Specifications are provided as part of the documentation set that becomes part of the legal contract for a project. The information contained is then used and relied upon by many parts of the industry including territorial authorities, QS’s, constructors, your clients and for building maintenance. With this in mind, Masterspec has recently undertaken research on the quality of the specifications being lodged for Consent - and the results indicate that not all specifications are created equal.
Our research has shown that specifications across the industry, including some documentation that looks very similar to our own Masterspec systems (which have been illegally copied), are often reused across multiple projects. This behaviour increases liability and risk, but also reduces the validity of all industry specifications. Copied documentation that is not project-specific often includes out of date or incomplete information, compromising the quality of the information and ultimately the project's quality as well.
This is often done in a vain attempt to reduce the time and effort required to produce considered, quality documentation. Unfortunately this practice means the copied documents become less about providing valuable building information for the construction process and more about just ticking the box of completing a specification.
In response, and to help identify authentic and professional specifications, the NextGen2 platform now features a QR Code and a unique specification number on the index page. The industry as a whole relies on the integrity of the documentation set and this new feature will help identify project specifications that have been authored using the latest information, but also that the content has been considered and completed.
This unique specification reference will provide a simple check with either a QR scanner or though the Masterspec website, of the basic project details to confirm that it is related to the named project. This will help protect practices and the industry from practitioners who fail to discharge their duty of care by providing each project with a customised and up to date specification.
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