This Tip looks at how a Specification should deal with Specification discrepancies with other documents.
This is not ‘order of precedence’ which is usually a clause in the General Conditions of Contract which gives the legal importance order of the different documents (usually the Spec is at the top…No.1 document).
How a Specification deals with discrepancies with other documents is a different thing, dealt with at the start of the Prelims, that spells out what document is to be followed in case of a discrepancy between the Spec and another contract document.
This may sound like an acceptance of documentation mistakes, and it is! No set of documents is going to be perfect, no matter how hard we try.
Good documentation will inevitably have a few discrepancies…and there needs to be a mechanism to quickly resolve them.
Here are examples of the common sources of discrepancies between the Spec and other documents:
- Principal designer drawings/schedules/other designer documents – allow these over the Spec (the designer has thought long and hard about the content of what goes into these documents),
- The General Conditions of Contract (GCC) – allow the GCC (it would be foolish to do otherwise),
- Consultant documents – allow the consultant documents, they are the experts in their fields, don’t argue with them,
- Manufacturer’s written instructions – allow the manufacturers instructions, again they are the experts in their fields (but have an ‘out’ if the instructions are low quality),
- Referenced documents (eg Australian standards, statutory regulations, etc) – allow the higher quality, more expensive option while still being NCC compliant, because the designer may want that option.
And with ALL of these…FIRST…the Spec needs to state that the contract administrator is to be notified at the time of finding the discrepancy.
These are the main sources of discrepancy between the Spec and other documents. If a solution is not specified, all sorts of arguments and interpretations will arise which leads to trouble.
PROMOTIONAL NOTE: The ArchiAssist Specification resolves in a reasonable way, all the negative outcomes relating to the issues presented in this advisory.
To know more about ArchiAssist, you can download a FREE SAMPLE Specification from the website.
