“The purpose of the reformat is to truly create a plug and play specification document — making it easy to use by mechanical engineers, architects, contractors, and others,” said Richard Lantz, president of NADCA. “A CSI-certified professional specifications writer was hired to work on the document and we are extremely pleased with the outcome.”

The Construction Specifications Institute created the template in three parts for document modification for project requirements and systems variations.

The three sections of the document are general project information, products to be used and execution.

NADCA hired David Stutzman, and president of specifications consulting and quality assurance firm, Conspectus Inc., and Steve Preis, a mechanical engineer and independent specifier, to work together on the document.

“Specifications are contract documents, so they must be clear, concise, accurate and written in a consistent way so that the specification looks, reads and interacts with all the other specs on a job,” Preis said. “A typical job might have 150 or 200 specs, so they all have to go together.”

“Something we think is minor, like punctuation, can completely alter the meaning of something,” Stutzman said. “Because CSI’s standard aims for clarity and standardization, adhering to the style is critical.”              

The newly formatted general specification document is available for download at this website.