| Author |
Message |
David G. Axt, CDT, CCS, CSI, SCIP
Senior Member
Username: david_axt
Post Number: 2104
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 12:34 pm: |    |
At last night's Puget Sound Chapter of CSI meeting, one of the old specifiers asked me an interesting question. "Does anyone write their own custom specifications?"
He meant a specification entirely from scratch, not "canned language" from MasterSpec, Speclink, etc.
David G. Axt, CDT, CCS, CSI, SCIP
Specifications Consultant
Axt Consulting LLC |
Melody Fontenot
Senior Member
Username: melodyccs
Post Number: 7
Registered: 01-2023
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 01:33 pm: | |
Hi David! We occasionally have a need in a project for a custom section we don't have in our Conspectus Cloud masters, and would usually start from the same template we use for creating our master sections since it is aligned to SectionFormat and PageFormat (canned template).
Custom sections are usually for new or "composite" products; a recent custom spec section one of our writers created was for a golf simulator.
Melody Fontenot, AIA, CSI, CCCA, CCS, CDT, LEED AP, SCIP
Portland, OR |
Edward R Heinen CSI CDT CCS LEED-AP
Senior Member
Username: edwardheinen
Post Number: 27
Registered: 04-2022
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:01 pm: | |
I've developed plenty of custom master/project specs totally from scratch; making use of MasterFormat, Section/PageFormat, and keeping a repository library.
Interesting comment about "canned language" so, what does that mean?
Lean Construction folks around here have commented about "over-specifying" being wasteful for construction. I think this happens because specs typically start with masters then edited down and tailored, whereas drawings are mostly custom from scratch, other than standard details. The lack of CSI-qualified specifiers contributes to this effect.
I can see that repetitive language arrangements can numb the mind of the reader, and lead to dismissiveness.
But without it, doesn't it become riskier as "inconsistent language?" |
David G. Axt, CDT, CCS, CSI, SCIP
Senior Member
Username: david_axt
Post Number: 2105
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:10 pm: | |
I meant to say "custom master specification," which means all the specifications not just a select few.
I will also create a custom section if I do not have it or if it is some weird material that some designer has selected.
The retired specifier I spoke with had created an entire library of specifications from scratch.
What I meant by "canned language" is using their language pretty much verbatim.
David G. Axt, CDT, CCS, CSI, SCIP
Specifications Consultant
Axt Consulting LLC |
Melody Fontenot
Senior Member
Username: melodyccs
Post Number: 8
Registered: 01-2023
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:35 pm: | |
We have our own masters in Conspectus Cloud. They are broad and concise, with many years of use on projects all over the world...and constant upkeep!
Sherry Harbaugh has custom masters available too: https://specseducation.online/trc-master-guide-specifications/
To Ed's point, in Conspectus Cloud, we also offer a Uniformat-based approach to documenting assemblies, listing minimal basic requirements as we know them. Would love to get more input from the LEAN community on these! We have a blog that explains this approach in more detail here: https://www.conspectusinc.com/blog/the-spd-leveraging-efficiency
Melody Fontenot, AIA, CSI, CCCA, CCS, CDT, LEED AP, SCIP
Portland, OR |
Margaret G. Chewning FCSI CCS
Senior Member
Username: presbspec
Post Number: 372
Registered: 01-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:36 pm: | |
Altho' I probably qualify as one of the old specifiers, I will pull from the "canned" masters for most of my sections. However, there is certain language and organization in them I will modify to suit the project and references I prefer in my project manuals.
When I do have to do a custom section for a project, a copy goes to a master file I keep for all of my projects, whether commercial or SpecsIntact.
I do keep a "cheat" sheet of SectionFormat hanging by my desk for all of the available articles and their proper order. |
William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS, CSI and SCIP Member Emeritus, VCE Certified Master Gardener
Senior Member
Username: wpegues
Post Number: 1014
Registered: 10-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, January 11, 2025 - 12:44 am: | |
When I first started back in 1976 writing specifications it was with the DC office of SOM. They had their own Master, not based on any of the standardized systems. When I went to WDG in 1983, they had tried working with Master Spec and had someone that was doing that. But they did not like the results. The office had been founded in the late 1930s and over that time a lot of situations created by loose developers requirements and the design and consdtruction process in the DC region had established a lot of modifications that needed to be added. So, having had 6 years of working with and maintaining a custom master, I simply wrote their office master for them (prior to that each partner (5 of them) each wrote their own by cloning their most recent similar type project.
So, time passes and the master evolved over time and we never looked back to any of the then and now master packages. Our Custom Master was the new Standard used by the office. Any addition or modification was modified into the existing Master as as it occurred. And if there was a slow (rare) time in the office I would go back and review the entire Master.
We did occasional projects where the requirement due to being a government related project required the use of a specific system, typically Master Spec. Maybe that was once a year or so. Those I modified with the special requirements we put in our custom master. This made the project harder to do than if we had used our own master.
I retired in 2017, handed everything over to a former specifier that had been assisting for several years that left and then came back where we did a year overlap. She became the new Director of Specifications and is with them still and maintaining the custom ‘in-house’ master to this day.
William C. Pegues, FCSI, CCS, CSI and SCIP Member Emeritus |
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