Show of hands, who all is using the following for base spec content:
-MasterSpec
-SpecText
-BSD
-Home-grown office masters not based on any of the above
-Manufacturer guide specs cobbled together
-SpecsIntact
-Combination of above 3 to develop home-grown masters cobbled together
-Other [__________]
I’ve been developing my own office masters for a while, and am now taking that route entirely, unless required by contract to use one of the others.
My question is not about software, nor BIM integration, although those topics are interrelated and sure to come up. For that, I believe there is still nothing that beats a human being who communicates well with the design team at the right phases and adds value to the project by offering concise spec terminology for drawing notes (in turn helping the spec writer be more efficient at writing what is actually needed), which leads to getting the right things into the model early on.
Home-grown office masters based on legacy SpecText.
For missing sections I use manufacturer guide specs for a starting point because they typically are formated to CSI SectionFormat. Goggle ProductMasters for manufacturer’s guide specs licensed by ARCOM to Manufacturer (“Licensee”)
I also dip into master specifications from soruces such as the VA Master Specifications and Federal Green Construction Guide for Specifiers found on the WBDG website, and the now defuct Spexplus free masters.
I inherited Office Masters (the origins of which were lost in the mists of time, but the previous spec writer never had a computer on their desk) around 2000. I quickly convinced the office to get MasterSpec. Since that time, I have probably replaced 80% of the text in the Office Masters. Article Names, “the”, “and” and “End of Section” might be the only holdouts.
I started with copying and pasting from MasterSpec into our Office Masters because our Masters had a lot of California hospital project DNA burned into them that MasterSpec was weak in.
So my order of edit resources is:
Office Master
MasterSpec
Other Spec writers in our immense firm
Manufacturer’s Model Spec
Perennial Review Comments from AHJ’s
I write manufacturer guide spec and prepare them from scratch using CSI formats and principles. While I am aware of a manufacturer’s marketing needs, my first criteria and final criteria are, “will this document be useful to a design professional that is not an expert in specifying this type of product,” and, “will a project spec based on this guide spec help keep the project on track to a successful conclusion?”
Steve:
the “previous spec writer never had a computer on their desk”? in the year 2000? I inherited office masters from the troll before me – he had his own macros, and his masters were all sort of based on the template from the Rough Carpentry section from Masterspec – and the result was this:
none of the macros worked, and neither did any of the Masterspec utilities
if you changed anything, the formatting would completely blow up and be unfixable.
I realize that this is a really big tangent, but what other part of the business would allow someone who worked for a big firm to remain so much of a dinosaur that they didn’t stay current with industry standards? I can’t even imagine a designer who never used a computer, and the marketing people have generally moved past rolodexes. Why do offices allow specification writers to be and remain so idiosyncratic? Why isn’t there someone who says “you know what? you’re not current. Either get current, or get out”.
I use MasterSpec as a primary information resource when I need to know something about a topic or need to update my own material. Arcom (now Avitru) has a long tradition of commitment to content through its hiring of good writers and its excellent review processes.
I have worked with BSD SpecLink and SpecText. SpecLink was the first to provide an easy-to-use automatic editing system that I think could be useful to people who wear a lot of hats or who pre-edit specs for multiple project managers. I did not like the style of language it employed and found myself re-writing it and importing a lot of my own (termed “user”) Sections, which negated some of the advantages it offered. I’m not saying that SpecLink is not a good system. It just has not been for me - yet.
The early versions of SpecText were good examples of the 4Cs in practice. Bob Johnson told me that much of the original text was written by an engineer. It was written to make it easy to get the information. I still have an old print copy in a shed out back. When the History Channel rolls out an “Architectural Pickers” series, I may be one of the weird-o’s they visit.
For sentimental reasons, I also have copies of Hans’s “Construction Specifications Handbook” and “Library of Construction Specifications.” There is still a lot of humor and wisdom in those, even though much of the technical content is out of date.
Anne, you make excellent points. Unfortunately, there are some spec writers who create smoke to protect their jobs.
Anne,
I know that sounds insane today, but this was 2000 and he was retiring at the end of a long career at some of the best regarded US A/E firms. What he did have was a carefully nurtured working relationship with a bevy of admin people who he carefully trained who maintained the specs (written in Word Perfect) from their terminals - not PC’s.
When I took over, those masters were very simple documents that I worked in MSWord with. If there were macros, I never found them.
When I think back, it was a different tech world back then. We didn’t automatically provide PC’s for every desk until about 1994-1995. i suspect that the main driver was the advent of email. Before that, computers were provided as needed in unrelated silos. Accounting had their own mini network, the already mentioned word processing suite (mellow jazz, suspicious looking beverages and only the tiniest mini-spot task lights), and in the studios were the Sun Sparc CAD stations that were on a server with less memory than my phone. Principals and Project Directors were given desktop or laptop PC’s, but when I first arrived in 1992, some had actually bought their own.
I learned spec writing from Ken Gabel in OKC. He wrote his sections in pencil using beautiful architectural lettering, then had them typed. He never touched a computer. His work was awesome.
I currently use MasterSpec. Previously, I had used custom specifications that were created by the previous specifier.
The advantage of MasterSpec is the language is updated fairly frequently, but the biggest advantage is the editing tools (MasterWorks). Every once in a while I will have to create a new specification that is not in the MasterSpect library. If I start with a manufacturer’s guide specification I convert it over to MasterSpec styles. That way I can use the MasterWorks tools to edit it.
I am currently finishing up a project from a client that the previous specifier recommended me. The client is so entrenched in the previous specifier’s specifications that is has been difficult for me to use MasterSpec sections. I ended up using a combination of the previous specifier’s specifications and my MasterSpec specifications. That was a big mistake. It was like putting a Chevy engine in a Ford automobile.
Most repetitive spec tasks can be recorded as macros and then combined/modified to do whatever you want. After doing so for a good while, I strongly prefer my own methods. The longer I stick to what has worked for me the most reliably, the more I have been able to focus on content, researching, and updating.
When I took over for our firm three years ago, we had office masters built off of Masterspec, but prior admin staff and/or my immediate predecessor had destroyed the formatting and styles from ARCOM. We had an ARCOM license, so I tired starting over using MasterWorks and found it very challenging to use. I tried e-Specs for a year and the quirks of that software and the difficulties I had lead me to cancel. We purchased Speclink (which I used at a prior firm) and are getting it set up for our integrated A/E firm. In the interim, I’m using Visispecs to edit sections. Years ago I became fluent in MS word (when that firm gave up WordPerfect) and wrote all kinds of macros. Those macros mostly stopped working when Word went to the ribbon and I decided you shouldn’t need to be a programmer to write specs. Visispecs has been a very reliable tools with a limited learning curve and someone else handles the software.
I am looking forward to using BSD again. I found it was easy to enhance the text where needed and that the software presented fewer challenges that ARCOMs products.
Don’t feel alone, I’m cranking out the work with BSD and remodeling my house. So, I’m about 10 feet underwater.
My style doesn’t like the repetitive wordiness in MasterSpec. They have a lot of content that I don’t need.
MasterSpec. We’ve been pretty much joined at the hip with them since setting up in 2002. I’ve done some writing for them over the years, and sat on the MARC for 10 years. So I can look at the more common sections and know what was deleted, or should have been. We don’t get issues based upon using their masters as our starting point. The language is structured to be understandable by stakeholders that matter (including mediators and judges) which makes sense. We see a lot of custom firm masters in our consulting work - a few of which are up to date and contain some very thoughtful content.