A New Specifications Primer

by Ed Buch, CSI, CCS, AIA

“Construction Specifications, A Primer” by Ralph W. Liebing, RA, CSI, (122 pages, self published in 2007 and available at www.lulu.com for $10.09), is a welcome introduction to the discipline of specifications writing. It is a primer that touches on many aspects of putting a project manual together. It’s short and is best read a topic at a time rather than reading it from start to finish.

Its length and the fact that it’s organized around 30 topics are the book’s most attractive features. Someone who might be curious about specifications practice will find it very easy to jump in almost anywhere and read one of the topics. They are interconnected and themes from one topic often appear in other topics. (On this point I think the book would have benefited from a good editor to cut down on some of the repetition.) It’s almost as though each topic was written independently before the idea of the book emerged.

For other architects and engineers, who have no intention of ever writing a specification section but who ought to know how they fit into a set of construction documents, there is an informative topic describing how the drawings and specifications should be developed together, in a coordinated and collaborative manner.

Liebing uses an eclectic approach in selecting his topics. Some younger readers will wonder what he’s talking about in Topic 7 where he describes the very, very long ago practice of using ditto masters and carbon paper in preparing specifications.

He includes a good presentation on the Standard of Care and how this differs from an architect’s negligence per se. He also makes the very good point that specifications should be proactive in describing what’s required in a project and not viewed solely as a defensive tool to be used against the contractor when problems arise.

I thought it was curious that he didn’t include any mention of any of the commercially available specifications systems. This is a short book and he couldn’t include everything. But, given the extent to which they’re used today by independent specifications consultants, and in A/E offices, I’m surprised he didn’t offer an opinion on them.

The author is a frequent contributor to the Discussion section on the website www.4specs.com, and in the Forum section of the Institute’s website, www.csinet.org. In both locations he provides thought provoking comments on topics beyond those included in his little book.

This book is a much easier way to read about specifications for anyone who might be put off initially by the sheer size and scope of such standard texts on the subject such as CSI’s Project Resource Manual or Rosen and Regener’s Construction Specifications Writing, Principles and Procedures, (both of which, by the way, are excellent books but for a more experienced audience). As Liebing makes clear, there’s no one best way to prepare a specification or assemble a project manual, only better ways of creating them. Certainly this little book will point the reader in some of those better ways.

Ed Buch is an architect in the Los Angeles office of Leo A Daly. A Nebraska native, he has worked in Los Angeles since 1988. Prior to that, he worked in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, and 5 years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.