I write this with mixed emotions.
For more than fifty years, I have used MASTERFORMAT®. I saw my first Sweets Catalog in 1973. I have taught CSI standards. I have defended them. I have built businesses around structured specifications.
And yet, the recent announcement requiring licensing to use CSI’s format documents has sparked industry-wide resistance — not only because of cost, but because of how suddenly and opaquely the decision was communicated.
But rather than debate licensing, I want to ask a deeper question:
Buildings are not collections of specification sections.
They are systems.
An exterior wall, for example, can be described long before specific products are selected:
None of those require selecting a manufacturer or product.
Yet when we organize documentation under MASTERFORMAT®, we must determine section numbers based on specific materials and work results. That requires decisions.
Design, however, is progressive and iterative.
MASTERFORMAT® assumes finality.
Design assumes evolution.
That mismatch creates rework.
At concept and schematic phases, many material selections are unknown. During design development, some systems remain unresolved. Even late in the process, substitutions and value engineering proposals alter assemblies.
Yet once a MASTERFORMAT®-based specification begins, we are effectively guessing at final solutions in order to choose section numbers.
What happens?
Who does this help?
Not the designer.
Not the estimator.
Not the contractor.
Not the owner.
There is another way to think about buildings.
The standard behind UNIFORMAT II — ASTM E1557 — organizes facilities by assemblies and systems rather than by trades and products.
This allows the team to document:
Before locking into final material decisions.
This is not theoretical.
On multiple projects, Conspectus produced full construction specifications organized by assembly rather than by MASTERFORMAT® sections.
The buildings were successfully bid and constructed.
The result?
The documents were shorter because they described what mattered: performance and integration.
Not boilerplate.
MASTERFORMAT® remains a powerful organizational tool for bidding and trade coordination. It is deeply embedded in software, cost databases, and contractor workflows.
But we should ask:
➡️Is it the best structure for documenting design intent during progressive design?
➡️Or have we simply accepted it as the only way because that's how we've always done it?
The recent licensing announcement has forced many firms to reconsider their dependence on CSI formats.
But to re-examine whether our documentation structures align with how buildings are actually conceived and developed.
When design intent is clearly documented at the system level:
When design intent is fragmented across product sections, intent becomes harder to defend.
This is not a licensing issue.
It is a clarity issue.
If we were inventing building documentation today — in a BIM-driven, performance-based, data-centric world — would we begin with product and trade sections?
Or would we begin with systems and performance?
We can debate fees.
Or we can rethink foundations.
I respect CSI and the standards that shaped my career.
But perhaps it is time to consider whether system-based documentation — grounded in ASTM E1557 — may better serve progressive design and performance accountability.
The question is not “Who needs MASTERFORMAT®?”
The question is: