Other Responsibilities for Specifications Writers

Specification & Product Discussions Specifications Discussions
1

I have an upcoming annual review with my supervisor, who is probably the best supervisor I’ve ever had during my career in specs (understands the importance of specs, respects my input as a spec writer, etc.). He made a great point that designers/architects within our firm have promotions, and responsibilities and positions they can work towards. However, I’m the first person to be in my position at my firm and I’m the sole spec writer so there’s not really anything already planned that I can work towards.

He asked me to start thinking of ideas for this - additional responsibilities that I could take on and ways I could move up within the firm.

In addition to leading specification efforts for our firm, I also help with reviewing submittals as my workload allows and as my expertise of specs/products is needed, but it’s not for all submittals and only when needed.

I know some of you are also architects, but I’d love to hear from some other specifications writers and see what other responsibilities/roles you carry within your firms. What else does your job consist of besides just writing specs?

2

As a specifier working for firms, I played a big role in material and product selection that would meet the criteria that the design team was thinking of. This included things like making sure the windows they wanted to use could meet the design loads, including when taking into account the mullion patterns. I also often took the lead on specialty, high-performance items. An example of that was selection of acoustically rated doors, often desired by architects at cost-prohibitive sizes. I would help make the design fit the product choices. I also did a lot of review of design details, in particular for exterior conditions, making sure both the arrangement and types of materials were right.

Most of the architects I worked with understood and appreciated the importance of standards and testing, but really didn’t have the time, patience or perhaps aptitude to really dig into how they affected design selections. I could and did take the time to really dig into these and it was appreciated by the firm.

So I would say that materials technology is at the core of a specifier’s role and shouldn’t be separated from that role. BTW, I was not trained as an architect.

3

Find out what they expect from the architects to advance through the hierarchy: associate, senior associate, etc. See what can be adapted/changed to be applicable for a spec writer.

One thing can be working towards CSI CCS and CCCA certifications. The other thing can be adding letters from other alphabet soups: LEED-AP, WELL-AP, et al. Depending on what is applicable for your firm.

FWIW, the description from the AIA Compensation report includes the following:

  • Five to ten years of professional experiences
  • Licensed architect preferred.
  • Reviews drawings and other project information to write and edit product specifications
  • Uses through understanding of project design requirements to translate project needs for specific materials, equipment installation, certifications, testing, and methods applicable to the project.
  • Performs product research, assists in material selection
  • Develops and maintains relationships with vendors
  • Performs quality management reviews and provides technical advice to project teams.

Also, find out what the timeline generally is. And how those promotions are decided.

4

When other architects move up within the firm, their current responsibilities are replaced by their new responsibilities. Thus, if they started as a BIM operator and worked their way up, they are very unlikely to still have their BIM operator responsibilities.

Specifiers are different. Principals seem to want to keep their specifiers as specifiers, which means promotions will add more responsibilities without reducing their original responsibilities. Thus, a specifier may become overwhelmed and their performance may take a hit that will be looked upon negatively at the next review.

Specifier promotions should be considered differently from other firm positions. The quality and expertise of a specifier’s contribution to each project should be considered first and foremost. They should next look at the number and size of projects to which the specifier contributes. The volume should increase over time as the specifier becomes more efficient.

If the specifier becomes so efficient that they now have time for other responsibilities, then look at providing in-house QC/peer reviews of drawings, becoming the in-house code expert (that is what I did), and reviewing the firm’s contracts with clients and consultants (another thing I did). You could also establish an in-house training program that provides LUs for employees.

There are many things that you could do depending on the size of the firm. Large firms (i.e., nation-wide or global) probably have employees hired to do some of these tasks, but the smaller firms may not.

5

Here is an outlier that you might consider. Depending on your BIM/Revit proficiency, in addition to specs and maintaining your spec database, there are revit component libraries and detail libraries that desperately need to be managed. At my previous firm, we were looking for a revit component liberian who could, when needed, produce specifications for our smaller projects as well as maintain corporate standards for materials, products, and the spec database as a whole.

6

Adding onto John’s and Ron’s suggestions: As your work will involve review of the Drawings to determine what to specify, you will be in a good position to determine what is wrong with the Drawings and the aspects that require more staff education. So, you could add on roles/responsibilities such as the following:

  • Provide QA-QC comments on the Drawings. Depending upon firm size and your other responsibilities these reviews could be as a primary reviewer or as a secondary supportive reviewer.
  • Help select and coordinate in-house education. Since your work will create a lot of connections with product representatives, you will be in a good position to orchestrate these events and make sure they are meaningful for the staff.
  • Provide in-house educational presentations to staff. By working with project teams and reviewing their Drawings you can readily identify common issues and gaps in knowledge and then tailor the programs you create to address them.
7

Some great suggestions listed.
A couple of other thoughts:

  1. I like to use specs as a mentoring tool for the folks producing details. For example I give the stair and railing specs to the folks doing the detailing and ask them to mark them up as best they can. I don’t use their markups in my specs but I usually get good information that I wouldn’t otherwise receive. I also get a chance to discuss content with the detailers who are hungry to learn and often don’t know what they don’t know. Great way to start discussions and maybe reduce Drawing Notes that can often contradict the specs.
  2. I don’t know what your focus is (or your firm) but it seems like a big gap in knowledge for many firms is building envelope (roof, walls, fenestrations, below-grade, deck, etc.) Lots to know but groups like IIBEC and ABAA offer plenty of classes and certifications that you can study for. After you get your CCS and CCCA of course ;=D
8

My experience as a specifier coincides with many of the good suggestions above, all of which give “added value” to the specifier’s position in a firm.

