Why the Specification Matters More Than the Drawing
WHAT HAPPENED · ILLUSTRATIVE COMPOSITE
The drawings showed the external glazed screen to the atrium in 10mm toughened glass, annotated on the elevation and carried through to the glazing schedule. The specification, in its glazing section, required laminated glass to a stated standard for all glazing over three metres in height — which this screen was. Both were contract documents. They could not both be satisfied.
The contractor priced and installed to the drawing. At practical completion the employer's consultant identified the discrepancy, and the argument turned on a question neither party had asked at tender: which document governed?
On a FIDIC contract that question has an answer. Sub-Clause 1.5 ranks the Specification immediately above the Drawings, and the laminated requirement would have prevailed. On an unamended JCT form it has no answer — clause 1.3 ranks neither above the other — so the same facts produce a matter of contractual construction and a dispute nobody budgeted for.
“Note what makes this a priority problem rather than a compliance one: the two documents contradict each other. Where they merely differ in what they cover, no ranking is engaged and the specification simply binds.”
Conflict, and the thing it is often confused with
What a conflict actually is. A priority clause only operates where two contract documents say incompatible things about the same matter, so that one must yield. That is narrower than it sounds, and the distinction decides whether any of this article applies to a given dispute.
What is usually happening instead. Most specification arguments are not conflicts at all. A drawing shows geometry and location; a specification states product, standard and performance. A contractor who installs a substitute product has not encountered a conflict — the drawing never said which product to use. That is straightforward non-compliance with the specification, and the priority clause is irrelevant to it: the contractor loses on any form, ranking or no ranking.
Why the composite is drawn the way it is. The composite above is deliberately the other kind. Ten millimetre toughened and laminated-to-a-standard are mutually exclusive specifications of the same element. One document must give way, and which one does is a question only a priority provision can answer.
Scope and sources. This article addresses the FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction 2017 (2nd edition) and JCT Standard Building Contract with Quantities 2016, both read from the forms themselves. The JCT 2024 suite and NEC4 are not covered. The case above is a constructed composite; the contractual positions are real.
Why specifications go unread
The structural reason. Drawings are visual and accessible to everyone on the team. The specification is text, often hundreds of pages, referencing standards that are frequently not available on site. It is read properly once — by the estimator and the QS at tender — and then filed. Site teams rarely open it again.
What it produces. That produces a systematic gap between what was priced and what gets built, and it produces conflicts of the composite's kind too: a discrepancy that a careful cross-reading at tender would have caught surfaces instead at completion, when the non-conforming work is already in place and remedy is at its most expensive.
FIDIC — an express sequence, and the Specification wins
The provision. Sub-Clause 1.5 opens by stating that the documents forming the Contract are to be taken as mutually explanatory of one another. Where there is conflict, ambiguity or discrepancy, it then sets out an express priority sequence — and it is worth knowing in order, because the ranking is not intuitive.
The order itself. The sequence runs: the Contract Agreement; the Letter of Acceptance; the Letter of Tender; the Particular Conditions Part A — Contract Data; the Particular Conditions Part B — Special Provisions; these General Conditions; the Specification; the Drawings; the Schedules; the JV Undertaking where the Contractor is a joint venture; and finally any other documents forming part of the Contract.
Two points in the ranking. Two things in that list repay attention. The Specification sits immediately above the Drawings — so on a FIDIC contract the composite resolves in the employer's favour. And the Particular Conditions outrank the General Conditions, which means amendments made in Part B govern over the printed form. A contractor reading only the General Conditions is reading the sixth-ranked document.
And a duty to speak. Sub-Clause 1.5 also imposes a positive duty. If a Party finds an ambiguity or discrepancy in the documents, that Party shall promptly give a Notice to the Engineer describing it, and the Engineer then issues the necessary clarification or instruction. The obligation runs both ways and it is not discretionary — a contractor who spots a conflict, stays quiet, and builds to the cheaper document has not merely taken a commercial risk; it has failed to do something the sub-clause requires. In the composite, that duty was engaged at tender and discharged by nobody.
JCT — no hierarchy between them, which surprises people
What clause 1.3 actually says. JCT takes a fundamentally different approach, and the difference is the single most useful thing in this article. Clause 1.3 provides that the Agreement and the Conditions are to be read as a whole, and that nothing contained in any other Contract Document or any Framework Agreement, irrespective of their terms, shall override or modify the Agreement or the Conditions.
And what it does not say. Read it carefully and notice what it does not do. It protects the Agreement and the Conditions from being overridden by anything else. It establishes no ranking whatever as between the drawings, the bills, the specification and the other production information. There is no JCT equivalent of the FIDIC sequence.
