Today we talk about the relationship between the Specification and the General Conditions of Contract (GCC – the terms the owner and builder agree to).
There is a good rule to help understand what content should be in each of these very important, but very different documents.
The GCC should have content only dealing with the administrative aspects of that contract. The Specification should have all the micro-detail that applies to construction. The two content types are very different.
A good way to think of the content is thinking from the perspective of a subcontractor on the job. GCC content should not interest a subbie at all. The Specification content should interest a subbie a lot.
For the original authors of both these types of documents, this is a good rule to follow as it saves a lot of confusion about what is in which document.
Unfortunately, many of the industry GCC’s and the industry Specification masters, are not completely coordinated in this way, and each can have content that should be in the other.
Fortunately, users can have control over the Specification master, searching to find one that only deals with construction. Having such a master, it is relatively easy then, with an industry standard GCC, to cross-out any construction detail it contains, leaving it to just deal with the administrative aspects of the contract.
This all makes for clearer documentation.
