TECHNOTES: WEAK IN FAITH, PART 1 -
MASTER GUIDE SPECS VS. THE MOP
Sheldon Wolfe, CSI, CCS, CCCA
on the web at www.NorthStarCSI.com
Minneapolis St-Paul Chapter CSI
Overall, CSI's documents present a fairly unified and consistent approach to preparing and
interpreting construction documents, something I like to emphasize when teaching
certification classes.
The Manual of Practice and the format documents (MasterFormat, SectionFormat, and
PageFormat) provide a firm but adaptable framework for preparing construction documents.
They provide enough structure so that, as your mother would say, there is "a place
for everything and everything in its place." On the other hand, they are sufficiently
flexible to allow one to specify just about anything imaginable.
CSI does not go into great detail about how to address specific problems; there is no
standard specification for concrete, no typical way to specify performance, no boilerplate
text for any part of a specification. That level of detail is left to the specifier, who
is supposed to apply the principles of the MOP and the organization of the format
standards.
Obviously, this leaves a lot to be done. If a specifier were to start with nothing it
would take a long time to assemble a set of master specifications. Writing even a simple
section can take many hours; the amount of research that would be required for a complex
system or assembly would be overwhelming.
Fortunately, several entrepreneurial individuals saw an unfulfilled need and began to
produce generic master guide specifications for a great variety of construction products
and systems. Unfortunately, the results don't quite follow the basic rules of specifying
established by CSI's standards. And there is plenty of blame to go around. Specifiers and
manufacturers alike follow the lead of those who produce master guide specifications, and
some wander even farther from the true path.
Manufacturers have a defensible position; they are in business to sell products, and they
have an understandable tendency to stack the deck in any way they can in their own
proprietary specifications. How many times have you seen a manufacturer's guide
specification that requires the product be produced by only one manufacturer not once, but
two or three times? From their viewpoint, it makes sense to identify the manufacturer
under "Section Includes", "Quality Assurance",
"Manufacturers", "Components", "Assemblies", and a few more
times under "Execution". They also like to include a variety of restrictive
specifications that have little to do with performance or quality.
I can't get too excited about a manufacturer who writes a specification that eliminates
the competition. They still offer useful information, and the price is right. The sad
thing is that some specifiers can't quite seem to figure out what's going on, and leave
all of the proprietary provisions in place. ? and then call it a competitive spec!