Which are the most appropriate terms to use in specification to disqualify a product/procedure/material: “not approved”, “not accepted”, “not allowed”, or “not permitted”?
For example:
“Masonry Cement: Not approved.”
“Grouting of Door Frames: Not accepted.”
“Galvanized Fasteners: Not allowed.”
“Field Mixing: Not permitted.”
Oh Boy David, I’ll bet you just opened another can of worms. It probably depends upon whether you’re not approving / dis-allowing a “System” or an “Assembly” .
Seriously, maybe it does? If left up to me, I would use “not permitted” when talking about construction activities like Grouting or Mixing. I’d use not accepted" when talking about a product like Masonry Cement.
David, SpecLink uses “Not permitted”.
I personnally use ‘not permitted’. I think ‘not allowed’ is acceptable, but that is how I would rank their use in my opinion.
‘Not approved’ seems out of cycle. Approval relates to the submittal process. Its not that it is incorrect, it is just that its using the term of one cycle of the process in an differnent cycle. In the body of the specification you should not be trying to tell the contractor what you will no approve, but what you don’t want him to consider doing before it gets to the approval process.
The same is the way I look at ‘not accepted’. Accepting, approving…connected to a submittal process which you want to avoid getting that far.
As to whether you ‘allow’ (or not) an activity and ‘permit’ (or not) a product or item - I don’t go that far down the root of the word. Plus, I personally like seeing the exact same phrase used for all situations consistently throughout the project manual.
William
(ps - if there seem to be typos in the above, my office has gotten very cold for some reason and my fingers are stiff -grin! I tried to fix as many as I noticed.)
I would use “not permitted”, or perhaps a construction such as: “Do not grout door frames”.
I fully agree with William Pegues comments regarding the terms “Not approved”, “Not Accepted”, etc.. for the same reasons.
How about “Not Acceptable”?
I prefer to just tell the Contractor to do or not do, use or not use such and such. I like to use permit otherwise. I think any of the words are fine. Intuitively, however, I think approve and accept imply that there was a process or will be a process of approval or acceptance. Contractors might see it as an excuse to try to argue for approval or acceptance of something else. The word permit seems to imply that the issue is out of our hands because of some code, a government mandate, or unchangeable requirement by the owner. For that reason, it is stronger than the other words, which I suspect is why I like to use it. Allow has a snobbish aspect to it.
David,
Just thinking.
Why not specify only what you want. Why specify what you do not want?
If it is not in the spec it is “not permitted” unless your specs are so vague and ambigous that you turn over the choice or option to the contractor.
If your steel metal frame spec does not specify grouted frames in parts 2 or 3 why bring up the subject?
Wayne
Wayne, you have a good point. However, the reason that I do it is that there are a few specific items that just keep coming around that I have to drive a stake into them up front.
For instance, in our practice, we don’t want to see tile adhesively applied to walls, we want a latex modified set - even to drywall. In the mid 80s, I started seeing it show up on submittals. Even though it was never specified ever, and the application for walls gave the specific products we wanted.
We kept getting back lame excuses that ‘well, you did not say we couldn’t use it’. Dumb response yes - its a menu, if its not on the menu its not avaiable to you. But it did not matter, it kept coming back. And then owner’s kept getting into conflicts with the contractors because their response was then, ‘well, it was priced based on tile adhesives so this is an extra.’ That was always shot down, but its a hassle I did not want our owners to deal with, and so I started putting in “Tile adhesive: Not permitted” in part 2. And somewhat redundantly, in part 3 I have a paragraph that reads, “Adhesive application of tile to walls will not be permitted”.
Sometimes you need 2 stakes to kill the vampire.
There are very very few items that we do this with. I can probably count them on 1 hand. Masonry cement is another, and in conjunction with our structural engineers batch plant on site for concrete is not permitted except on those jobs where they permit it.
As I think of it, those may be the only 3 times I do have this phrase in the spec…oh - and under coordination drawings and shop drawings it states that reproductions of contractor documents will not be permitted to be used.
There, that’s it. The only exclusions. I am sure that others in specific other regions may have a different set, and I am sure its probably fairly limited and due to a similar situation.
William
oh - make that ‘…reproductions of CONTRACT drawings…’. My hands are still freezing and sluggish.
And then there is Murphy’s Law.
Hey William, I could have used some of that cold down here last weekend!
We had several contractors who told us that they wanted to use masking tape when taping gypsum board seams (and there was one contractor that had already started to do so until our CA guy found it), even though we identify the product as paper reinforcing tape … so our master now specifically says that masking tape is not acceptable. I would have to think that every firm has something similar based on their past project history.
David, I’m still trying to absorb all the assembly/system comments, but here goes…
Approve submittals, accept substitutions. Or reject them. I’d keep all three verbs out of the product/execution spec. They seem more suited to CA functions.
I prefer “not permitted” over “not allowed”. Or use “prohibited”.
In theory, I agree with Wayne that you only specify what you want, but in reality there are probably limited times you want to exclude. I agree with William that these instances should be very limited. Seems to me there was another thread about this topic, right? “Unacceptable Manufacturers”???
Try ‘okay’ and ‘no’. (I am smiling when I suggest this)
I tend to write, “Organic adhesives shall not be used” (since one could conceivably argue that anything used to adhere tile, including thinset mortar, is an adhesive.) For some reason, even though I usually eschew “shelby-style” specs, I prefer this wording to the more straightforward, “Do not use organic adhesives” or “Organic adhesives are not permitted.”
Two other things often specifically proscribed are knock-down HM frames and vinyl base (as opposed to vulcanized rubber).
I like to take the Nancy Regan approach and just say no. That way there is no argument over whether a product is allowed because you specifically did not say to not use it (double negative = positive). No means no. End of story.
Sometimes we run into a situation where something is allowed by building code (lowest common demominator) yet we still don’t want it. (For example with the UBC we specifically prohibited wire glass even though it was allowed by Code.)
Other instances occur when you are doing a design-build or performance spec. You may not get too nitty gritty about the details but have in mind what you don’t want on the project.
I don’t see how it could be possible to write a project manual without telling the contactor what you don’t want to see on the project.
how about a stamp: thumbs up for yeah, thumbs down for neay! You know, I think I had a set of stamps like that around here some where…but where could it be?
David and others,
I sometimes wear my ski instructors hat when it comes to some issues. It is not good to tell athletes what not to do. I puts negative thoughts into their brains when learning something new. Negative reinforcment.
As I said, I was just thinking and I spawned 8 responses.
I also use the phrase “not permitted” for all of the above lessons learned. I particulary like the masking tape (blue or tan?) for gypsum board taping and the stakes through the heart.
I love to check the “NOT APPROVED” box in the Request for Substitutions form.
William the Vampire Slayer, I am thinking of becoming Wayne the Imapler.
Walliam, do you threaten back charges to the contractor that regurgitates your own details back at you as his/her shop dwg submittal?
Wayne the Impaler
But Wayne, the Impaler was a Vampire - be careful, or do we have to figure out how all this relates to Buffy and Angle and those tv series -grin!
No, we don’t threaten back charges - we just return them unreviewed.