Jeff, Let's see where we agree and where we diverge. Models come in many forms. Models can be used to forecast future events, given some assumptions.
Models can be general to a familiy of occurances, or specific to a particular instance.
When providing general guidance to an audience, the best you can do is suggest general solutions. It is dangerous to assume specific experiences apply to general audiences. While research in one area of the country on one set of buildings may provide insight into a successful modeling approach for those conditions, it does not necessarily apply to all areas. There may be cases where what is good for repeatibility is bad for accuracy. The argument to require models to be defined as they are in the tables errs on the side of repeatibility, at the cost of flexibility and potentially, accuracy.