Detail here relates to all Australian architectural, building, interiors, landscape projects including housing, multi-residential, industrial, commercial.
Designers do not need different specifications for different size or type projects if they use a good master specification. Let’s examine these two things, size, and type.
Project size shouldn’t affect the specification.
A quality specification is needed even for the smallest projects because all building work is important and very expensive and not being prepared can lead to big problems.
On big projects, there is a lot more of each of the different materials, compared to a smaller project. However, having a lot or a little of a material does not change how these materials are used, and specification detail does not need to change.
An increase in size of a project will see an increase in the number of drawings, and schedules, but not the specification.
Project type shouldn’t affect the specification.
There are many types of buildings all designed for different uses, and they all have a number of different things to be incorporated. However, by comparison, there is a huge number of common things.
Most things are done the same way on all projects, for example, laying concrete, laying bricks, metalwork fabrication, laying of tiles, and on and on. They are done with regular monotony, year after year, site to site across Australia.
This common detail only goes into the specification. The project-specific things (those not done the same way on all projects) are put on drawings or in schedules. So the same master specification can be used on different type projects, and its common detail simply edited to suit.
Letting project size and type affect the specification is difficult and risky.
Creating a specification is a difficult thing if you want it to be.
ArchiAssist helps designers by adhering to the dicipline of keeping common construction detail in the specification and the designer draws and schedules project-specific detail.
Don’t be fooled by arguments that that only lead to complexity. This increases the level of difficulty in creating and reading the specification. Everything will suffer as a consequence.
