Overview
Specifications are an important contractual document on many projects. The Specifications tab allows Project Admins to upload and organize their Specification files all in one location. When you upload your specifications document, our system will divide the document into sections and version them; this allows both the field and the office teams to have the most up-to-date documentation.
Note: The Specifications tab is only added automatically to projects created after July 26, 2022. If you would like Specifications toggled on for your entire Account and/or existing Projects, please reach out to support@fieldwire.com.
The Specifications tab is available for all subscription tiers (Basic, Pro, Business, and Business Plus), and for all platforms (web, Android, and iOS).
Table of Contents
The Specifications Tab
Like many of the modules in Fieldwire, you have the ability to upload your documents to the Specifications tab and export them. In addition to this, the functionality in Specifications is very similar to uploading Plans in the Plans tab. However, the only file type accepted in the Specifications tab is PDF, and the size limit for uploaded files is 200MB.
The headers in this tab provide a high-level overview of the Specifications on the project. More specifically, these headers are defined below:
- #: The number is assigned by our system, (much like how our system looks for the names of Plan Sheets), which looks for the 6-digit spec number and spec title based on the CSI MasterFormat widely used in the US.
- Title: The title of the Specification, added when the spec is created or can be manually added/updated.
- Current Version: The date that the latest version of that spec section was uploaded.
Uploading Specifications
- Click + New specification (or the hyperlinked text, “Upload a new specification”)
-
Choose your upload source
- Click Select files to upload specifications directly from your computer, or
- Click More upload options to upload specifications from Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, or OneDrive Business
- Click 'Upload files'
If you accidentally upload the incorrect specification, and you have already gone through the review/confirmation process detailed in the section below, you can delete the specification as described in the section, Deleting specifications.
Confirming Automatically Generated Spec Numbers, Titles, and Version
If the formatting of your documents conforms to either the CSI Master format (widely used in the USA) or CAWS (predominantly used in the UK), they will be automatically read by our system after uploading.
Note: If your document does not conform to the CSI Master format or CAWS, please follow the steps under “Subdivide Specification Sections Manually” to manually divide the specifications into sections.
If you would like automated subdivision to be supported for other formatting types in the future, please send us an e-mail to support@fieldwire.com.
If the file name matches the [spec number] [spec title] formatting, and the document is vector-based, we will automatically name and number the section with no need for confirmation along with adding the version (CSI Master format).
During the upload process, your specifications will immediately land in a “processing” state (see screenshot below).
- If your files remain in this processing state for longer than 5 minutes, it could be that our processing queues are backed up.
- If they are processing for longer than 15 minutes, please contact support@fieldwire.com.
Upon upload, our system will automatically add the upload date as the version and identify the different sections of the document (if they are following the 6-digit CSI MasterFormat or CAWS). You’ll see these sections when clicking “Review" or “Review all uploads”.
If the file name does not match this formatting, you will need to manually confirm the section numbers and titles. You can review all uploads one after another by clicking the “Review all uploads” button, or you can select a specific file to review by clicking “Review” next to the Spec file.
Subdivide Specification Sections Manually
Specifications that do not correspond to the CSI MasterFormat or CAWS can be manually divided into different sections if required. To do this, follow these steps:
- Click on the blue +New specification button.
- Select the source from which you want to upload the specification.
- You can upload specification from your computer, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, One Note and Gmail.
- If you are uploading the specifications from your computer, select (or drag and drop) the relevant file(s) in the upload window and select “Upload”.
- Click on Review, once the upload process is complete
- Click on the section automatically created for the entire document
- Assign a number and a title and define which pages you would like to have in this section.
- Confirm this section by clicking on the blue Save button.
- Click on +New section for each section (area) you want to create and enter the number, title, the page number from where and until this section applies
- Confirm this new section by clicking on the blue Save button.
- Complete the process by clicking on the blue Confirm all sections button.
Deleting Specifications
If you have accidentally uploaded the wrong specification, there are three ways to delete the uploaded document. However, in order to do so, you must be a Project Admin (more info here: Introduction to Project Permission Levels: Administrators, Members, and Followers).
Note: Once a specification is deleted, it cannot be recovered from the Trash tab (see "What is the Trash Tab?" for further details).
Option 1: Instead of clicking on “Review” after uploading a service description, you can click the Delete button.
Option 2: Click on the kebab menu (⋮) on the far right in the line of the specification and select “Delete”.
Option 3: You can delete multiple specifications at once by selecting the checkboxes to the left, clicking the Actions dropdown menu, and then choosing "Delete".
- After clicking Delete, you'll see a pop-up in Fieldwire asking you to confirm this action.
Resolving Version Conflicts
Similar to the Plans Version Control module, if you need to upload an updated version of your spec book, you can do so within Fieldwire’s Specification module.
