Coming into focus.
A specification is usually written twice: once in the architect’s head over two years of decisions, and once in a fortnight before tender, from memory, a previous job, and the minutes. The reasons, why that brick and not the other, are rarely written down at all.
Then a cost check comes back, the brick changes, and nobody can remember what it was chosen to do.
A series of decisions
Nolliworks keeps a job’s specification as a series of decisions. It can begin with almost nothing (external walls: low carbon, brick to the street) and come into focus one question at a time: what each element must do, usually by Stage 2; what kind of thing it is; how it is put together; and, by Stage 4, exactly which products.
Every question has its guidance: why it matters, how to decide, the options with what each is good and bad at, the watch points and the regulations. A question still open when the stage should have settled it is marked as due.
Confirmed by a person, changed with a reason
Anybody can propose an answer, and several proposals can stand as the options under consideration. A person confirms one and says why. A confirmed answer is changed only by giving a new one with its reason, the QS’s cost check, a planning comment, the client’s wish, and the old answer stays on the record, struck through.
Build-ups you can see
Walls, roofs and floors are build-ups. Choose the system and finishes and see it as a section, with its U-value, a moisture check and its carbon, worked out from what has been decided, so what is drawn is what is decided. The materials library behind it holds each material with its figures and a specimen to turn in the hand, and the practice keeps its own build-ups in families, each with the jobs it was used on.
In the small print
- Elements numbered as the building is (EW-01, WN-01, HT-01)
- Intent, approach, assembly, product: settled by the stage you would expect
- Options not taken stay on the record with why
- Every layer of a build-up asks which product, and whether another material should take its place
- A first pass by AI, if you want one, for an architect to confirm or change
Questions practices ask
- Can the specification start before the design is fixed?
Yes. It begins with intent, what each element must do, and comes into focus a question at a time until every element is named down to its products.
- Does it keep the reasons for changes?
Yes. A confirmed answer can only be changed with a reason, and what drove it: cost, planning, programme. The old answer stays on the record.
- Can I see the U-value of a build-up?
Yes. Walls, roofs and ground floors show as a 3D section with the U-value, a moisture check and the carbon, worked out from the layers chosen.