical inquiry into product information acquisition and processing by architects and building owners in Austria. It provides the results from a study that investigated the building product information acquisition and processing habits of architects. The objective for the personal interviews was to gain a better understanding of survey trends and the habits of individual architects. Architects who agreed to be interviewed mentioned that electronic drawings are often adapted to a working document’s level of detail and representation style. According to the results from the survey and the interviews, architects view themselves as playing an active, leading role in the product search and selection process. The architects are most often interested in a product’s visual performance characteristics and pricing, followed by solutions for integration with other systems and technical information. Architects and building owners differ somewhat with regard to both the attributes and the presentation of the product information they search for.
