From the President, October 2001
The Future of Specifications

The November meeting of the Mpls.-St. Paul Chapter will be a milestone event for our chapter and for CSI. At one meeting, we will have four of the most influential people in specifications; we will also make this meeting available to other chapters via the Internet.

The subject of the November meeting is of obvious interest to specifiers, but it will also be interesting to suppliers and others in construction. Any significant change in the way specifications are produced will have an impact on everyone in the construction industry.

The role of the specifier has changed little in the past fifty years; many differences are related more to process than results:

• At one time, many specifiers to begin their careers as clerks, eventually becoming specialists. Specifiers today are often architects, or have other professional or practical experience.

• Early specifiers had to write their own specifications. Today’s specifier has access to several commercially produced master guide specification libraries.

• Fifty years ago there was no common standard for sequence, content, or format of specifications. Documents produced by one office varied substantially from one office to another; some appeared to be written in a stream-of-consciousness style. Today we benefit from standards promulgated by CSI, which are accepted as standards in much of today’s construction.

• Production tools have evolved, from manual typewriters to electronic typewriters, to card or tape driven mainframe computers, to personal computers.

• The editing process has also evolved, from redlining to word processing to question-and-answer systems.

Some things have not changed.

• There are relatively few specifiers.

• Firms that do not have dedicated specifiers frequently suffer from a lack of specification knowledge, as it is difficult for a single person to completely know and control all aspects of construction documents.

• Specifiers are often relatively low in the office hierarchy, despite their knowledge of construction products and processes. They are sometimes seen as a necessary evil rather than as an integral part of quality assurance and document production.

• Appearance takes precedence over performance. Specifiers are sometimes overruled by project managers who do not understand products or the consequences of their decisions about contract documents.

• The relationship between specifier and supplier is almost as important as that between design professional and client. The design professional relies on both for success, and neither client nor supplier can be abused.

forecast: unsettling and stormy, followed by improved conditions

Specifications are about to change significantly, and we must be prepared. CAD vendors have promised for years that drawings will one day be used to automatically produce specifications, material quantities, and other information directly from drawing files. Recent changes in electronic communications - the ubiquitous personal computer, tremendous increases in computing power, dramatic reductions in cost, and development of electronic languages - have brought what was once an interesting theory to the brink of reality.

The importance of construction documents will increase even further as they are used for ordering products, and as they incorporate the needs of the owner. As their importance increases, their value will increase. While construction documents were once simply a time-intensive and barely adequate means of telling a contractor what to do, they will soon become an indispensable resource; they will have real and continuing value to the owner.

Think of all of this information not as a set of paper documents, but as an electronic construct that contains the accumulated knowledge of the owner, the design professional, the contractors, and the suppliers. It will be the “single document” that we only pretend to believe in.

When owners see the value of such an electronic construct, they will no longer be passive recipients of paper documents. They will demand control of production and development of construction information, and require other members of the construction team to deliver the information they need - not just to build, but to operate and maintain their facilities. And once a contract is signed, ordering products, submitting shop drawings, verifying conformance, and other tasks will become automated.

This presents an opportunity for an enterprising company to integrate all of the information, and to make it easily usable by contractor and owner. The needs of the rest of the construction team will become secondary to those of the owner. To date, CSI has not recognized this evolution; it is still a paper-centric organization. If some profit-making company - Microsoft, for example - decides to create an electronic system that addresses all of these issues, it will quickly become an industry standard. It would be sold directly to owners, who would require design professionals to use it.

Fully developed, this electronic construct will contain all information relevant to a facility, and will obviate the need for drawings and specifications as we now know them. The information in the construct will be processed by computers, but will be accessible to humans using something akin to Internet browsers. If performance criteria is needed, the browser will show a text document, tables, or graphs as required. Specific details at any location will be generated on demand. When the project is complete, the owner will incorporate the information into a master file, ready to be used for operation and maintenance. And when the next project comes along, the design professional will get information that truly reflects existing conditions.

The specifier as presently known will cease to exist; word-smithing and editing will no longer be needed. Specifiers have a choice - they can anticipate these changes and be ready to move into those positions that will be required, or they can ignore them - and be displaced. Similarly, CSI can anticipate the coming changes and maintain its position as the organization that sets the standards for construction information, or it can ignore them - and be displaced.

Present efforts in the study of the Overall Construction Classification System (OCCS) and changes to MasterFormat are steps in the right direction. Those members who interfere with those effort in a narrow-minded attempt to maintain the status quo do all of us a disservice; they might just as well argue for restoring the dominance of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Sheldon Wolfe, President
Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter, CSI
swolfe@bwbr.com