A technical specification is an initial document intended for the design development of a construction project, containing all the data about the object and all the characteristics that the object should have after completion of the work. Judging by the text composition, we can say that the terms of reference for construction are an example of what the customer wants.

Approximate content of technical specifications

The ideal completed technical specification for construction design should include all the information that the client can provide.

The customer must clearly understand what he wants to get as a result and convey this information to the contractor.

The terms of reference usually consist of the following sections.

Total information

This section should contain the following information (at the discretion of the customer):

• Justification for construction - an order from the head of the customer organization or another document.
• Type of construction - newly started, reconstruction or other.
• Full name of the customer organization.
• Information about the features of the site allocated for construction - geological features, soil type, location of groundwater, presence of vegetation for cutting down.
• Basic requirements for the object: type of object, purpose, number of floors, the possibility of using standard projects or only individual ones, building area and the permissibility of using the underground space of the site.
• Construction sequence - if there is a sequence for launching equipment or installations at the site.
• Required start and completion dates for construction. Desired date of completion of the object. This point must be present in any technical specification. The date of delivery of the object must be earlier or coincide with the date of the concluded contract.
• The degree of reliability of the building (in accordance with the requirements of GOST 54257-2010).
• Design characteristics - number of stages.
• Availability of initial documentation for construction, including all permits.

Design requirements

• The completeness of urban planning decisions is the need for landscaping and landscaping of the site. This paragraph should also contain requirements for the placement of the construction project on the site.
• Facility architecture, including façade solutions and building energy efficiency solutions. In this paragraph you can specify the number of balconies, windows, the placement of the main and emergency exits and their design.
• Features of design solutions: proposed type of foundation, walls and ceilings.
• Finishing solutions: the possibility of using local or imported materials, recommendations for their use and choice of colors.
• Engineering solutions: efficient location of utility networks, including solutions for optimizing water supply and wastewater disposal.
• Energy supply of the facility and its efficiency. This item can even include the required number of sockets in each room.
• Lighting design. The clause may include a requirement to carry out the necessary calculations for lighting standards for each room at the facility.
• The need to design security systems (security and fire alarms or both security and fire alarms separately), data transmission systems and other systems (ventilation, heating, air conditioning).
• Infrastructure of the facility and site - availability of parking lots, pedestrian paths, and well-maintained access roads.
• Customer requirements for the content of design and estimate documents and the form of their submission.
• The need for feasibility studies of all calculations.

Additional instructions

This paragraph should indicate those customer requirements that are not reflected in the previous paragraphs. For example, the availability of demonstration materials, the need to develop various passports for the future facility, the number of copies of project documentation.

As practice shows, such a complete construction task is developed only in cases of large, newly organized construction of objects, including shopping centers and residential complexes. Information on each item should be as complete as the customer deems necessary.

Options for designing technical specifications

There are no uniform requirements for the preparation of technical specifications.

That is, the form of the task is almost arbitrary, but as understandable as possible for the performer. You can complete the task in the form of continuous formatted text, or you can do it in tabular form.

1. Technical assignment No. 1. Variant of questions that should contain technical specifications for the construction of a house of the future (smart home). This option is suitable for particularly demanding customers when planning large individual residential construction.
2. Technical assignment No. 2. A ready-made technical specification for the design of a hotel, which maximally reflects the requirements for construction as a whole and the design features of the facility.
3. Technical assignment No. 3. This example is a technical assignment for the construction and design of a warehouse complex with office premises, written in continuous text.
4. Explanation of the technical specification form (with examples) from the developer protection center. This page provides samples of approved tasks for different types of work.

Responsibility when drawing up technical specifications

When drawing up a document such as a technical specification for the construction of a building, the customer needs to clearly formulate all the important points. The content of the assignment should not cause controversial issues or ambiguity. This document has legal weight and is necessarily attached to the agreement between the contractor and the customer in the form of one of the main appendices. The immediate executor bears administrative responsibility for the correctness of the assignment.

Have you decided to build your own country house to be able to enjoy peace, quiet and clean air in your free time? We can only congratulate you! Yes, a lot of hassle awaits you - buying a plot, building a house, resolving legal issues, but the result is definitely worth it.

