Specification

One of the most important area of the building industry is Specification. If the Architect,Architectural Technologist, Specifier,Analyst or the Estimator do not adhere to the quality and choose the right materials the buildings you see today will be ashes tomorrow. 

Specification Preliminaries

What are Preliminaries?

The specification of any project, whether shown on drawings or written, usually is said to consist of Preliminaries and Work Sections. Together they describe what is required to complete the Works in accordance with the Contract. If the Work Sections describe the nature of the work to be done, then what is contained in the Preliminaries?

The layout of NBS is based on the classification document Common Arrangement of Work Sections for Building Works (CAWS) published by the Construction Project Information Committee. This describes Preliminaries as:

·         Preliminary and general information and information relating to the Works as a whole; items for the Contractor’s general costs; provisional sums and other items for work by others or subject to later instruction.

The Code of Procedure which accompanies SMM7, the Standard Method of Measurement for building works, notes that the Preliminaries section contains those items that are not specific to work sections but have an identifiable cost which is useful to consider separately in tendering.
In short, Preliminaries relate to the cost-significant items required by the method and particular circumstances under which the work is to be carried out, and those costs concerned with the whole of the works rather than just Work Sections. These costs may either be ‘one-off’ fixed costs, such as the cost of bringing to site and erecting site accommodation (and subsequent removal) or time-related, such as the heating, lighting and maintenance cost for that accommodation.

Typical preliminaries and its Examples:

Contractual Risks

It is when the contractor takes over all the threat and agrees to pay an amount of expense for the forthcoming risks.

•       ..contractor is to provide all temporary lighting required in the progress of the works, install and maintain same, pay all charges in connection therewith, remove same and make good on completion of the works.

Directives

•       …the conditions of the contract shall be those of the JCT SBC05 Without Quantities, etc.

Instructions

•       …include the provisional sum of £16000 (sixteen thousand pounds) as a contingency sum to be used in whole or in part as directed by the architect/contract administrator, the whole or any part not so used to be deducted from the final account on completion of the contract.

References

•       …the term BS shall mean the current British Standard Specification of the British Standards Institution, etc.

Information

·         …access to the site is from Blackhalve Lane, an unadopted, unmade, private road on the East side of the A449 approaching the village of Billesley Prior from Kidderminster. 

Bibliography

• 1.       (Greenhalgh , Squires,2011)- Introduction to Building Procurement.
• 2.       Abridged NBS guidance (Specification Documents)
• 3.       Scott J.J-Specification Writing on Introduction