Specifications of work quality are an important part of facility design documentation. They describe the required quality and components of a facility. General specifications are available from organizations like ASTM, ANSI, and CSI, but must be modified for local conditions. Writing specifications requires balancing assumed reasonable behavior with pre-specifying all operations precisely. Performance specifications have also been developed, specifying the required performance or quality of the finished facility while leaving the construction method up to the contractor.

1. Course teacher: Tina Farjana Lecturer, Architecture Discipline. Fareast
International University
SPECIFICATION
COURSE CODE : Arch. 432
Course no: Arch-432
Presentation
Roksana Khatun ID : 19128011

2. The Specifications Material and Work
Specifications of work quality are an important feature of facility
designs. Specifications of required quality and components represent
part of the necessary documentation to describe a facility. Typically,
this documentation includes any special provisions of the facility
design as well as references to generally accepted specifications to be
used during construction.

3. The Specifications Material and Work
General specifications of work quality are available in numerous
fields and are issued in publications of organizations such as the
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI), or the Construction
Specifications Institute (CSI). Distinct specifications are formalized
for particular types of construction activities, such as welding
standards issued by the American Welding Society, or for particular
facility types, such as the Standard Specifications for Highway
Bridges issued by the American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials. These general specifications must be
modified to reflect local conditions, policies, available materials, local
regulations and other special circumstances.

4. The Specifications Material and Work
This set of specifications requires judgment in application since some items
are not precisely specified. For example, excavation must extend a
"sufficient" distance to permit inspection and other activities. Obviously, the
term "sufficient" in this case may be subject to varying interpretations. In
contrast, a specification that tolerances are within plus or minus a tenth of a
foot is subject to direct measurement. However, specific requirements of the
facility or characteristics of the site may make the standard tolerance of a
tenth of a foot inappropriate. Writing specifications typically requires a
trade-off between assuming reasonable behavior on the part of all the parties
concerned in interpreting words such as "sufficient" versus the effort and
possible inaccuracy in pre-specifying all operations.

5. The Specifications Material and Work
In recent years, performance specifications have been developed for many
construction operations. Rather than specifying the required construction
process, these specifications refer to the required performance or quality of
the finished facility. The exact method by which this performance is
obtained is left to the construction contractor. For example, traditional
specifications for asphalt pavement specified the composition of the asphalt
material, the asphalt temperature during paving, and compacting procedures.
In contrast, a performance specification for asphalt would detail the desired
performance of the pavement with respect to impermeability, strength, etc.
How the desired performance level was attained would be up to the paving
contractor. In some cases, the payment for asphalt paving might increase
with better quality of asphalt beyond some minimum level of performance.