What you will be able to do after this lesson
After this lesson you will be able to assemble the minimum content of a spec from which two different manufacturers will quote the same product.
Why it matters
A modular building rarely fails because of poor steel. More often it fails because the specification never said who the building is for, where it stands and what is included in the price. The supplier fills the gaps in their own way: one includes ventilation and installation, another does not. On paper the proposals are comparable; technically they are different buildings.
A good spec does not have to be thick. It only needs to answer seven questions unambiguously: purpose, capacity, site and climate, dimensions and logistics, engineering systems, scope of supply, documentation. Whatever the client does not know is more honestly recorded as “to be determined by design” than guessed.
Revisions are a separate discipline. Drawings, site plans and equipment schedules exist in several versions. If the spec does not state which revision is attached, the parties inevitably work from different files, and the discrepancies surface during installation.
| Work | Client | Manufacturer | Separate contractor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surveys and design | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Base and foundation | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Delivery, unloading, crane | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Installation, joints, common roof | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| External utilities and connection | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Commissioning and acceptance | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
How to apply this on a project
- Step 1. Start by describing the task and the purpose of the building, not the desired brand or an arbitrary standard size.
- Step 2. Separate the client's requirements from the parameters the design engineer must determine by calculation.
- Step 3. Fix the scope of supply: design, foundation, delivery, installation, external utilities, commissioning and acceptance.
- Step 4. State the revisions of the attachments and drawings so that the parties do not work from different versions.
Typical mistake
Requesting only a price per square meter without an identical configuration and scope of supply.
Check before the next step
- Building purpose
- Region and site
- Capacity or functional program
- Dimensional constraints
- Engineering systems
- Scope of supply
- List of attachments and revisions
Practice: prepare the input data
One questionnaire is available in three formats with the same question structure. In the online form, answers can be saved as a PDF without submitting a request; the Word form is for editing and the PDF is for printing.
Fill in online (in Russian) Word form (in Russian) PDF form (in Russian)
Leave unknown parameters to be agreed with the design engineer.
Related materials and tools
- INTERMODULE Questionnaire (in Russian)
- What documents are needed for design
- Technical descriptions of the series
Apply the lesson to your project
Gather the input data and record the unknown parameters as questions for approval. We prepare a calculation based on the questionnaire within 1 working day.