Specification can be tricky for everyone involved. Along a project’s timeline, there are many opportunities for specifications to be lost, swapped or cut out. Does this mean you shouldn’t bother with specification? No, quite the opposite in fact.

There are many key points in the life-cycle of a project where your architectural specification can be altered without you even knowing. Common reasons for specification changes are:

• Budget restrictions
• The offer of ‘cheaper’ imported product
• Existing builder/installer relationships
• Unclear or incorrect specification
• “Or equivalent” notes on key specification documents
• Competitor product swap

Sometimes, change of specification is unavoidable. Budget constraints can be difficult to work around, and on some projects, especially within the government sector, specifications must be labelled with “or equivalent”.  We understand, with so many obstacles working against you, lost faith in the specification process can occur. At EDGE Architectural, we urge you not too get disheartened. Don’t be defeated, where there is a will, there is a way. In today’s competitive, price driven market, that way, is employing smart specification strategy, to ensure your design vision and performance intentions will be realised.

Specify smart

Want to know how to ensure your specifications are held?

When specifying EDGE Architectural’s aluminium windows and doors, there are some simple spec strategies to empower your window and door specification to best stand-up. At the end of the day, specification is about ensuring what you design is built, but it’s also about securing quality and long term building performance. When specifications are cut down, or swapped out for inferior product, the integrity of projects – buildings we will use and interact with, is ultimately compromised.

At EDGE, we want to help you to create good buildings, quality developments that will stand the test of time; that’s why we chose to create the EDGE super suite. To help ensure your projects are built as intended, we created this check-list to work as a reference when specifying EDGE Architectural.

• Do your research. Make sure you specify product fit for purpose. Avoid specifying building elements just because “they’re what you have always specified”. Every project is different, reward your creativity with solid product research.
• Contact our Architectural project manager Kath Outhred, for a product consultation. It’s impossible for an architect to be an expert on every product. It’s our job to be the experts, all you need to do is contact us. By involving EDGE early in project development, you can gain understanding of what is possible, what systems will suit your design and how to best use them. EDGE are specialists at making the impossible, possible, involving Kath early in your project, can result in some pretty amazing details becoming built reality.
• Contact EDGE to check your specification. Quite often, specifications are swapped out or dropped purely because they were not documented correctly. Don’t let this happen to your next project. Contact EDGE to have your window and door schedule checked and remove on site confusion later on.
• Have EDGE supply you with performance specification documents. To fight specification swap outs, installation of inferior imported product, or specification confusion, EDGE will prepare and issue documentation for your drawings and enter into tender packages. We base our specification documents on performance, highlighting the uniqueness of the EDGE range, and it’s outstanding capabilities. This is the best step you can take, to ensuring your projects are built with the EDGE product you wanted.
• Don’t be a stranger. We can only help keep your specification if we know about your project. Keep in touch and let Team EDGE know when you have specified our product. This way, when builders are seeking prices, we can put forward our aligned installers. If you have been kind enough to specify us, we want to do your project justice, and hold specification for you.
• Builders hold significant power over specification. If you have relationships with builders, whom you undertake repeat work for, let’s network. If our relationship can be as strong with your builders as it is with you, then we are all another step closer to securing specification.

What are you waiting for? If you have a project where quality, performance and contemporary style are of the utmost importance, contact us today and specify smart to build better.