specification technical standard specification redirects here for other uses see specification disambiguation a specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material design product or service a specification is often a type of technical standard there are different types of technical or engineering specifications specs and the term is used differently in different technical contexts they often refer to particular documents andor particular information within them the word specification is broadly defined as to state explicitly or in detail or to be specific using the term specification without a clear indication of what kind is confusing and considered bad practice a requirement specification is a documented requirement or set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a given material design product service etc it is a common early part of engineering design and product development processes in many fields a functional specification is a kind of requirement specification and may show functional block diagrams a design or product specification describes the features of the solutions for the requirement specification referring to either a designed solution or final produced solution it is often used to guide fabricationproduction sometimes the term specification is here used in connection with a data sheet or spec sheet which may be confusing a data sheet describes the technical characteristics of an item or product often published by a manufacturer to help people choose or use the products a data sheet is not a technical specification in the sense of informing how to produce an inservice or maintained as specification specifies the conditions of a system or object after years of operation including the effects of wear and maintenance configuration changes specifications are a type of technical standard that may be developed by any of various kinds of organizations both public and private example organization types include a corporation a consortium a small group of corporations a trade association an industrywide group of corporations a national government including its military regulatory agencies and national laboratories and institutes a professional association society a purposemade standards organization such as iso or vendorneutral developed generic requirements it is common for one organization to refer to reference call out cite the standards of another voluntary standards may become mandatory if adopted by a government or business contract use in engineering manufacturing and business it is vital for suppliers purchasers and users of materials products or services to understand and agree upon all requirements a specification may refer to a standard which is often referenced by a contract or procurement document or an otherwise agreed upon set of requirements though still often used in the singular in any case it provides the necessary details about the specific requirements standards for specifications may be provided by government agencies standards organizations astm iso cen dod etc trade associations corporations and others the following british standards apply to specifications bs 737312001 guide to the preparation of specifications bs 737322001 product specifications guide to identifying criteria for a product specification and to declaring product conformity bs 737332005 product specifications guide to identifying criteria for specifying a service offering a designproduct specification does not necessarily prove a product to be correct or useful in every context an item might be verified to comply with a specification or stamped with a specification number this does not by itself indicate that the item is fit for other nonvalidated uses the people who use the item engineers trade unions etc or specify the item building codes government industry etc have the responsibility to consider the choice of available specifications specify the correct one enforce compliance and use the item correctly validation of suitability is necessary guidance and content sometimes a guide or a standard operating procedure is available to help write and format a good specification a specification might include descriptive title number identifier etc of the specification date of last effective revision and revision designation a logo or trademark to indicate the document copyright ownership and origin table of contents toc if the document is long person office or agency responsible for questions on the specification updates and deviations the significance scope or importance of the specification and its intended use terminology definitions and abbreviations to clarify the meanings of the specification test methods for measuring all specified characteristics material requirements physical mechanical electrical chemical etc targets and tolerances acceptance testing including performance testing requirements targets and tolerances drawings photographs or technical illustrations workmanship certifications required safety considerations and requirements environmental considerations and requirements quality control requirements acceptance sampling inspections acceptance criteria person office or agency responsible for enforcement of the specification completion and delivery provisions for rejection reinspection rehearing corrective measures references and citations for which any instructions in the content maybe required to fulfill the traceability and clarity of the document signatures of approval if necessary change record to summarize the chronological development revision and completion if the document is to be circulated internally annexes and appendices that are expand details add clarification or offer options construction specifications construction specifications in north america specifications in north america form part of the contract documents that accompany and govern the construction of building and infrastructure projects specifications describe the quality and performance of building materials using code citations and published standards whereas the drawings or building information model bim illustrates quantity and location of materials the guiding master document of names and numbers is the latest edition of masterformat this is a consensus document that is jointly sponsored by two professional organizations construction specifications canada and construction specifications institute based in the united states and updated every two years while there is a tendency to believe that specifications overrule drawings in the event of discrepancies between the text document and the drawings the actual intent must be made explicit in the contract between the owner and the contractor the standard aia american institute of architects and ejcdc engineering joint contract documents committee states that the drawings and specifications are complementary together providing the information required for a complete facility many public agencies such as the naval facilities command navfac state that the specifications overrule the drawings