A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service.
An "in-service" 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, in both the public and private sectors.
Example organization types include a corporation, a consortium (a small group of corporations), a trade association (an industry-wide group of corporations), a national government (including its different public entities, regulatory agencies, and national laboratories and institutes), a professional association (society), a purpose-made standards organization such as ISO, or vendor-neutral developed generic requirements.
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.
[2] 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).
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 MasterFormat and SectionFormat[20] systems can be successfully applied to residential, commercial, civil, and industrial construction.
Most construction specifications are a combination of performance-based and proprietary types, naming acceptable manufacturers and products while also specifying certain standards and design criteria that must be met.
This approach is unusual in North America, where each bidder performs a quantity survey on the basis of both drawings and specifications.
Specification writers may be separate entities such as sub-contractors or they may be employees of architects, engineers, or construction management companies.
ArCHspec was created specifically for use by licensed architects while designing SFR (Single Family Residential) architectural projects.
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.
The Housing and Building National Research Center (HBRC) is responsible for developing construction specifications and codes.
[23] 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.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has published a non-binding recommendation that addresses just this point.
[30] In many contexts, particularly software, specifications are needed to avoid errors due to lack of compatibility, for instance, in interoperability issues.
For example, Mac OS X has many components that prefer or require only decomposed characters (thus decomposed-only Unicode encoded with UTF-8 is also known as "UTF8-MAC").
In one specific instance, the combination of OS X errors handling composed characters, and the samba file- and printer-sharing software (which replaces decomposed letters with composed ones when copying file names), has led to confusing and data-destroying interoperability problems.
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 inter-operable between various file system drivers, operating systems, network protocols, and thousands of software packages.