Getting out in front of one’s co-workers to offer educational programs, and becoming involved in professional associations outside the firm provide opportunities to exhibit expertise that is not always apparent in day-to-day tasks.

For promotion up through the ranks one needs to exhibit leadership of some kind. This could mean anything from establishing initiatives and tools that are useful to the firm, to taking on a management task such as QA/QC.

9

This is long, but it is relevant, and it was also fun to write!

Really great advice and suggestions here. I am not a registered Architect. I graduated with a BS in Architecture (U of Tenn) but got interrupted by military and transfer of schools. So, by the time I graduated I was going to end up over 30 and under 3. That is, over 30 years old and under 3 years of experience. The compensation was going to be terrible for several years. I came to that decision when I got out of the military and was going into 3rd year design. Fortunately, UT had just hired Marvin Martin who had left CSI Institute and was teaching Materials and Methods at UT as well as an innovative program for specifications. I took all his classes and came out of that with a specifications position recommendation from that was a 6 month job writing for a lab in Oak Ridge that was repurposing a small building with major renovations. They had the plans, but they were going to build it with their personnel.

Anyway, that as just the start. I joined the local CSI chapter, and never looked back. 2 years later I joined SOM in DC and in 1983 with recession slowly recovering moved to the local firm of WDG Architecture. I came in with enough knowledge at that point to head up their specifications effort. They were growing, and their history was each partner wrote their own. They now rank annually in the top 30 firms for high rise multi-family architecture, and are on the leading edge of conversion of existing office buildings to residential and mixed residential/hotel. Lots of long term experience in repurposing existing buildings since no one wants to tear down a building in DC given the height restrictions, and those built in the 60s typically squeezed 1 floor in where a new structure has one less.

I stayed with them for 37 years until retirement in 2017.

Thats just background and during which I laid the foundation for advancement. With my background Architecture which I did like design, I would tour the office every other day or so, and not less than once a week and see what was new in early design, and if anyone needed any research for materials for projects underway, or, review and response to contractors or owners proposing lower costs, if such was truly available and if not why to stay with what we were doing. Both design-wise and technical.

I was writing Design Development Outline Specifications as well as the full project manual reviewing all consultant work, marking up every section they wrote. I developed great rapport with them.

I also made it clear that if anyone wanted/needed impromptu support in a developer meeting they could call me to come in and clarify the firms position.

Also, the specification master that I wrote for them was totally custom and constantly updated by me and coordinated with the group maintaining all the drawing details so that terminology 100% matched. Keywords were always identical between specs and drawings, a list was maintained and nothing could be added or changed without an agreement between my and the group, and that worked both ways.

Thats setting the base for advancement. I was Head of Specifications. An informal job title. There was no problem in moving up through the standard positions of Associate and Senior Associate. But after that there was Associate Principal, Principal, and Managing Partner.

I am not sure how high I could have gone, but age was a factor. I planed to retire at 70 (which I did). I became an Associate Principal about age 60. I was advancing pretty much on track with those that I came in with, though many left the firm over time. Anyway, when the group that made association when I did were moving from Associate Principal to Principal, that was about 3 years before my retirement projection, which I had let them know since we were actively looking for my replacement. The firm had a buy in clause for full Principals, and a minimum 10 years before you could retire after becoming a Principal. I was actually told in advance of my peers promotions that they had discussed me and that they decided not to offer it since there is no way I could take it and retire, let alone if that became permitted could I afford the buy in and then retire 3 years later.

Nice of them to do that, and I totally understood and to this day agree. I would have had to say no thank you.

But that shows essentially that given the right firm, the right psychology in that firm, that there is no limit. You must become an asset, not just a hard worker.

I had to relate a story that is an example of the foundation of this path to advancement. After I was promoted to Associate principal, 3 of my long term specifier friends that were independent consultants had a special party for me. One of them asked me how I got to be elevated since he thought the definition of a principally was someone who brought fees into the firm. I said, funny you should ask that since the 2 principals that recommended me were asked the same thing by one of the other managing principals, and in that meeting, they looked at each other, and then turned back to the questioner and replied, William probably keeps more money from leaving the firm than any one of us brings in during any given year.

