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A specification is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service. (ASTM definition)

Contents 1 Technical requirement 1.1 Construction specifications in North America 2 Procurement 3 See also 4 External links 5 References

In engineering and manufacturing, it is vital for suppliers, purchasers, and users of products or services to understand and agree upon the technical requirements. This might include, requirements for physical , mechanical, or chemical properties, and safety, quality, or performance criteria.

The specification may also contain both the systems requirements and the test requirements by which it is determined that the systems requirements have been met, known as the acceptance test requirement(s), and a mapping between them.

Specifications in North America form part of the contract documents that accompany and govern the construction of a building. The guiding master document is the National MasterFormat. It is a consensus document that is jointly sponsored by two professional organisations:

• Construction Specifications Canada
• Construction Specifications Institute

Generally, "Specs overrule Drawings" in the event of discrepancies between the text document and the drawings.

The Specifications fall into 16 "Divisions", or broad categories of work involved in construction. The "Divisions" are subdivided into "Sections", that address specific workscopes. For instance, firestopping is addressed in Section 07840 - Firestopping. It forms part of the Division 7, which is Thermal and Moisture Protection. Division 7 also addresses building envelope and fireproofing work. Each Section is subdivided into three distinct areas: "General", "Products" and "Installation". The National MasterFormat system has been uniformly applied to residential, commercial and much though not all industrial work.

Specifications can be either "performance-based", whereby the specifier restricts the text to stating the performance that must be achieved in each Section of work, or "prescriptive", whereby the specifier indicates specific products, vendors and even contractors that are acceptable for each workscope.

While North American specifications are usually restricted to broad descriptions of the work, European ones can include actual work quantities, including such things as area of drywall to be built in square metres, like a bill of materials. This type of specification is a collaborative effort between a specwriter and a quantity surveyor. This approach is unusual in North America, where each bidder performs his or her own quantity survey on the basis of both drawings and specifications.

Specification writing is a professional trade with its own professional designations, such as "RSW", which means "Registered Specification Writer". Specwriters can be either employees of or sub-contractors to architects. Specwriters frequently meet with manufacturers of building materials who seek to have their products "specified" on upcoming construction projects so that contractors can include their products in the estimates leading to their proposals.

An official document intended primarily for supporting procurement, which document clearly, and accurately describes, the essential technical requirements for items, materials, or services, including the procedures by which it will be determined that the requirements have been met.

An example of a Federal specification is FIPS-PUB 159, Detail Specification for 62.5-μm Core Diameter/125-μm Cladding Diameter Class Ia Multimode Optical Fibers.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188

• Program specification
• Defense Standard
• MasterFormat
• Construction Specifications Institute
• Requirements analysis.
• Submittals (construction)
• Shop drawing
• Tolerance (engineering)

• Construction Specifications Library (US) by Arcat

• Pyzdek, T, "Quality Engineering Handbook", 2003, ISBN 0824746147
• Godfrey, A. B., "Juran's Quality Handbook", 1999, ISBN 007034003