Which leaves the question open. So the question 'which governs, the drawing or the specification?' has no contractual answer under an unamended JCT form. A genuine conflict between them is resolved by ordinary principles of contractual construction — reading the documents together, giving effect to the parties' evident intention, and weighing which reading makes commercial sense — not by looking up a priority list, because there is not one.
Why it matters commercially. That is a materially worse position for both parties than FIDIC's. It converts a question with a defined answer into an argument with an uncertain one, and it is precisely why many JCT contracts are amended to insert a priority clause. If you are administering a JCT form, find out whether yours has been amended before you need to know.
The one-page package extract
The realistic fix. Telling site teams to read a three-hundred-page specification does not work and never has. The workable discipline is extraction: for each package, one page capturing what the specification actually requires.
What goes on it. Four questions fill it. What materials and products are specified, by name or by standard? What standards and codes apply, and are they available on site? What minimum performance requirements attach — guarantee periods, load ratings, fire ratings, thermal values? And what testing, sampling or certification is required before the work is accepted?
And the question that catches conflicts. Add a fifth column on any package where the drawings carry product or performance annotations of their own: does the drawing say anything the specification contradicts? That is the cross-read that catches a conflict at tender, when Sub-Clause 1.5's notice duty can still be discharged cheaply, rather than at completion when the glass is already in.
What it costs. It takes about an hour per package to produce from a specification the QS has already read at tender. Against the cost of stripping and reinstalling a completed facade, roof or floor finish, that is the cheapest risk control available on a construction project.
The case against specification primacy
The obvious objection. The title of this article is deliberately one-sided, and the other side deserves stating properly.
The argument. Specifications are frequently worse documents than drawings. They are often assembled from a library, carried across from a previous project, and contain requirements the designer never consciously chose — a named product no longer manufactured, a standard since withdrawn, a guarantee period no supplier in the market will give. A rigid specification-wins rule can therefore enforce a requirement nobody actually intended, at real cost and no benefit.
And a second. There is a second, more practical version. On a well-coordinated project the drawings are the document most recently reviewed against site conditions, while the specification may not have been opened since tender. The more current document is not always the higher-ranked one — and in the composite it is entirely possible that the 10mm toughened annotation reflected a considered later decision that nobody wrote back into the specification.
Where that leaves it. None of which argues for ignoring the specification — it argues for interrogating it early. Raise obsolete, unobtainable or superseded requirements at tender or at the first package review, when a substitution or a formal amendment can be agreed cheaply. Under FIDIC Sub-Clause 1.5 there is an express route for exactly this, and using it converts a latent dispute into an instruction. Discovering the problem at completion, when the ranking is against you, is the failure mode.
What to do on the next package
First. Find your priority clause before you need it. On FIDIC it is Sub-Clause 1.5 and the sequence is express. On JCT check whether the form has been amended to insert one — many are, and the unamended position leaves the question open.
Second. Produce the one-page extract for every significant package, from the specification the QS read at tender, and include the cross-read against any product or performance annotation on the drawings.
Third. Where drawing and specification genuinely contradict each other, raise it before building, in writing. Under FIDIC that is a contractual duty, not a courtesy. Under JCT it is the only way to get an answer that binds anyone.
Fourth. And distinguish the two cases before you argue. If the documents merely differ in what they cover, you are in a compliance argument and the priority clause will not help either side. If they contradict, you are in a priority argument and the form decides it.
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CLAUSE REFERENCES FIDIC Conditions of Contract for Construction 2017 (2nd ed): Sub-Clause 1.5 [Priority of Documents] — documents are mutually explanatory; where there is conflict, ambiguity or discrepancy the sequence is the Contract Agreement; Letter of Acceptance; Letter of Tender; Particular Conditions Part A – Contract Data; Particular Conditions Part B – Special Provisions; General Conditions; Specification; Drawings; Schedules; JV Undertaking; and any other documents forming part of the Contract. The same sub-clause imposes a duty on a Party finding an ambiguity or discrepancy to give prompt Notice to the Engineer. · JCT Standard Building Contract with Quantities 2016: cl. 1.3 — the Agreement and Conditions are to be read as a whole, and nothing in any other Contract Document or Framework Agreement, irrespective of its terms, shall override or modify them. Clause 1.3 establishes no priority as between drawings, bills and specification; that is stated here as the absence of a ranking provision in the unamended form, and many JCT contracts are amended to insert one. The JCT 2024 suite is not covered. · NEC4 is not covered. |
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