Specification

Where standards are written for everyone, specifications are written for this project: which pipe from the standard's options, which finish, which tests, which submittals, to what acceptance criteria. They are produced by the design organisation, structured by work sections, and consumed by bidders pricing them, contractors executing them, and inspectors holding work to them. With the drawings they form the contract's technical content, with a stated order of precedence for when the two disagree.

Specifications divide by philosophy: prescriptive specs state exactly what to provide and how; performance specs state what the result must achieve and leave method to the contractor — a risk-allocation choice as much as a technical one, since whoever chooses the method owns its failure.

In practice most specifications descend from master documents, edited per project — and that lineage is their weakness. Master specs accumulate superseded standard citations, options irrelevant to this project, and requirements contradicting these drawings; unedited residue becomes contractual text. A large share of RFIs, review findings and disputes trace to specification content nobody consciously chose.