FAST: An Intuitive Thinking Technique

This paper tells how intuitive thinking was responsible for the development of the FAST Diagramming Technique. Accepting the Challenge It has been 27 years since I presented my first paper on FAST Diagramming in Boston. I will try to shed some additional light on this subject today. The initial seeds for FAST Diagramming were planted in 1960 while attending the first university offered course on Value Engineering (VE) at UCLA. During the course Ed Heller made a presentation on Function Analysis. His explanation of the verb-noun method of expressing functions developed by Larry Miles was fascinating. It sparked within me a seemingly unlimited amount of creativity and understanding. During the next three or four years this new method of identifying functions using a verb and a noun became part of my life. I soon discovered I could isolate the basic function by asking this question. “If I didn’t have to perform the function I’ve selected would I still have to perform any of the other functions listed?” If the answer was no, then I knew I had identified the basic function. This method of analysis soon caused me to ask other questions about each of the other functions, such as “Why must this function be performed?” and “How is this function actually performed or proposed to be performed?” One day when an instructor working with another team failed to have the same degree of success as I enjoyed, I was invited to as