But before starting construction, you should transfer the technical specifications for the design of the building to specialists in order to receive a full-fledged project of the future house.

Example of a building project

Before you start drawing up a full-fledged house project, you need to do some preliminary work. And draw up a document on the basis of which architects will work to bring it to life. This document will be the technical specification for the design of the house.

It presents regulatory and technical requirements, the purpose of the future structure, time limits for the work and many other things important for construction. The preparation of this document involves various measurements and studies.

Here many people have a question: is the project needed at all? After all, a small house of one or two floors is being built, not a skyscraper! So is the project a necessity or will it be a waste of money in this case? This is a very serious issue that should be dealt with before making important decisions.

This document is a fundamental element of the project, and consequently of the construction itself. This document regulates the relationship between the client and the contractor.

According to the technical specifications, the work is carried out in the prescribed manner, the principles and tasks of the performer’s activities are determined. Thus, it turns out that according to this document, the client can visit the facility under construction and check the compliance of the work performed with the design documentation.

At the same time, for the contractor, the terms of reference for designing a house are all the necessary data that give a complete picture of the parameters of the planned construction and the opportunity to actually draw up a specific plan for its implementation.

First you need to decide on the disadvantages - there are significantly fewer of them. Or rather, just two:

1. You will have to spend a good amount of money on designing the house. In some cases, the cost of the project reaches 3-5% of the cost of the house, which scares off potential home owners;
2. When the task of completing a project is delegated to specialists, you will not always be able to quickly see the result of the work. Some companies, not valuing their client’s time, can provide a finished project only after a few months.

Finished building project

This is where the construction shortcomings of the project end. The following are the only advantages that, in the opinion of most people, outweigh the disadvantages:

As you can see, there are significantly more pros than cons. Now you can decide for yourself whether you should spend money on construction design or whether you should try to do all the work without a project.

Is having a project a legal necessity?

Often people who decide to build their own home simply do not know whether they will receive a building permit if they do not have a project for the future structure. Because of this, they cannot make the right decision. In some cases, they waste money in vain, and in others, they start work only to find out very soon that the construction is being carried out illegally.

The Town Planning Code contains Article No. 51, which states that you can obtain a building permit without a completed project. So, only the developer himself makes the decision whether to spend money on the project or not.

However, there are certain limitations here.

The area of ​​the house should be no more than 1500 m2, and the house itself should not have more than 3 floors.

Although, such houses are built by an extremely small number of people, and those who can afford it will probably not be forced to save money, and will be able to afford the services of even the most expensive designer.

How a project is created

A project can be created in different ways. Some future home owners prefer to do all the work themselves. How justified is this and is it acceptable at all? This will be discussed below.

An alternative to drawing up a project yourself is to enter into a cooperation agreement with a specialized company. In this case, you will only have to draw up technical specifications - the specialists will do all the rest of the work themselves. However, such a statement can frankly frighten many inexperienced people.

Sample cooperation agreement

When developing this document, the features of specific construction works are taken into account. It is the specifics of the future construction that determine the specific design of the assignment. In this case, the client must necessarily transfer to the contractor all the initial documents, including permitting papers on the approval of the site of future construction, investment justification, and the site selection act.

The terms of reference for designing a house should be drawn up taking into account information on the implementation of a set of activities in research, architectural, planning and development areas. The document must also reflect the possibility of connecting the future building to engineering systems and communications.

In fact, technical specifications are often drawn up during a normal conversation with specialists. You will be asked leading questions, and from the answers received, a technical specification is formed, on the basis of which the design of your house will be developed.

Typically the questions might be:

• Structure, what shape and size are you planning to order?
• Will it be connected to utility networks, and if so, which ones?
• What materials will be used during construction?
• What should be the design of the main elements?
• What construction timeframe suits you?
• How much money are you willing to spend on building a house?

As you can see, these are quite simple questions that can be answered by every person who has at least a vague idea of ​​their future home. Based on your answers, specialists will be able to draw up a detailed project.

Moreover, most often several projects are compiled so that you can choose exactly the one that suits your taste. By the way, the best solution would be to entrust the design of the house and its construction to one company.

