New Builds – Defining the Specification

Before the design is signed into contract, all parties must agree on the specification …
The HUB revolutionises the process of Spec review … which traditionally circulated a Word document to owner, designer, shipyard, consultants.

As the feedback comes in, whoever has the job of reconciling the recommendations has to amend and re-publish the Specification.  The hard part is retaining and organising the reasons for the changes suggested and/or adopted.  These generally reside in an InBox, in a more or less organised fashion.

Here the HUB can be of considerable use … The specification is contained within the Hub, as a LIST which correlates to the Spec’s Table of Contents.  Each section can then be reviewed concurrently, by all the parties concerned, and their comments recorded in a series of related mark-ups.  This vastly improves the speed and accuracy with which the spec can be reviewed, and also records the reasons behind the evolution of the Spec.

To help further, the Hub allows users to add Attachments for every paragraph, so that spreadsheets, notes, reports and all manner of files, help to record the background to the evolution of the Spec.

With versioning enabled, nothing is lost.  Previous wording is simply archived, and may be retreived if needed, rather than being overwritten and lost.