CSC and CSI have announced the 10-year renewal of an agreement to license and support MasterFormat in Canada, United States, and worldwide. MasterFormat is used throughout the building industry to format specifications for construction contract documents.
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The Alberta Construction Association is looking for assistance with developing and updating trade definitions, and aligning them with resources like MasterFormat and UniFormat. CSC past-president Keith Robinson, FCSC, FCSI, RSW, LEED AP, is the CSC Edmonton Chapter representative providing support for the initiative.
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A basic tenet of a good set of construction documents is “Mention it once and in the right place.” The contract is between the owner and the contractor, and the specifications communicate to the latter what is required (without telling the contractor how to construct). This second article in a three-part series on architects, specifiers, and construction documentation focuses on language and specification format.
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This final article in a three-part series on specifications examines the divisions of MasterFormat .
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In more than one instance, this author has heard an architect tell a specifier something along the lines of “You want 250 hours for specifications? I have only budgeted 70 hours.” A project manager once told me, “We provide specifications only because the client requires us to do it—the contractor does not look at the specifications until there is a legal issue.” This is a dangerous line of thinking because it eventually has negative impact on the architectural firm and its reputation.
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English is complicated, and misinterpretation of written communication is pervasive. Without the added layer of subtleties of speech tone, body language, and context, many written sentences can be easily misinterpreted. This is especially true when it comes to specifications.
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The revised 2016 edition of MasterFormat is available for purchase at Spex.ca. The joint publication of CSC and CSI, it is a master list of numbers and titles classified by work results or construction practices, used to organize project manuals, detail cost information, and relate drawing notations to specifications.
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MasterFormat is the industry’s leading resource for organizing project manuals and specifications, construction project filing systems, construction product information, and cost estimates. The new, updated, improved edition is coming later this spring, and this article offers a sneak peak on what has changed from the previous edition.
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For 60 years, CSC has worked to improve the quality of construction documentation in this country. Nevertheless, there is still some confusion over the standard definition of a specification—despite its ubiquity in the design/construction world, there are often misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
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