What Is Expected of a Specifier?

• By: admin
• On: 02/09/2010 15:27:38
• In: Specifying Practice Group
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See Stutzman’s presentation or hear a recording of it. You can also read Stutzman’s notes from the meeting on his blog. 

Specifiers are continually advising their clients on product selection, code application, and how products will interact, Stutzman said. They are the people who fill the gap between what a manufacturer can tell you about their product, and what will happen once it’s in use with other materials.

Specifiers are experts at figuring out what designers are thinking. They rely on conversations with the architect and their past experience with his or her work to ensure design intent is translated into specifications. (Some practice group member suggested that good specifiers also use osmosis and highly developed mind-reading skills with some of their clients.)

Stutzman shared “The Specifier Quiz -- 20 Questions for the Designer” as an example of what can be done with information contained in the Specifiers Property Sets found on www.wbdg.org.

"These are the 20 questions we play with architects,” he said. “They know they need a flush wood door, but we try to lead them through these questions to figure out what kind of a flush wood door to actually specify."

He also showed the group an email in which he’s advising a client about pavers -- both where they go in the specs and what to require to ensure they’re slip-resistant, among other performance goals.

"There is a whole level of technical support that we're providing,” Stutzman said.

Stutzman said specifiers can:

• Take the owner’s somewhat fuzzy description of the standards and quality expected for the project, and guide the selection of products that deliver
• Balance cost and durability against green goals
• Translate the information in a product binder into the data the BIM model needs to produce a schedule
• Determine what it was about a particular product brochure that caught the designer’s eye
• Figure out exactly what the architect is trying to communicate
• Look at an estimate and determine what the contractor thinks the design team is planning
• Coordinate the keynotes with the specs so that the terminology is always the same, whether you’re looking at the drawings or the specifications
• Help clients craft documents with reasonable expectations for the design team and the contractor
  

Specifiers also may find themselves doing drawing reviews and quality assurance work, even if they weren’t contracted to do so.

“Our goal here is to try to keep everyone out of trouble and end up with a workable project,” Stutzman said. “Once it's been on the drawings for weeks, it tends to be overlooked, so as we're going through projects trying to develop specs, we're looking at these drawings. “

One participant asked how Stutzman and others handle unintentional, unfunded project reviews.

“I often find things in the drawings that are a problem,” she said. “I don't include in my fee proposal or statement of services that I'm going to do a drawing review, but I have to do one to figure out how to write the specs. Am I overstepping if I send them an email?”

Stutzman provides review as a service, and charges accordingly, he said.

Another caller said he actually started as a reviewer, and moved into spec-writing from there. Ninety percent of his clients want feedback about the drawings and documents from him.

One caller reported that as the in-house specifier, he regularly does quality control and gives feedback to the design team. Another recommended holding periodic “university sessions” with staff so that everyone knows what information to collect, what words mean, etc.

An experienced independent specifier cautioned group members to remember whose project they’re working on.

“A lot depends on whether you're an in-house specifier or a consultant,” he said. “As a consultant, we have to sit back more and let the architect of record make decisions."

 

Communication is the key to getting the most out of a specifier, Stutzman said. He showed the group the above image to make his point.

Checklists are useful in guiding conversations, but they cannot replace them, he said. Design intent is difficult to communicate without actually talking to each other.

He’s an advocate of Preliminary Project Descriptions/Basis of Design documents, which precede the specs.

"That's something specifiers are more than capable of providing for any project,” he said. “It is the first line of defense because it becomes the mark by which you judge whether the project is meeting the owner's intent."

Group members asked about improving communication with all the teams involved in the project.

"I feel like I'm a good communicator, and I'm an architect,” one caller said. “How do I tell them, ‘hey I'm going to be looking at your schedules. If it's not right, let me know, if it's just a place holder, let me know?’"

Stutzman said he asks for notes indicating when a schedule has been copied from another project.

"We actually use the specs as a communication tool,” he said. “We put in notes for the design team or the owner to collect their thoughts."

"I always try to keep the spec as direct as we can, so there's very little wiggle room on what it can mean."

CSI’s Specifying Practice Group meets monthly by webinar. The next meeting will be in March. Join the group! It’s free!