Abstract
According to the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) which trade association’s mission is to promulgate how “spec’s” are correctly written. The primary goal when authoring a construction specification is to make sure it is: clear, correct, concise and complete. However, as most who bid projects for a living know this is too often not the case. Instead “spec’s” frequently contain an over-abundance of words and so pages that are just as often contradictory from one section or page to another. This practice certainly does not qualify the “spec” as being correct, concise, nor clear, and while the author of it may lay claim to it being complete, and the purpose of all the verbiage, the courts often find otherwise.
This paper examines the authors successful experiences on some simple and very complex projects where both the coatings and environmental requirements were limited to a few pages. Being made up almost entirely of SSPC/NACE and PDCA standards that described “performance criteria” as opposed to being a prescriptive or proprietary type of specification defining what was to be used, when it was to be used and how it was to be done.
The benefits of this style of specifying known as “reference or performance” are that they allow the contractor a much larger degree of inventiveness and ingenuity in fulfilling the project criteria than do prescriptive or proprietary specs. Which typically equates to dollars saved for the project Owner and an excellent product as well. The downside’s of this type of specifying are that to do them correctly a specifier needs to be very knowledgeable about the references used and of course the qualities and limitations of any product types or systems being specified.