This will achieve several benefits:

1. You can get a certain discount, since you order a whole range of services from one company (with such significant costs, even a savings of 1-2% will amount to a considerable amount).
2. If any defects are discovered during the operation of the building, you know exactly who was responsible for their occurrence, and you can go to court. If the project was developed by one company, and the construction of the house was carried out by another, there is a high probability that representatives of the companies will blame each other, which is why it will be almost impossible to find a solution.

We create the project ourselves

So, you have decided to develop a project according to which your dream home will be built. As mentioned above, legally this is quite legal - you can simply sketch out an approximate project, which will indicate the shape and size of the premises, and start construction based on this project. As a result, you can save tens of thousands of rubles. But is this method always optimal?

Mistakes of self-designing a house

The advantages of such a solution include savings and short deadlines, but that’s where the advantages end. But the risk of making mistakes is quite high if you have never developed building projects. In addition, poor knowledge of the building materials market often does not allow amateurs to choose the most effective technologies and solutions. It is possible that the resulting house will be very different from the one you imagined in your dreams.

In general, independent design is only permissible in cases where you are building a small country house. In many cases, its low weight eliminates the need to use a massive foundation. In addition, if it will be used only in the warm season, there is no need to connect it to a variety of communications - the only exception is electricity.

Professional foundation waterproofing

If the house needs a high-quality foundation, reliable vapor barrier and thermal insulation, and for comfortable year-round living it is necessary to connect heating, cold and hot water supply, sewerage and gasification, it would be better to entrust the work to professionals. An amateur simply will not be able to take into account all the nuances, as a result of which a lot of effort, time and money will be spent, and the built house will leave much to be desired.

Technical specifications for design

The development of an automation project is carried out on the basis of a technical specification for the design, which is drawn up by the customer or the organization performing the technological part of the project. Sometimes the organization carrying out the automation project is involved in drawing up the task.

A design brief is a document that defines all technical issues related to design.

The design assignment must resolve the main fundamental issues and identify all the requirements and wishes for the design of automation systems. It states:

name of the enterprise and task of the project;

basis for design;

composition of the designed object,

brief description and main characteristics of the technological process and equipment;

organization of operational management of the facility with a list of control points (central, dispatch, shop, etc.),

indicating their location and relationship;

a list of planned activities for the reconstruction and mechanization of production processes when designing the automation of existing facilities;

a list of controlled and regulated quantities indicating the characteristics of the environment,

the required accuracy of control and functional characteristics of instruments (indicating, recording, etc.), and for regulators - the permissible limit of deviation of the controlled quantities;

list of remote controlled power equipment indicating control points, the nature of the impact and the location of the equipment.

The following source materials are submitted along with the design assignment:

technological diagrams with pipeline communications and indication of their diameters;

drawings of production premises with the location of process equipment, pipeline communications and recommended installation locations for switchboards and control panels (plans and sections);

drawings of premises for placing switchboards and consoles;

power supply circuits for powering automation systems;

power supply circuits for automated electric drives;

schematic electrical diagrams of drives,

air and water supply diagrams indicating pressure, temperature, and the presence of air drying devices;

statements of instruments and automation equipment supplied complete with the equipment.

The design assignment is approved by the authority, which will subsequently approve the technical design.

Projects for automation of technological processes using control computers (CCMs) are developed on the basis of previously conducted research work.

When designing automation systems for technological processes using CFM, the following materials are additionally submitted to the design assignment:

data on priorities and time characteristics of solving automation problems;

results of research work, including the delivery of all first-time designed automation tasks using computers with machine algorithms and programs.

When creating an automated process control system, the “Technical specifications” stage is recommendedshould be done step by step:

The first stage - a preliminary examination of the automated object - consists of determining the types and volumes of research required for a detailed justification of the feasibility and possibility of creating the system.

The second stage - pre-project research work - consists of identifying and analyzing the most complex management problems for a preliminary selection of methods for solving them.

The third stage - preliminary development of an automated process control system - consists of the development of basic materials confirming the feasibility and possibility of creating an automated process control system. At this stage, it is recommended to carry out experimental testing of control algorithms using mock-ups of nodes of the created automated process control system,

The preliminary design is completed, if necessary, by adjusting the feasibility study related to clarifying the list and characteristics of the functions implemented by the system.

