The Basics of Writing Paint Specifications
What are Paint Specifications?
Implementing corrosion protection for your facility all starts with one important document: your paint specifications sheet. Your paint specifications sheet will outline the entire course of your project. This document must clearly and concisely lay out the conditions and processes that will prevent corrosion and other harmful damages to your facility.
It is not a statement of how the project should look once completed, but rather a detailed explanation of the conditions necessary to achieve maximum service life and corrosion protection. Paint specifications are the project template, and if something is wrong with the template, the finished product simply won’t perform properly.
In the unfortunate event of a dispute between a contractor and a project owner, the project specifications will also likely be used to determine whether each party lived up to its responsibilities. This is just another reason to make sure your paint specifications are thorough and clear before a project gets off the ground.
How to Write Paint Specifications
Well-written paint specifications contain exactly as much detail as they need to make expectations clear and no more. Industrial coatings are more complex than they used to be, and paint specifications need to reflect that complexity.
At the same time, these specifications need to be unambiguous in order to avoid confusion about an owner’s expectations. It should be clear to a contractor that the owner expects all aspects of the document to be lived up to, or else any recommended changes should be clearly mentioned during the bidding process.
Clarity of the paint specifications will reduce the likelihood that a contractor’s work does not conform to expectations. A clear understanding between both parties will also reduce the probability that expensive change orders will need to be filed during the course of the work.
As mentioned before, specifications can act as legal documents in the case of a dispute, and any confusion resulting from unclear specifications may increase the risk of a breach of contract or a legal dispute.
But what are the actual elements of a specification document?
What exactly is being specified?
For answers to these questions and more info on who to talk to about paint specifications, download our whitepaper below.