this is based on the idea that words are easier for a jury or mediator to interpret than drawings in case of a dispute the standard listing of construction specifications falls into 50 divisions or broad categories of work types and work results involved in construction the divisions are subdivided into sections each one addressing a specific material type concrete or a work product steel door of the construction work a specific material may be covered in several locations depending on the work result stainless steel for example can be covered as a sheet material used in flashing and sheet metal in division 07 it can be part of a finished product such as a handrail covered in division 05 or it can be a component of building hardware covered in division 08 the original listing of specification divisions was based on the time sequence of construction working from exterior to interior and this logic is still somewhat followed as new materials and systems make their way into the construction process each section is subdivided into three distinct parts general products and execution the masterformat and section format system can be successfully applied to residential commercial civil and industrial construction although many architects find the rather voluminous commercial style of specifications too lengthy for most residential projects and therefore either produce more abbreviated specifications of their own or use archspec which was specifically created for residential projects master specification systems are available from multiple vendors such as arcom visispec bsd and spectext these systems were created to standardize language across the united states and are usually subscription based specifications can be either performancebased whereby the specifier restricts the text to stating the performance that must be achieved by the completed work prescriptive where the specifier states the specific criteria such as fabrication standards applicable to the item or proprietary whereby the specifier indicates specific products vendors and even contractors that are acceptable for each workscope in addition specifications can be closed with a specific list of products or open allowing for substitutions made by the contractor most construction specifications are a combination of performancebased and proprietrary types naming acceptable manufacturers and products while also specifying certain standards and design criteria that must be met while north american specifications are usually restricted to broad descriptions of the work european ones and civil work can include actual work quantities including such things as area of drywall to be built in square meters 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 a quantity survey on the basis of both drawings and specifications in many countries on the european continent content that might be described as specifications in the united states are covered under the building code or municipal code civil and infrastructure work in the united states often includes a quantity breakdown of the work to be performed as well although specifications are usually issued by the architects office specification writing itself is undertaken by the architect and the various engineers or by specialist specification writers specification writing is often a distinct professional trade with professional certifications such as certified construction specifier ccs available through the construction specifications institute and the registered specification writer rsw through construction specifications canada specification writers are either employees of or subcontractors to architects engineers or construction management companies specification writers 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 in february 2015 archspec went live from arch architects creating homes a nationwide american professional society of architects whose purpose is to improve residential architecture archspec was created specifically for use by licensed architects while designing sfr single family residential architectural projects unlike the more commercial csi 50 division commercial specifications archspec utilizes the more recognizable 16 traditional divisions plus a division 0 scope bid forms and division 17 low voltage many architects up to this point did not provide specifications for residential designs which is one of the reasons archspec was created to fill a void in the industry with more compact specifications for residential use shorter form specifications documents suitable for residential use are also available through arcom and follow the 50 division format which was adopted in both the united states and canada starting in 2004 the 16 division format is no longer considered standard and is not supported by either csi or csc or any of the subscription master specification services data repositories product lead systems and the bulk of governmental agencies construction specifications in egypt specifications in egypt form part of contract documents the housing and building national research center hbrc is responsible for developing construction specifications and codes the hbrc has published more than 15 books which cover building activities like earthworks plastering etc construction specifications in the uk specifications in the uk are part of the contract documents that accompany and govern the construction of a building they are prepared by construction professionals such as architects architectural technologists structural engineers landscape architects and building services engineers they are created from previous project specifications inhouse documents or master specifications such as the national building specification nbs the national building specification is owned by the royal institute of british architects riba through their commercial group riba enterprises ribae nbs master specifications provide content that is broad and comprehensive and delivered using software functionality that enables specifiers to customize the content to suit the needs of the project and to keep up to date uk project specification types fall into two main categories prescriptive and performance prescriptive specifications define the requirements using generic or proprietary descriptions of what is required whereas performance specifications focus on the outcomes rather than the characteristics of the components specifications are an integral part of building information modeling and cover the nongeometric requirements food and drug specifications pharmaceutical products can usually be tested and qualified by various pharmacopoeia current existing pharmaceutical standards include british pharmacopoeia european pharmacopoeia japanese pharmacopoeia the international pharmacopoeia united states pharmacopeia if any pharmaceutical product is not covered by the above standards it can be evaluated by the additional source of pharmacopoeia from other nations from industrial specifications or from a standardized formulary such as british national formulary