A specification can name the right product and still miss the performance the project actually needs.
In this episode of What a Week, Elias Saltz and Conspectus senior specifier Chad Hanley dig into how construction administration experience sharpens technical specification decisions. Using real project examples, they examine a hospital fountain where treatment chemicals degraded the specified waterproofing and a Las Vegas casino where a proposed floodproofing substitution lacked testing and warranty coverage for the conditions it was intended to resist.
The discussion gets to the heart of performance specifying: understand the exposure, verify the testing, scrutinize warranty limitations, and confirm that the product can perform under actual project conditions. It’s a technical look at why specifications require more than selecting a familiar product, and how lessons from the field lead to better questions, better research, and better specifications on the next project.
Product performance cannot be evaluated in isolation.
Don’t stop at the product data sheet. Review test methods, limitations, and warranty exclusions to determine whether the manufacturer’s performance claims actually align with the project requirements.
Good specifications start with asking the right questions. Identifying project-specific conditions early, such as the chemicals used in a hospital fountain or the hydrostatic pressures associated with flooding, helps establish the performance criteria before products are selected.
A familiar product or less-expensive substitution may introduce risk when its testing does not represent actual field conditions. Technical research during design and submittal review creates an opportunity to identify those gaps before they become failures in the field.
Construction administration experience builds better specifiers. Seeing how products, details, and specifications perform in the field develops the problem-solving instincts to question assumptions, investigate claims, and carry lessons learned into the next project.
One of the traits of a good specifier is being able to do the research, understand what the problem is, and recognize what is not the solution.