If you upload new specifications with the same number as an existing section, it will trigger a “Version Conflict”. This occurs when the system tries to confirm that the new section number is accurate and that the new version will supersede the existing version.
When you need to resolve the version conflict, you'll see a red warning at the top of the page.
To resolve the conflict, you will need to confirm the section number, title, and version description of the new version(s) so the new specifications will “slip-sheet” on top of the existing specifications.
To begin to approve your specifications, click the 'Review individually’ or ‘Resolve all’ buttons to determine whether you want to review each conflict individually or all at once:
Note: If you click ‘Resolve all’, you will be asked to confirm this action. Once this action is confirmed, all version conflicts will be resolved without the ability to review them one by one. If you confirm this action, it cannot be undone.
If you choose to “Review Individually”, a new screen will appear displaying the new and existing sheets and the spec numbers, titles, etc. of each. Here you can view the newly updated Spec document to locate where the conflict is coming from.
Clicking ‘Add as new version’ will merge the two documents into a single spec section, where you can jump between versions. If it is not a new version, you can also change the number of the section so the number does not match with the existing sheet, and 'confirm' this as a unique spec.
Exporting Specifications
Once your specifications have been uploaded and processed, you can export them as PDFs. To do so, you'll click the three dots on the right side of the specification and click "Export".
Note: You cannot export multiple specifications at once.
Extract Submittals
In addition to exporting your specifications, once they have finished uploading and processing, you'll be able to extract Submittals information from them (see The Submittals Workflow in Fieldwire for further details), which will be placed in a CSV file.
1. Click on the checkbox next to each specification that you'd like to extract Submittal information from. If you'd like to select all of your specifications, you can select the checkbox next to the "#" symbol. Once your specifications are selected, the "Extract submittals" button (which will previously have been greyed out) will be clickable.
2. After clicking on the "Extract submittals" button, you'll see a pop-up asking you to confirm the action as well as indicating that this process can take up to 1 hour to complete.
3. Once the extraction process is complete, you'll receive an email in your inbox. This email will provide a link to the downloadable spreadsheet, as well as provide the names of the sections you selected that did not contain submittals.
4. By clicking the "Here" hyperlinked button, you'll download a .csv file. The downloadable spreadsheet will contain the following columns: Specification Section, Name, Type, and Description.
5. If you have access to the Submittals tab, these downloadable spreadsheets with Submittal information can then be imported to the Submittals tab as new Submittal Logs!
Search Spec Sections by Number or Title
Navigating the Specifications tab is relatively easy. However, locating specific specification sections might be difficult depending on how many you've uploaded to your project. Thus, to make this easier, you have the ability to search for your various spec sections by either the Number (#) or the Title. To do so, simply use the search bar as shown in the short video below.
Note: If your specifications have spaces, dashes, or other special characters in the "#", you need to include those in your search for our system to locate your spec sections accurately.
Search Key Words/Phrases in the Specification
You can search the actual Specification itself for keywords and phrases.
- 1. Click on the Specification to open it up
2. In the upper right hand corner click on the magnifying glass which will open up a search bar
3. Enter your search term/key words and if it is in the Spec, it will show up in yellow, both on the document itself and on the right hand side under the search bar -
Viewing Specifications
After you’ve split your files and resolved version conflicts, you can access current and older versions of specifications (just as you would review Plan sheets) by clicking on the date in the lower left-hand corner. You should be able to see previous versions of this specification listed.
Older versions of the specification will be easy to spot, as they will bear a large red watermark stating “Old version” in the center of the document.
Markups
After opening a Specification on the web, you can view and create markups. Use the top toolbar to add annotations, shapes, or to add a signature:
Project Admins can edit, comment on, delete and link markups on Specifications made by any user, and they will see the following options:
Project Members can only edit and delete markups on Specs that they created, but they have ability to comment and link on markups created by other users. See screenshot below for reference of what project members should see when they click on another user’s markup:
Note: Followers are not able to edit, comment, link or delete any markups.
Specifications on Mobile
Once you've uploaded your specifications to Fieldwire on the web, you'll be able to view and create markups on them via your iOS and Android devices!
To view specifications on both iOS and Android, simply navigate to the new Specifications tab.
Note: You cannot upload documents to the specifications tab on mobile, or view plan links to specifications on your device. These actions still need to be performed on the web.
iOS:
Once you have navigated to the Specifications tab on your iOS device, click on the three dots in the upper right-hand corner to add markups.
A new page will open, allowing you to create markups, annotations, etc. These are the same options seen when adding markups to a file on the Files tab on mobile.
Android:
Once you have navigated to the Specifications tab on your Android device, click on the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner to add markups.
A new page will open, allowing you to create markups, annotations, etc. These are the same options seen when adding markups to a file on the Files tab on mobile.
More information
- The Photos tab
- Introduction to the Forms Tab
- The Files tab
- Private Markups
- The Submittals Workflow in Fieldwire