for children british national formulary national formulary a similar approach is adopted by the food manufacturing of which codex alimentarius ranks the highest standards followed by regional and national standards the coverage of food and drug standards by iso is currently less fruitful and not yet put forward as an urgent agenda due to the tight restrictions of regional or national constitution specifications and other standards can be externally imposed as discussed above but also internal manufacturing and quality specifications these exist not only for the food or pharmaceutical product but also for the processing machinery quality processes packaging logistics cold chain etc and are exemplified by iso 14134 and iso 15609 the converse of explicit statement of specifications is a process for dealing with observations that are outofspecification the united states food and drug administration has published a nonbinding recommendation that addresses just this point at the present time much of the information and regulations concerning food and food products remain in a form which makes it difficult to apply automated information processing storage and transmission methods and techniques data systems that can process store and transfer information about food and food products need formal specifications for the representations of data about food and food products in order to operate effectively and efficiently development of formal specifications for food and drug data with the necessary and sufficient clarity and precision for use specifically by digital computing systems have begun to emerge from government agencies and standards organizations the united states food and drug administration has published specifications for a structured product label which drug manufacturers must by mandate use to submit electronically the information on a drug label recently iso has made some progress in the area of food and drug standards and formal specifications for data about regulated substances through the publication of iso 11238 information technology specification need in many contexts particularly software specifications are needed to avoid errors due to lack of compatibility for instance in interoperability issues for instance when two applications share unicode data but use different normal forms or use them incorrectly in an incompatible way or without sharing a minimum set of interoperability specification errors and data loss can result for example mac os x has many components that prefer or require only decomposed characters thus decomposedonly unicode encoded with utf8 is also known as utf8mac in one specific instance the combination of os x errors handling composed characters and the samba file and printersharing software which replaces decomposed letters with composed ones when copying file names has led to confusing and datadestroying interoperability problems applications may avoid such errors by preserving input code points and only normalizing them to the applications preferred normal form for internal use such errors may also be avoided with algorithms normalizing both strings before any binary comparison however errors due to file name encoding incompatibilities have always existed due to a lack of minimum set of common specification between software hoped to be interoperable between various file system drivers operating systems network protocols and thousands of software packages formal specification formal specification a formal specification is a mathematical description of software or hardware that may be used to develop an implementation it describes what the system should do not necessarily how the system should do it given such a specification it is possible to use formal verification techniques to demonstrate that a candidate system design is correct with respect to that specification this has the advantage that incorrect candidate system designs can be revised before a major investment has been made in actually implementing the design an alternative approach is to use provably correct refinement steps to transform a specification into a design and ultimately into an actual implementation that is correct by construction architectural specification in hardware software or enterprise systems development an architectural specification is the set of documentation that describes the structure behavior and more views of that system program specification a program specification is the definition of what a computer program is expected to do it can be informal in which case it can be considered as a user manual from a developer point of view or formal in which case it has a definite meaning defined in mathematical or programmatic terms in practice many successful specifications are written to understand and finetune applications that were already welldeveloped although safetycritical software systems are often carefully specified prior to application development specifications are most important for external interfaces that must remain stable functional specification functional specification in software development a functional specification also functional spec or specs or functional specifications document fsd is the set of documentation that describes the behavior of a computer program or larger software system the documentation typically describes various inputs that can be provided to the software system and how the system responds to those inputs web service specification further information list of web service specifications web services specifications are often under the umbrella of a quality management system document specification these types of documents define how a specific document should be written which may include but is not limited to the systems of a document naming version layout referencing structuring appearance language copyright hierarchy or format etc benchmarking change control guideline defense standard design specification diagnostic design specification documentation document management system formal specification functional specification identification of medicinal products list of iso standards list of air ministry specifications manufacturing test requirement design specification open standard performance testing process specification product design specification publicly available specification revision control requirements analysis shop drawing specification and description language specification tree standardization statistical interference systems engineering submittals construction technical documentation tolerance engineering verification and validation notes and references pyzdek t quality engineering handbook 2003 isbn0824746147 godfrey a b jurans quality handbook 1999 isbn007034003x specifications for the chemical and process industries 1996 asq quality press isbn0873893514 astm e2906b standard practice for using significant digits in test data to determine conformance with specifications journal of chemical information and modeling journal of documentation emerald group publishing issn00220418 