The fourth stage - development of technical specifications for the creation of an automated process control system - consists of drawing up a technical specification for creating a system based on the results of pre-design work.

After approval, the technical specification is a mandatory source document for all subsequent work on creating the system.

The technical specifications are approved by the ministry (department) of the developer and the ministry (department) of the customer and must be agreed upon with all organizations participating in the Work (co-executors).

An obligatory stage of cooperation between the customer and the design organization is development of technical specifications. A well-written technical specification is half the success of design. The terms of reference should be as detailed and detailed as possible - only this approach ensures complete mutual understanding between the customer and. In order for the design to be carried out without hitches, time delays and technical problems, it is necessary to take a responsible approach to drawing up the technical specifications.

Basic principles for developing technical specifications

The customer does not always have the special knowledge to competently draw up technical specifications. Therefore, this document is being developed jointly by the customer and engineers. Leading specialists from the design organization take part in the development of tasks for complex objects. The main task of technical specialists is to professionally “filter” abstract ideas and determine which ideas can be technically implemented. Engineers provide the customer with preliminary information about the difference in design time for simple and complex ideas. Technical specialists analyze the initial data and find a balance between the customer’s requirements and factors such as the reliability of the object, the complexity of the design, and the cost of construction. Competent communication between the customer and engineers allows us to find the “golden mean” in all significant parameters and ensure the profitability of the facility.

Source documents for developing technical specifications

To obtain a complete picture, the customer must provide the design organization with the maximum set of source documentation. A short list of source documents:

• approved engineering survey plans;
• decision of the executive authority to approve the construction site;
• site plan indicating communication connection points;
• technical conditions for connecting networks;
• architectural and planning task;
• a list of unique requirements for the object.

Procedure for developing technical specifications

To draw up technical specifications for design, the customer contacts specialists from the design organization for a preliminary discussion of the concept. Brief customer requirements are drawn up in the form of a questionnaire or formulated in any form. The main parameters that are determined at the very first stage of drawing up the technical specifications: area, number of storeys, shape of the building, type of facades, materials used, individual characteristics of the object. These parameters are included in the architectural and planning design assignment.

Having received the initial information, technical specialists provide recommendations for optimizing the building structure and its main parameters. After agreeing on all the nuances, the finished technical specification is drawn up as a separate document and sent for approval. Only after the technical specifications are signed by the customer and the contractor, the design organization proceeds directly to the design. The assignment is part of a legal agreement (contract or agreement) for the performance of project work.

Approximate composition of a design assignment

Common data.

• Type of construction and basis for design.
• Full name of the customer and contractor organizations.
• Scope and stages of design work.
• Stages of construction.
• Category of object complexity.
• List of special conditions for construction and operation of the facility.
• Design and construction timeframes.
• Initial documentation for design.

Design requirements.

• Data on the land plot, planning restrictions, landscaping, soil type, location of groundwater and green spaces.
• Technical and economic indicators of the facility (productivity, power, throughput and other indicators depending on the specifics of the building).
• For manufacturing enterprises - requirements for technology and operating mode.
• Requirements for the layout of an object on a land plot.
• Requirements for planning and architectural solutions (number of floors, area, decoration, facades, materials, architectural style, colors, etc.).
• Requirements for structural solutions (foundations, floors, walls, stairs, roofing, partitions, etc.).
• Requirements for external and internal engineering networks (heat supply, water supply, communications, electricity supply, drainage, lighting, ventilation, alarm system).
• Requirements for infrastructure and landscape design of the adjacent territory.
• Requirements for ensuring the energy efficiency of a building.
• Requirements regarding the need for future expansion of the facility.

Additional instructions. This section may include unique customer requirements - for example, the need to prepare demonstration materials and the number of copies of project documentation.

The PNProject company guarantees high-quality execution of design work, subject to detailed development of the technical specifications. The task should be free of controversial issues; every technical detail should be clearly formulated without the risk of double understanding. The terms of reference have legal force, so its preparation should be approached professionally and carefully. In this case, it is much better to spend more time developing technical specifications than to rush and later reap the unpleasant “fruits” of an unprofessional approach. Therefore, when collaborating with customers, we insist on a clear, in-depth and detailed study of the source data and high-quality development of the technical specifications.