CONSTRUCTION SPECS: GOOD AND BAD EXAMPLES. Here are examples of good and poor specifications: Poor: “Composite-type decking, Trex or equivalent, fastened with hidden fasteners.”

There are 5 main types of construction specifications: Performance specifications; Prescriptive specifications; Proprietary specifications; General specifications; Detailed specifications; Keep reading for in-depth explanations of each type of specification, their importance, and how to write construction specifications for your projects.

ArCH is the leader in creating and providing residential specifications to Licensed Architects. ArCH is an American organization of Licensed Architects, although many of the ArCHproducts, available on the ArCHstore, can assist Architects globally, adjusted for each Country & State of practice.

Construction specifications — or specs, for short — add supplemental detail to guide the build. The blueprint, for example, might show where doors go and how big they should be, while the specifications say what type of material should be used for those doors and whether they need to be fire-rated.

Let’s take a look at how an (almost) entire set of residential specifications manifest themselves on a residential project. The pages I am showing here are 30″ x 42″ (Arch E1 size) and the specifications will fit on three pages.