The one that made that comment had a few years previously come quietly into my office and sat down while my back was turned and I did not even know he was there until he tapped the desk. I turned around and he was very nervous and asked if I had changed anything that was in our standard section about attachment of precast panels that sat on lintels, or changed the requirements of the support length of the lintel for a particular project. I was an aware of some proposals from the contractor to save costs that we rejected due to standards for such. It turned out the developer HAD permitted the changes, and the drawings we had referred to the support and attachment requirements in the specifications and they were not changed either. It was a contentious issue. The principal simply said thank you, and with a big smile on his face left my office.

Turns out that over night, this project which was already partially occupied a 5 foot talk panel that was 1 bay long located at the 2nd floor slab simply fell off the face of the building right next to the entrance walk way leaving a major depression in the ground.

Consider that the building then needed to have the lintels all reset. In addition to shortening the lintel, they had entirely excluded the structural tie back.

So, you can make yourself an asset, and not just someone writing specs.

And I have never looked back with regret at any part of my career. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. And over the years developed many presentations to the firm about materials. I was even invited back after I retired and gave an updated presentation on vegetated roofing which I had made a specialty in my last 10 years.

10

William’s point directly above about being the person in the firm who “keeps more money from leaving the firm than any one of [the principals] brings in during any given year” is really important.
The unrealized potential losses are much harder to measure than the actually realized gains. It’s harder to see the near misses where a lot of money (and/or expensive time) could have gone out the door due to a bunch of rework, a claim or a lawsuit, or a deeply disappointed client’s not becoming a repeat client.
But over time, as new people begin to work at your firm, some of them will be architects who have had bad experiences or near misses caused by the sorts of things that can be prevented by a good specifier (good specs, good coordination between drawings and specs, and assistance during construction from the specifier). They’ll see the difference between their past experiences and working with you. This may take time. But as in William’s example, questions/problems that come up in construction really smack an architect in the face, and the specs’ “saving them” may be pretty memorable.
The absence of a bad thing is harder to see than the presence of a good thing, so sometimes you may have to point it out at the appropriate time and place. (Such as at annual employee reviews.)

11

I believe QA/QC drawing review responsibilities would fit nicely with specification writing. After all, we examine the drawings and extract information from them. Sometimes project architects/managers are so used to looking at the drawings they have problems seeing what is really on them (tree/forest thing). I find that PAs/PMs rarely coordinate between the drawings and specifications.

My only concern is that the added responsibilities would take away from the time spent on specification writing. As we all know, well-crafted and coordinated specifications take a lot of time and effort. I dont have to tell this group that good specifications are very important to the success of the project.

12

Melissa,
Thanks for asking a thoughtful question that has led to lots of interesting opinions.
I agree with much of the previous responses and will add sustainability. The in house specifier becomes an expert in every sustainability program to come through the office - LBC, LEED, PHIUS, etc… If not specified correctly, the certifications will not be achieved. You may even find yourself providing education within the office about each program.
As a young specifier in a large A/E firm, at review time the partner in charge of salary and review wanted to pay me like a secretary (probably because I am a girl), and I compared myself to job captain/project manager people for my level of responsibility and independence. The senior specifier and marketing director backed me up.

13

Kudos to all of the above.

Im going to stick my neck out here and say that the actual writing of the specifications is arguably the least important part of what we do. To my mind, a specifiers greatest value is the big picture approach and experience that a specifier can bring to a project.
Early-on meetings, to review project scope and SD or DD drawings, and to determine to project manual TOC.
Later meetings with designers and project architects to review specification drafts and coordinate drawings and specifications, and determine and agree on terminology and keywords.
QA reviews of drawings. We can notice potential problems while they are still on paper. As David Axt noted, using the specifier as fresh eyes as one who is not so close to the drawings that they look at them without seeing.

Specifiers as a whole tend to have more experience than most of the designers and project architect they work with. That having seen it before experience ideally leads to a critical holistic approach to thinking and to reviewing of the design.

A related big picture contribution the specifier can bring is with what I call the Domino Effect: if something changes, what are the consequences, ie. how does one change domino down and affect related conditions and details.

About 20 years ago, I was reviewing the SD drawings for a professional football stadium for which we were writing the specs. There was a four-foot diameter trash chute for use by the food vendors, which stopped at the top level; the designers had never done a trash chute before, and did not know that code requires the chute to project four feet minimum above the roof in order to vent. That by itself could have been remedied easily enoughexcept that extending the chute above the roof plane would have interfered with the opening of the adjoining retractable roof. When I pointed this out to the project architect, he said, You just earned your fee. Unfortunately, the project was killed for political reasons and never progressed past SD.

Without patting myself on the back too much, this analysis was a result of experiencenoticing the chute stopped at the top level, familiarity with code requirements for chutes, thinking what happens when the chute is extended through the roof and noticing on the roof plan the retractable roof. A holistic way of thinkingseeing not only the forest and trees but also the branches and leaves–that becomes second nature for specifiers.

14

Another good additional responsibility would be a code review of the design. Specifiers are skilled at reading, understanding, and interpreting technical documents.